NAME¶
bsnes - Accurate SNES/Super Famicom emulator
SYNOPSIS¶
bsnes <ROM location>
OPTIONS¶
<ROM location> -- from the command line, you can supply the name of a ROM
file as an argument to start playing that ROM
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS¶
F11 -- toggle fullscreen mode
DESCRIPTION¶
bsnes is a Super Nintendo / Super Famicom emulator that strives to provide the
most faithful hardware emulation possible. It focuses on accuracy and clean
code, rather than speed and special features. It is meant as a reference
emulator to document how the underlying hardware works. It is thus very useful
for development and research. And while it can be used for general purpose
gaming, it will require significantly more powerful hardware than a typical
emulator. Although not as polished as the SNES emulation (yet), there is also
support for NES, Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance games.
Supported Filetypes¶
SFC: SNES cartridge -- ROM image.
BS: Satellaview BS-X flash cartridge -- EEPROM image.
ST: Sufami Turbo cartridge -- ROM image.
SRM, PSR: non-volatile memory, often used to save game data -- (P)SRAM
image.
GB/GBC/GBA: Gameboy (Color/Advance) cartridge -- ROM image.
NES/FC: NES cartridge -- ROM image.
Note that bsnes can not open ROMs with different filename extensions or with
copier headers.
Known Limitations¶
Satellaview BS-X emulation: this hardware is only partially supported.
This is mostly because the satellite network it used (St. GIGA) has been shut
down. Access to this network would be required to properly reverse engineer
much of the hardware. Working around this would require game-specific hacks,
which are contrary to the design goals of this emulator. As a result, most
BS-X software will not function correctly.
Netplay: internet multiplay is not currently supported nor planned.
PROFILES¶
bsnes comes with three profiles, where "accuracy" and
"compatibility" are focused on accuracy in emulating the SNES
(compatibility makes minor tradeoffs in favor of speed) and
"performance" is focused on using less resources. Which profile to
use can be set with:
# update-alternatives --config bsnes-bin
SYSTEM FOLDERS¶
bsnes does not only need ROMs containing games, but also data that was
originally stored in chips belonging to the consoles. The files containing
this data are organized in system folders. The system folders contain system
info and firmware/BIOS images and are located in
"$HOME/.config/bsnes". For example, to play GBA games, a GBA bios
image is required. The file has to be named "bios.rom" and placed
inside the "Game Boy Advance.sys" folder in
"$HOME/.config/bsnes". The checksum of the file has to match the one
given in "/usr/share/bsnes/Game Boy Advance.sys/manifest.xml".
SEE ALSO¶
bsnes-purify(6),
laevateinn(6)
MORE INFO¶
Website:
http://byuu.org/bsnes/
BSNES AUTHOR¶
byuu
MAN PAGE AUTHORS¶
Brandon Barnes, Tobias Hansen