Mednafen

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Introduction to Mednafen

Mednafen is a portable, utilizing OpenGL and SDL, argument(command-line)-driven multi-system emulator. Mednafen has the ability to remap hotkey functions and virtual system inputs to a keyboard, a joystick, or both simultaneously. Save states are supported, as is real-time game rewinding. Screen snapshots may be taken, in the PNG file format, at the press of a button. Mednafen can record audiovisual movies in the QuickTime file format, with several different lossless codecs supported.

The following systems are supported(refer to the emulation module documentation for more details):

Mednafen is distributed under the terms of the GNU GPLv2.

Due to the threaded model of emulation used in Mednafen, and limitations of SDL, a joystick is preferred over a keyboard to play games, as the joystick will have slightly less latency, although the latency differences may not be perceptible to most people.

News

Mednafen 1.28.0-UNSTABLENovember 12, 2021 - 02:23 PST

Notable changes since 1.27.1:
  • Stricter parsing of the configuration file and numeric setting values, with error messages now containing line numbers when relevant.
  • Added setting "video.force_bbclear", default value of "0", which when set to "1" will force clearing of the backbuffer before drawing every frame.
  • Added setting "video.cursorvis", default value of "hidden", to allow for showing the windowing system's mouse cursor within Mednafen's window even when it's not required.
  • Implemented an M3U recursion limit of 9, adjustable by the new setting "cd.m3u.recursion_limit".
  • Implemented a limit of 25 on the total number of CD images loaded while processing M3U files, adjustable via the new setting "cd.m3u.disc_limit".
  • Added Zstandard decompression support to game loading, with both naked files("zst" extension) and ZIP archives.
  • Added support for loading CD images from ZIP archives when the "cd.image_memcache" setting is set to "1". The ZIP archive may be loaded directly, or indirectly via an M3U file. An M3U file may also exist within the ZIP archive, to allow loading multiple CD images from within that ZIP archive. However, loading from a ZIP archive within another ZIP archive is not supported.
  • Changed the naming of save games, save states, etc. for gzip-compressed games. Previously, a gzip-compressed file named like "whatever.nes.gz" would generate a save game named like "whatever.nes.<HASH>.sav", but will now generate a save game named like "whatever.<HASH>.sav", the same as if "whatever.nes" had been loaded instead of "whatever.nes.gz". The old behavior may be restored by setting the new undocumented setting "filesys.old_gz_naming" to "1".
  • SS: The emulated reset button mapped to Mednafen's reset command key(F10 default) will now respect the "input.ckdelay" setting.
  • SS: The VA0/VA1 motherboard's memory mapping behavior for Low-RAM is now emulated instead of VA2's, to fix a crash in "Myst" in the generator room.
  • SS: Fixed unresponsive input in "Discworld".
  • SS: Fixed startup abort to CD player screen in the Europe and USA releases of "Primal Rage".
  • SS: Fixed abort to CD player screen when trying to start a game demo in Gremlin Interactive's "Demo Disc".
  • SS: Fixed inability to skip the intro FMV in "Senkutsu Katsuryu Taisen: Chaos Seed".
  • SS: Fixed flickering title screen in the "Saturn Super Vol. 2" demo of "Golden Axe: The Duel".
  • SS: Fixed a regression introduced in 1.26.0-UNSTABLE that broke the CD audio player in the North America/Europe BIOS.
  • SS: Implemented emulation of the CD block Scan command, to allow the scan forward/backward functionality in the BIOS's CD audio player to work.
  • SS: Fixed a bug in the CD seek handling code that could cause more emulator frame pacing and sound buffer underrun issues than strictly necessary when CD image memory caching is not enabled, the default.
  • SS: Corrected a few inaccuracies in the relative timing between different SCSP EG rates and between different SCSP timer prescaler rates(probably with negligible audible effects in commercial game sound drivers).
  • VB: Added "left" and "right" options to the "vb.3dmode" setting, to allow for more easily showing only the left or right view.
ChangeLog


mednafen-1.28.0-UNSTABLE.tar.xz
SHA-256: 0aef2b2ed30a23fd1586a590860077d75826ed077e7d32772b1acf3fcbf03f53

mednafen-1.28.0-UNSTABLE-win64.zip
SHA-256: 2181acabc3af0014b3d764ecd0ae7f921f51d16475cec3b4c5e6367abc437709

mednafen-1.28.0-UNSTABLE-win32.zip
SHA-256: e003f55c644ebb4fe84884a0bd4a9bd87eacd01f4553928360ad8e1e3ac9c811

Mednafen 1.27.1June 13, 2021 - 01:19 PDT

Minor bugfix release.

ChangeLog


mednafen-1.27.1.tar.xz
SHA-256: f3a89b2f32f40c3232593808d05e0c21cbdf443688ace04c9c27e4cf4d5955fb

mednafen-1.27.1-win64.zip
SHA-256: 578c49ce2d8a36af9103113d5d6cf97139c59f89450db5a1ea0c7a3ada895458

mednafen-1.27.1-win32.zip
SHA-256: a0f4dd4e66b056f756aa7d181714507cfefa526332ccc371e6665ec1617b306b

Mednafen 1.27.0-UNSTABLEApril 1, 2021 - 12:29 PDT

With this release, there is now a special non-Unicode Windows 98-compatible build available. This special Windows 98 build will not be provided for every release, and may be discontinued entirely if it becomes too much of a pain. The minimum CPU requirement is i686-class with MMX, e.g. Intel Pentium II, AMD K7(Athlon), and VIA C3 Nehemiah, though the PS1 emulation module also requires SSE2 for MDEC emulation.

Notable changes since 1.26.1:
  • Added support for 16bpp graphics output to the majority of emulation modules(excluding "pce", "pcfx", "psx", "snes", "ss", and "vb"). Using this support with OpenGL can be done by setting the video.glformat setting appropriately, which *may* result in a small performance boost on scary dinosaur toasters and underpowered ARM SBCs.
  • Rewrote the save state preview image resizing code, such that it no longer makes Saturn mesh transparency look horrendous.
  • Dropped usage of and dependency on libsndfile, and added a direct dependency on libFLAC. The only CD image audio file formats/encodings other than raw supported now are: FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, and uncompressed PCM in AIFF/AIFC, AU/SND, W64, and WAV.
  • Each Mednafen data directory created on startup will now be based on the current value of the corresponding filesys.path_* setting, rather than the default value, except when the current value of the corresponding filesys.fname_* setting is different from its default, in which case the directory will not be created at all.
  • Added manual physical game controller hotplugging support, by pressing SHIFT+F3 to rescan and reinitialize the controllers.
  • Changed netplay/cheat console key combos for navigating to the beginning and end of the scrollback buffer to CTRL+Home and CTRL+End, respectively(previously SHIFT+Home and SHIFT+End).
  • Added netplay/cheat console key combos CTRL+Backspace and CTRL+Delete for quickly clearing the prompt text entry buffer.
  • PS1: Fixed hangs at different points in some versions of "Tomb Raider", a problem initially fixed in 0.9.38.3, but regressed in 1.22.0-UNSTABLE.
  • PS1: Fixed missing FMV audio in "Blue's Clues: Blue's Big Musical".
  • SNES-Faust: Fixed hangs in "Derby Stallion 96", "Hakunetsu Pro Yakyuu: Ganba League", "Ihatov Monogatari", "Kentou Ou World Champion", "Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei", "Sound Novel Tsukuru", "Super Professional Baseball II", "Yuujin Janjuu Gakuen 2", and "Yuuyu no Quiz de Go! Go!".
  • SNES-Faust: Fixed missing sound in "Shougi Club".
  • SNES-Faust: Fixed saving in "Light Fantasy", "PGA Tour Golf", and "Ys III".
  • SS: Fixed major audio problems in "Lunar" during boss battles, due to the sound CPU crashing inaccurately during game bootup and corrupting SCSP DSP registers. Note that this fix will not affect existing save states made within the game.
ChangeLog


mednafen-1.27.0-UNSTABLE.tar.xz
SHA-256: 4a7ecf38139372472598ab1c75469eac284ba203cdce5ba6ec8aefbff5f0a382

mednafen-1.27.0-UNSTABLE-win64.zip
SHA-256: a6196361b8c7740c65d9647550ff3e7b870e2f2c833e178f06bbda1deea963f9

mednafen-1.27.0-UNSTABLE-win32.zip
SHA-256: dcb5649b857b4879bbc76aba4bf04d31bc250d97a5e81539325ee2a771691188

Mednafen 1.26.1November 10, 2020 - 23:12 PST

This release fixes compilation errors with clang, fixes compilation errors after configuring with --disable-debugger, fixes a few minor MSU1 handling bugs in the SNES-Faust module, and improves the accuracy of the PS1 SPU reverb emulation.

mednafen-1.26.1.tar.xz
SHA-256: 842907c25c4292c9ba497c9cb9229c7d10e04e22cb4740d154ab690e6587fdf4

mednafen-1.26.1-win64.zip
SHA-256: 1d776e9355208c2fc81bea5ce036e955c5aea02f1176dc311df0a74ec17e6b48

mednafen-1.26.1-win32.zip
SHA-256: 7ba91c81e7c40179adbd066fb390d8d696fdf3f9222c87090576f62359c9e7fb

Mednafen 1.26.0-UNSTABLEOctober 28, 2020 - 23:13 PDT

This release may have more Saturn-related regressions than usual.

Notable changes since 1.25.0-UNSTABLE:
  • SS: Fixed startup hang in the Europe releases of "Virtua Cop" and "Virtua Cop 2".
  • SS: Fixed startup hang in the USA release of "Independence Day".
  • SS: Fixed hang in "QuoVadis".
  • SS: Fixed hang in "Kidou Senkan Nadesico: Yappari Saigo wa Ai ga Katsu".
  • SS: Fixed crash/hang in "Hop Step Idol".
  • SS: Fixed startup abort to CD player screen in "Break Point" and "DJ Wars".
  • SS: Fixed hang of finite duration that sometimes occurred when trying to skip FMVs in "Dragon Force II" and "World Cup France '98: Road to Win".
  • SS: Fixed major sound glitches during gameplay in "Gunbird" after starting a game after exiting from the illustration gallery.
  • SS: Fixed dialogue voice audio being cut off prematurely in "Paneltia Story".
  • SS: Fixed missing graphics in the intro of "Magical Drop III".
  • SS: Fixed missing background layer graphics on disc 2 of "Mahjong Doukyuusei Special".
  • SS: Fixed glitchy ship sprite in the ending sequence of "Thunder Force III" in "Thunder Force Gold Pack 1".
  • SS: Fixed FMV tearing in "Ys II" of "Falcom Classics II".
  • SS: Fixed FMV tearing in "In the Hunt".
  • SS: Fixed minor FMV glitches in "3D Baseball", "The Crow", "NBA Action", "NFL Quarterback Club 96", "Solar Eclipse", and "Titan Wars".
  • SS: Fixed FMV glitches in "NFL Quarterback Club 97".
  • SS: Fixed FMV glitches in the Japan and USA releases of "Virtua Fighter Kids".
  • SS: Fixed intro FMV ending too soon in "Yu-No".
  • SS: Fixed glitchy frames on the Konami intro arm sprite in "Tokimeki Memorial: Forever With You".
  • SS: Fixed graphical glitches on the save and load screens in "Horror Tour".
  • SS: Fixed glitchy rotation-zoom effect in "Corpse Killer".
  • SS: Fixed blank game over screen in "Doraemon: Nobita to Fukkatsu no Hoshi".
  • SS: Fixed glitches when character graphics change in "Mujintou Monogatari R: Futari no Love Love Island".
  • SS: Fixed character portrait graphical glitch after entering the character select screen in "Zero Divide".
  • SS: Further reduced graphical glitching in "Virtua Fighter Remix".
  • SS: Fixed most rock face graphical glitches in "The Lost World: Jurassic Park".
  • SS: Fixed most graphical glitches with the player's robot in "Wolf Fang SS: Kuuga 2001".
ChangeLog


mednafen-1.26.0-UNSTABLE.tar.xz
SHA-256: 0ab810f32fde4feb9fcf94fa595362b529b8c2cdbb6d47b400983c426808ace1

mednafen-1.26.0-UNSTABLE-win64.zip
SHA-256: 4b03e0f25db89b512e4c80689d48bc21693ff57c399b8efadc360bb25c8218c7

mednafen-1.26.0-UNSTABLE-win32.zip
SHA-256: e85bc80e0bf0483b9547f31270c2ad1a0cd3cfd80cc62f2e578d6a0c687b9aa1

Mednafen 1.25.0-UNSTABLEJuly 13, 2020 - 22:53 PDT

Notable changes since 1.24.3:
  • SS: Implemented more complete emulation of SCSP's buggy linear interpolation on FM carrier slots.
  • SS: Fixed a minor VDP1 rendering inaccuracy with non-rectangular sprites and polygons.
  • SS: Fixed excessive CPU usage during the FMV in "Dark Seed II".
  • SS: Fixed hang after defeating the final boss in "Rayman".
  • SS: Fixed hang after the Meribia singer's singing in "Lunar".
  • SS: Fixed missing graphics during the attract mode in "Virtua Cop".
  • SS: Fixed garbage horizontally-stretched sprite in the Christmas-themed stage in "Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams".
  • SS: Fixed dialogue text truncation in "Senken Kigyouden".
  • SS: Significantly reduced graphical glitching in "Virtua Fighter" and "Virtua Fighter Remix".
ChangeLog


mednafen-1.25.0-UNSTABLE.tar.xz
SHA-256: 0ee12e6b52325d5b158f55725f2f34845afd85a4bfba2d5e3c1e139e2be5982a

mednafen-1.25.0-UNSTABLE-win64.zip
SHA-256: 3a1d0be4da01fbff3eef7019e89db38bcbb12b249e426cfb49261a230c47ed5a

mednafen-1.25.0-UNSTABLE-win32.zip
SHA-256: 1170c8cd84829dc1c5b7e735e22cef1c309ffe7d5926262412a765e8b8bb79db

Mednafen 1.24.3May 4, 2020 - 11:07 PDT

This update implements more complete emulation of the Saturn SCSP's short waveform mode, fixing excessive distortion in a sound effect in "Sega Ages: OutRun", a regression introduced in Mednafen 1.24.2.

ChangeLog


mednafen-1.24.3.tar.xz
SHA-256: 3dea853f784364557fa59e9ba11a17eb2674fc0fb93205f33bdbdaba1da3f70f

mednafen-1.24.3-win64.zip
SHA-256: abcb3d6f037c4b69f82b6d1b01e80e727bfd6f54bdc9cae78a4167e1d9c6240c

mednafen-1.24.3-win32.zip
SHA-256: 9486b5c7e26e146b5142f9aed1d204441ab7395edbe92f697376bb3e6a9a9467

Mednafen 1.24.2May 1, 2020 - 01:13 PDT

A newer version, 1.24.3, is available.

Minor update.
  • Fixed broken support for systems with no OpenGL implementation available.
  • Apple2: Fixed potential assert() failure after changing disks.
  • SS: Implemented emulation of SCSP slot EG bypass and short waveform mode bits.
  • SS: Implemented the buggy linear interpolation that occurs when SCSP FM is used.
  • SS: Implemented SCSP register mirroring.
  • SS: Fixed a few inaccuracies with the SCSP waveform loop handling.

ChangeLog


mednafen-1.24.2.tar.xz
SHA-256: 1169ded285bb56d359973d3d332f28e5d2e9e41768a9932383d1a0ef63057c6c

mednafen-1.24.2-win64.zip
SHA-256: cb95a1e0c33873ccd746e5ac4af2cbcdc48281416beb66f1da99e9b68e26aca6

mednafen-1.24.2-win32.zip
SHA-256: f2921999408a911e7be5229a0cf51be658c5b3bc4ad15e6353a6988c0308f00c

Mednafen 1.24.1March 18, 2020 - 02:58 PDT

Minor update to fix build issues on a few platforms, to fix sound effect glitches in the PS1 game "Re-Loaded: The Hardcore Sequel", and to fix minor background layer alignment issues in the Saturn game "Fighters Megamix".

ChangeLog


mednafen-1.24.1.tar.xz
SHA-256: a47adf3faf4da66920bebb9436e28cbf87ff66324d0bb392033cbb478b675fe7

mednafen-1.24.1-win64.zip
SHA-256: ad3a7906521f0ce45737c2f0f7ea1117799548e60d10a746ac74ddd26d944cbb

mednafen-1.24.1-win32.zip
SHA-256: d26456eb711feac679e424968edee579b69c38ce1972a93bed10355b04ff21cd

Mednafen 1.24.0-UNSTABLEDecember 24, 2019 - 15:48 PST

Notable changes since 1.23.0-UNSTABLE:
  • Added settings "affinity.cd", "affinity.emu", "affinity.video", and "ss.affinity.vdp2" to specify CPU thread affinity masks for the CD read threads, main emulation thread, video blitting thread, and Saturn VDP2 rendering thread, respectively. Setting thread affinities properly can improve Saturn emulation performance on a dual-core CPU with hyperthreading.
  • Using drive-relative paths on Windows should no longer make a mess due to Mednafen looking for and putting files in the wrong place.
  • Apple2: Added support for 32-color custom palettes(will automatically enable a text fringe reduction RGB mode if used).
  • Apple2: Renamed(with backwards-compatibility aliases) video mode "rgb_alt1" to "rgb_alt" and "rgb_alt2" to "rgb_alt_tfr", and added new video mode "rgb_tfr".
  • PS1: Made minor adjustments to the PS1 pixel aspect ratio and lightgun crosshairs Y position with PAL PS1 emulation. This may necessitate updating any custom per-game psx.xscale/psx.xscalefs settings, and recalibrating the lightgun in-game, with PAL games.
  • PS1: Added setting "psx.correct_aspect", default value of "1".
  • SNES-Faust: Added support for Game Genie cheats(entered via Mednafen's cheat system).
  • SNES-Faust: Added setting "snes_faust.region" to allow for overriding the automatic region detection and emulating one region while reporting the different region to the game.
  • SNES-Faust: Added DSP-2 and S-DD1 emulation.
  • SNES-Faust: Added MSU1 support.
  • SNES-Faust: Fixed hang in "Frisky Tom" in "Nichibutsu Arcade Classics".
  • SNES-Faust: Fixed audio glitching and hang in "Tenshi no Uta: Shiroki Tsubasa no Inori".
  • SNES-Faust: Added a multithreaded PPU renderer, controlled via the new "snes_faust.renderer" setting, disabled by default.
  • SNES-Faust: Added SuperFX overclocking support, controlled via setting "snes_faust.superfx.clock_rate".
  • SNES-Faust: Added SuperFX instruction cache emulation support, controlled via setting "snes_faust.superfx.icache", disabled by default.
  • SS: Removed setting "ss.midsync"; the functionality it controlled is now always enabled.
ChangeLog

New settings:
  • affinity.cd
  • affinity.emu
  • affinity.video
  • psx.correct_aspect
  • snes_faust.renderer
  • snes_faust.affinity.ppu
  • snes_faust.affinity.msu1.data
  • snes_faust.affinity.msu1.audio
  • snes_faust.msu1.resamp_quality
  • snes_faust.region
  • snes_faust.slstart
  • snes_faust.slend
  • snes_faust.slstartp
  • snes_faust.slendp
  • snes_faust.superfx.clock_rate
  • snes_faust.superfx.icache
  • ss.affinity.vdp2

Changed settings:
  • apple2.video.mode
  • snes_faust.correct_aspect
  • snes_faust.h_filter

Removed settings:
  • ss.midsync


mednafen-1.24.0-UNSTABLE.tar.xz
SHA-256: e71d9de5ff350f76eedbd8f31a899012a674309ab3f110bf6ea259c1e19bd4cc

mednafen-1.24.0-UNSTABLE-win64.zip
SHA-256: 8ddc89f8ff32da747321a12d7553b40942f8775876ee74b84835d47b3d993477

mednafen-1.24.0-UNSTABLE-win32.zip
SHA-256: a1ab29f7bbeb375994582e14aa6ab3c8d58590592ae7de61a42ba6b783255bea


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