SNES9X is a groups effort on the part of 9 people to perfectly emulate the SNES console. With the appearance of SNES9X DOS and Windows, both SNES96 and SNES97 became largely obsolete. The one part about the emulator that is most impressive is the 16 bit digital sound, which for a first release is truly incredible. A very large percentage of ROMs work with sound, and the sound quality is usually very good. The main core of SNES9X is Gary Henderson's SNES96 code, and the GUI for SNES9X Windows was created and refined by Jerremy Koot. Trepalium, of discontinued TrepSNES, is also working on the project somewhat, and helps largely with the DOS port. SNES97 on the other hand does not have sound, but since it still runs some ROMs that SNES9X can't (Like Uniracers and Clay Fighter), and since the code is significantly different than SNES9X's I'll leave it available for downloading.
Author: |
Gary Henderson, Jerremy Koot + More |
Current version: |
0.12 |
Still in progress?: |
Yes |
Latest Update: |
7/30/97 0.12 DOS |
WWW site: |
www.euronet.nl/users/jkoot/index.htm |
SNES9X is quite fast as far as SNES EMUs go, and it runs most ROMs at about 60-70% SNES speed on my P100 with the frame skipping set to 3.
1) Change the Frame Skipping rate! The default is now the new speed regulation code, which tries to keep the EMU running at a constant speed. This is worthless on older machenes however, disable it and speed up the EMU by using the -f # command. Mt reccomendation: -f 3 for P100-120 -f 2 for P133 and maybe 166.
2) Alter the % of scan lines drawn by dropping the -h # command below 100. Most games work fine even with this set at 75 or so.
3) If the ROM you are running doesn't use any special effects like mode 7 or H-DMA effects, hit the "9" key once the ROM loads to switch to the older tile-based redraw method. This can speed up certain games (DKC 1,2,3, Many Platform type games and RPGs to name a few) significantly. Another way to do this is by putting the -O (The Letter) command in the command line. This will force the old tile-based code to initialize upon startup.
4) Disable some backgroung layers with the 1-5 keys. Usually backgrounds 3 and 4 and sometimes 2 aren't critical to the gameplay and can be disabled.
5) Decrease the Sound sampling Rate by lowering the # in the -r # command to 2 or 3 (Even to 1 if you can stand it) Even disable sound entirely if you don't care about it.
6) Change your video Mode. If your video card supports vesa or vesa 2, try switching to the appropriate mode with the -m # option. 2 is a good large screen mode, but I like to use 3, which is a small screen mode, but looks crisper to me.
snes9x dck.smc -S -r 2 -f 3 -h 75 -m 3 -O (-O (letter) forces the tile base GFX) Then when the action starts, disable backgrounds 3, and 4. None of these backgrounds will be missed much, and you will see how fast SNES9x can be. If this is too choppy looking for you, you should be able to get away with -f 2. And if the game STILL runs too slowly, disable background layer #2 as well.
I am currently working on the SNES Emulator Review, a new SNES ROM testing site. Rather than me trying to keep up with compatibility, please check out our site, where we give detailed info for hundreds of games (Well, eventually).