Skip to content

Super Nintendo
RetroBat system snes
Games go in roms\snes
BIOS None, apart from a chip's firmware for a few games on some emulators
Tested rows Platforms lists each emulator and whether it passed

Which emulator to use

Leave RetroBat on its default, RetroArch with the Snes9x core. Every emulator RetroBat offers for the Super Nintendo passed RomMBat's tests. The default is also the easy choice for a game with an extra chip, since it needs no firmware for one (below).

BIOS

RetroBat lists no BIOS for the Super Nintendo. A few games carry an extra chip, such as Super Mario Kart's DSP-1, and some emulators read the chip's firmware. A sync fetches the files those emulators read under their own names when your RomM library has them, such as dsp1b.data.rom and dsp1b.program.rom. Three emulators refuse to start a DSP-1 game without its firmware:

  • RetroArch's Mesen-S core, which reads dsp1b.rom from RetroBat's bios folder.
  • The standalone Mesen, which reads dsp1b.rom from emulators\mesen\Firmware, not from bios.
  • jgenesis, which needs the file's path set in its own configuration by hand.

The single dsp1b.rom those three read has no checksum in any source RomMBat uses, so RomMBat cannot fetch it, and you supply it yourself. On the default emulator you need none of them.

Saves

A save follows you to another emulator only where the two read the same file (Changing emulator). On the Super Nintendo:

  • All seven of RetroArch's cores, the standalone Mesen, Snes9x and Mednafen share one save.
  • BizHawk's three cores share another.

The rest each keep their own.

A few Japanese games, such as Daikaijuu Monogatari II, carry a real-time clock, and most emulators keep it in a second file beside the save. RomMBat syncs that file with the save. RetroArch's Snes9x 2005 core would not start the one such game tested. Its bsnes-jg core keeps a clock of its own, in a format the other cores do not share, and RomMBat syncs it separately, so it comes back only to bsnes-jg. That needs the game zipped as one file, which is how most collections ship it.