nemulator - an NES emulator

11/11/2011

Added quick access menu feature to ease navigation of large collections. Press Select, or up at top of menu, to activate.
More accurate color palette (based on Bisqwit's work).
Improved IRQ timing (fixes Mickey's Adventures in Numberland glitches)
Improved handling of sprite memory reads (fixes Super Cars glitches)
Fixed bug that could cause nemulator to hang when selecting a game
Enter and escape keys now work for menu navigation and entering/exiting games
Added support for the following mappers:
- 15 - 100-in-1 Contra Function 16
- 16 - Dragon Ball Z (J)
- 18 - The Lord of King (J), Magic John (J), Pizza Pop! (J)
- 41 - Caltron 6-in-1
- 42 - Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa (J) (Mario Baby - FDS Conversion)
- 44 - Super Cool Boy 4-in-1, Super Big 7-in-1
- 47 - Super Spike V'Ball + Nintendo World Cup
- 70 - Family Trainer - Manhattan Police (J), Ge Ge Ge no Kitarou 2 (J), Kamen Rider Club (J)
- 72 - Pinball Quest (J), Moero!! Juudou Warriors (J), Moero!! Pro Tennis (J)
- 73 - Salamander (J)
- 76 - Digital Devil Monogatari (J)
- 77 - Napoleon Senki (J)
- 82 - SD Keiji - Blader (J)
- 85 - VRC7 Lagrange Point (J), Tiny Toon Adventures 2 (J)
- 86 - Moero!! Pro Yakyuu (Red) (J), Moero!! Pro Yakyuu (Black) (J)
- 89 - Tenka no Goikenban - Mito Koumon (J)
- 92 - Moero!! Pro Soccer (J), Moero!! Pro Yakuu '88 - Ketteiban (J)
- 95 - Dragon Buster (J)
- 97 - Kaiketsu Yanchamaru (J)
- 105 - Nintendo World Championships
- 113 - Rad Racket, Papillon

4/17/2011

Support for joystick axes and POV hats (e.g., Xbox 360 D-Pad). See nemulator.ini for configuration examples.
New audio engine provides better audio rate/framerate synchronization
Processor throttling interferes with nemulator's timing. Added an option to disable it while nemulator is running.
Fixed handling of RMW instructions by MMC1 (Bill and Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure, AD&D Hillsfar, etc. work now)
Turbo button support - press turbo button (by default, S for button A on joypad 1, A for button B) to enable/disable turbo mode. Hold down left shift while pressing button to decrease rate or right shift to increase rate.
Added support for SKB opcode (fixes Puzznic glitches)
Fixed scrolling bug in menu
Added config option to run nemulator as high priority process
Rewrite of cartridge/mapper interface
Added support for the following mappers:
- 10 (MMC4) - Fire Emblem
- 19 - Final Lap, Splatter House, Mappy Kids
- 25 - Gradius 2
- 32 - Image Fight
- 33 - Bubble Bobble 2 (J)
- 34 - Mashou (J)
- 40 - SMB2J FDS conversion
- 68 - After Burner
- 75 - Tetsuwan Atom, Exciting Boxing
- 79 - Krazy Kreatures
- 80 - Minelvation Saga, Kyonshiizu 2
- 87 - City Connection (J)
- 88 - Quinty (J), Devil Man (J)
- 103 - Doki Doki Panic FDS conversion
- 112 - San Guo Zhi - Qun Xion Zheng Ba
- 152 - Arkanoid II (J)
- 228 - Action 52, Cheetamen II

12/9/2010

The number of games displayed in the menu is now customizable. See menu_columns option in nemulator.ini.
Widescreen/fullscreen aspect ratio is selectable via app.widescreen option in nemulator.ini.
Fixed bug that could cause nemulator to hang while exiting.

12/6/2010

Lots of changes in this release:

Sound engine improvements - audible adjustments to playback frequency are essentially eliminated
Fixed IRQ behavior following CLI, PLP, and RTI instructions (fixes Pinbot, High Speed, and some test ROMs)
More accurate MMC3 implementation
Fixed sprite DMA from non-CPU memory (fixes Noah's Ark)
CRC-based detection for ROMs that aren't adequately described by iNES headers
ROMs are cached on startup for smoother scrolling through the menu (can be disabled in nemulator.ini)
Hotkeys for resetting games (F2) and switching between fast and accurate emulation modes (F3)
Emulation of emphasis bits and grayscale mode
Fixed handling of OAM reads via $2004 while rendering; Micro Machines is working properly now
A lot of code reorg/cleanup and a few bug fixes
Added support for the following mappers:
- MMC6 - Startropics
- 23 - Contra (J), Parodius, Crisis Force
- 67 - Fantasy Zone 2 (J)
- 78 - Holy Diver (J)
- 93 - Fantasy Zone (J)
- 94 - Senjou no Ookami
- 119 - Pinbot, High Speed
- 184 - Atlantis no Nazo
- 185 - Spy vs. Spy (J), Mighty Bomb Jack (J)

6/12/2010

Performance improvements
Some code cleanup and minor bug fixes

6/10/2010

I've discovered some new PPU behavior that allows The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to be emulated without graphical glitches. nemulator is the first emulator to do this! Other changes:

MMC1 fixes - Robocop 3 is working now
MMC3 fixes - Gauntlet II, Mickey's Safari in Letterland, Kickle Cubicle, and probably others are working properly now
Joypad fixes - simultaneous left+right and up+down are no longer permitted
Added mapper 69 (FME-7) support (Hebereke, Batman - Return of the Joker, etc.)
Added mapper 66 (GxROM) support (Dragon Power, Thunder & Lightning, etc.)

1/30/2010

Four-screen mirroring fixes. Rad Racer 2 works correctly now (if it doesn't, your ROM most likely has the wrong mirroring info in its header; try another copy).
Support for SUROM boards (Dragon Warrior III and IV). Since the iNES format doesn't provide enough info to identify these boards, the mapper_variant option needs to be set to 1 for them in nemulator.ini (GoodNES ROMs are already configured).
SRAM wasn't being saved on reset; fixed.
Compiled using profile-guided optimization (PGO), resulting in 25% lower CPU utilization (if accurate mode was too slow before, try it now).
Support for monitor refresh rates other than 60Hz (see timer_sync option in nemulator.ini).

1/6/2010

Fixed a bug that, in some cases, prevented SRAM from being saved to disk.

1/5/2010

nemulator now includes a cycle-accurate emulation mode! This mode enables accurate emulation of games like Battletoads and Marble Madness and eliminates graphical glitches in many other games. The scanline-based (fast) mode is used in the menu, and the cycle-based (accurate) mode is used in-game. This is configurable in nemulator.ini.
Added options to disable sprite limiting (to reduce flicker) and to mask the sides of the screen (to hide scrolling glitches). These are configurable globally and on a per-game basis; see nemulator.ini.
Fixed bug that could cause random hangs on game selection.
Improved audio resampling.

12/25/2009

More accurate MMC3 emulation. Fixes Kirby's Adventure pause screen, Mega Man 5 level intro screen, etc.
Fixed bug in input handling which caused joypad 1 input to be used for both joypad 1 and 2.
Select and Start are now usable in menus.

Merry Christmas!

12/21/2009

nemulator 2.0 beta 2 contained a bug that caused glitches in the background while scrolling. 2.0 beta 2a corrects this.

12/19/2009

Joystick support (non-analog joysticks only, see nemulator.ini)
Menus: On the game selection screen, use A to select a game, B to bring up the menu. In-game, press start+select to bring up the menu.
Fullscreen mode configurable via nemulator.ini
Configurable reset and menu delay behavior (thanks to Alexander Rojas for the suggestions!)
Fixed bug that caused crashes when quitting while in fullscreen mode

7/7/2009

nemulator 2.0 development started in 2008 simply in order to switch from DirectDraw to Direct3D (both to fix compatability issues with Vista and as a learning experience). Along the way, it morphed into what you see today. The GUI is the primary feature of nemulator 2.0, but there are a ton of changes under the hood including improved mapper support, an improved sound engine, and many bug fixes.

2003-2008

nemulator development started in 2003 and was worked on, sporadically, through 2008.