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ZSNES

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ZSNES
Developer(s)ZSNES Team
Stable release
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeConsole emulator
LicenseGNU General Public License
Websitewww.zsnes.com/

ZSNES is an emulator of the Super Famicom and SNES video game systems. Since 2001, ZSNES has been free software, under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was originally DOS-based, but has since been ported to other systems, including Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Xbox, and Intel Macs.

ZSNES is largely written in Intel x86 assembly language, and is therefore not easily portable to other architectures, such as PowerPC. Due to being written in assembly, ZSNES is very fast, allowing it to run most SNES games at 60 frames per second with a computer with a Pentium II CPU and 64 MB RAM, with full stereo sound and basic graphics interpolation.

History

ZSNES was first developed by pseudonymous programmers (zsKnight and _Demo_) and released on the Internet in 1997. Originally, ZSNES was closed source. However, on April 2, 2001, the GPL was adopted and the project became open source, hosted on SourceForge (as of 2006 it is hosted on BountySource). Since then, a large number of contributions have been made by outside coders, among them pagefault and Nach. ZSNES is still in active development, although the frequency of official releases has fallen dramatically since its original developer, zsKnight, left the team due to the death of his father. Semi-official releases, however, are frequent. These WIP releases are maintained by ipher, and come from SVN snapshots.

Features

ZSNES has historically been regarded as the most advanced SNES console emulator available; the emulator has pioneered software emulation of the system since originally released.[citation needed] Aside from emulation accuracy, many of the additional interface features first introduced in ZSNES have later been adopted in other emulators. Among them are:

  • Support for smoothing and dynamic image scaling.
  • The ability to take screenshots of currently running games.
  • The ability to "save" the game at any point by recording the console's state; commonly referred to as a "savestate".
  • The ability to record movies of gameplay which can be played back.
  • Support for rewinding and fast-forwarding in-game.
  • The ability to record and capture the console's sound output to a file, saving to the SPC700 sound format (.SPC).
  • Enhanced audio capabilities, making the SPC700 audio of better quality on ZSNES than on the actual Super Famicom or SNES console.
  • Built-in support for Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, and GoldFinger cheat codes.
  • The ability to play multiplayer games with another person over a network. (Feature removed on version 1.5 due to incompatibility with other subsystems) [1]

Today, ZSNES is considered to have the widest support for specialized SNES hardware, and is one of the most popular SNES emulators.[citation needed] ZSNES and Snes9x were the first SNES emulators to fully emulate the Super FX, DSP-1, and C4 chips. ZSNES also recently added full support for the DSP-4, S-DD1, and ST010 chips. As of version 1.42, the support to play "interleaved" SuperFX games was removed due to it being a "buggy code". The producers recommend un-interleaving SuperFX games with NSRT.

Also of note is that ZSNES was the first emulator to implement the hq2x interpolation algorithm and that it was the first emulator to offer any sort of support for the DSP-3 chip.[2]

Most sites claim that game emulators like Zsnes (there are many others for the Super Nintendo alone)[1] are legal as long as you are using any ROM image you download to back up games you have already legally purchased or, in the case that you don't already own the game, as long as you delete the ROM within the first 24 hours. However, this is false:

There is a good deal of misinformation on the Internet regarding the backup/archival copy exception. It is not a "second copy" rule and is often mistakenly cited for the proposition that if you have one lawful copy of a copyrighted work, you are entitled to have a second copy of the copyrighted work even if that second copy is an infringing copy. The backup/archival copy exception is a very narrow limitation relating to a copy being made by the rightful owner of an authentic game to ensure he or she has one in the event of damage or destruction of the authentic. Therefore, whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.[2]

References

  1. ^ http://zsnes.com/index.php?page=news
  2. ^ http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6638

See also

Super Nintendo Entertainment System:Emulation and controversies

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