higan, the multi-system emulator

higan emulates a number of classic videogame consoles of the 1980s and 1990s, allowing you to play classic games on a modern general-purpose computer.

As of v102, higan has top-tier support for the following consoles:

• Nintendo Super Famicom/Super Nintendo Entertainment System, including addon hardware:
  • Super Game Boy
  • Sufami Turbo
• Nintendo Game Boy Advance

It also includes some level of support for these consoles:

• Satellaview addon for the Super Famicom
• Nintendo Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System
• Nintendo Game Boy
• Nintendo Game Boy Color
• Sega Master System
• Sega Game Gear
• Sega Megadrive/Genesis
• NEC PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 (but not the CD-ROM² System/TurboGrafx-CD)
• NEC SuperGrafx
• Bandai Wonderswan
• Bandai Wonderswan Color

Note: Some consoles were released under different names in different geographic regions. To avoid listing all possible names every time such a console is mentioned, higan uses the name from the console's region of origin. In practice, that means Japanese names: "Famicom" and "Super Famicom" instead of NES and SNES, "Mega Drive" instead of "Genesis", "PC Engine" instead of "TurboGrafx-16".

higan is actively supported on FreeBSD 10 and above, and Microsoft Windows 7 and above. It also includes some level of support for GNU/Linux and macOS.

If you want to install higan and try it out, see the Quick Start section below.

higan is officially spelled with a lowercase "h", not a capital.

About this document

This is the unofficial higan README, a community-maintained introduction and reference. It may be out of date by the time you read this, and it may contain errors or omissions. If you find something that's wrong, or you have a suggestion, see "Unofficial higan resources" below.

Official higan resources

• Official homepage
• Official forum

Unofficial higan resources

• Source code repository archives official higan releases and WIP snapshots since approximately v067r21.
• Quark shader repository collects shaders that higan can use to add special effects like TV scanlines to its video output, or smarter algorithms for scaling up to modern PC resolutions. See Installing custom shaders below for details.
• Mercurial Magic is a tool for converting MSU-1 games and mods into a format higan can use. See Importing MSU-1 games below for details.

There are also other projects based on current or older versions of higan, in whole or in part, that you might want to check out.

• Mednafen is another multi-system emulator. Its Super Famicom emulation is based on bsnes v059, from the time before bsnes was renamed to higan.
• BizHawk is another multi-system emulator, specialising in the creation of tool-assisted speedruns. Its Super Famicom emulation is based on bsnes v087.
• nSide is a fork of higan that greatly enhances its NES emulation support, and adds minor features to the other cores too. It also restores the "balanced" Super Famicom emulation core that was removed from higan in v099, which is less CPU intensive than the current accuracy-focussed core.
• bsnes-plus is a fork of bsnes v073 that adds improved support for debugging Super Famicom software.

Quick Start

TODO

• install
• configure inputs
• load a game
• connect a controller

Installing and uninstalling higan

The best way to install higan depends on what platform you're using, as well as whether you want to use official binaries or compile the source-code from scratch.

Installing an official release on Windows

Official higan releases are distributed in 7-zip archives. You will need to install 7-zip, or another compatible archiving tool, to install higan.

Once you have a suitable archiving tool, extract the contents of the higan archive into a new folder.

When you're done, the new folder should contain higan.exe and icarus.exe along with other assorted files and directories that describe the systems higan emulates.

You may put that folder wherever you like.

To run higan, open the higan.exe file.

Before you can actually play games, you'll need to import them and configure higan. If you want to play Game Boy Advance games, you will need a GBA BIOS.

Uninstalling an official release on Windows

Delete the folder containing higan.exe and the other associated data from the original archive.

To remove higan's configuration:

1. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog
2. Type %LOCALAPPDATA% and press Enter to open the folder where higan's configuration data lives
3. Delete the subdirectories named icarus and higan if they exist.

You might also want to remove the games imported into higan's library (including in-game saves and save-states):

1. Press Win+R to open the Run dialog
2. Type %USERPROFILE% and press Enter to open the folder where higan keeps its game library
3. Delete the folder named Emulation if it exists

Compiling from source on Windows

You will need a copy of the higan source-code. If you download an official release from the higan homepage, you will need 7-zip or a compatible tool to extract it. Alternatively, you may obtain higan source code from the unofficial git repo using the Git source-code management tool, or by clicking the download button on the right-hand side of the web-page and choosing an archive format.

You will need a C++ compiler to compile higan. We recommend installing TDM64-GCC, preferably the latest version but anything newer than 4.9 should be fine. higan does not support building with clang++ (Clang is still not quite there yet for Windows) nor Microsoft Visual C++ (last we checked, it didn't support all the C++ features higan uses).

Note: Make sure you get TDM64-GCC, not TDM-GCC. When compiled in x86 (32-bit) mode, higan may crash at startup because gcc targeting x86 does not support Windows' structured exception handling (SEH). Also, historically in x86 mode gcc has miscompiled a part of the NES emulation core. See the higan forum for details.

Once you've installed mingw-w64, open a command-prompt window, type g++ --version then press Enter to check it's installed correctly. You should see a message like

g++ 1.2.3 20010101
Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

...except it should mention the version of mingw that you installed and the corresponding dates. If you see an error message like "command not found" or "bad command or filename", you may need to add mingw's "bin" folder to your computer's %PATH%. See the mingw documentation for help with that.

Once mingw is installed and available from the command prompt:

1. Put the higan source code in some convenient location, like C:\higan-src
2. Open the command-prompt
3. Type cd C:\higan-src (or wherever you put the higan source) and press Enter
4. Type mingw32-make -C icarus compiler=g++ and press Enter to build the icarus import tool
5. Type mingw32-make -C higan compiler=g++ and press Enter to build the main higan executable

Installing a compiled build on Windows

1. In Windows Explorer, create the folder where you want higan to live
2. Assuming you built higan in C:\higan-src, copy C:\higan-src\icarus\out\icarus.exe into the new folder
3. Copy C:\higan-src\icarus\Database and its contents into the new folder
4. Copy C:\higan-src\higan\out\higan.exe into the new folder
5. Copy all the *.sys directories in C:\higan-src\higan\systems into the new folder

The new folder should now contain icarus.exe, higan.exe, a folder named Database, and half a dozen folders named after the systems higan emulates with .sys at the end. This is what you would get by downloading an official build, as described under Installing an official release on Windows above.

Before you can actually play games, you'll need to import them and configure higan. If you want to play Game Boy Advance games, you will need a GBA BIOS.

Uninstalling a compiled build on Windows

The process is the same as Uninstalling an official release on Windows above. You may also wish to delete the higan source folder.

Compiling from source on Linux

You will need a copy of the higan source-code. If you download an official release from the higan homepage, you will need 7-zip or a compatible tool to extract it. Alternatively, you may obtain higan source code from the unofficial git repo using the Git source-code management tool, or by clicking the download button on the right-hand side of the web-page and choosing an archive format.

You will also need GCC 4.9 or higher, including the C and C++ compiler, GNU Make, and development files (headers, etc.) for the following libraries:

• GTK 2.x
• PulseAudio
• Mesa
• gtksourceview 2.x
• Cairo
• SDL 1.2
• libXv
• libAO
• OpenAL
• udev

On a Debian-derived Linux distribution, you can install everything you need with a command like:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libgtk2.0-dev libpulse-dev \
    mesa-common-dev libgtksourceview2.0-dev libcairo2-dev libsdl1.2-dev \
    libxv-dev libao-dev libopenal-dev libudev-dev

Once you have all the dependencies installed, you may build and install higan.

Note: Run these commands as yourself, do not run them as root (no sudo, no su, etc.), because higan does not support being installed system-wide.

1. Put the higan source code in some convenient location, like ~/higan-src
2. Open a terminal window
3. Type cd ~/higan-src (or wherever you put the higan source) and press Enter
4. Type make -C icarus compiler=g++ and press Enter to build the icarus import tool
5. Type make -C higan compiler=g++ and press Enter to build the main higan executable

Installing a compiled build on Linux

Assuming you have successfully compiled higan as described in the previous section:

1. Open a terminal window
2. Type cd ~/higan-src (or wherever you put the higan source) and press Enter
3. Type make -C icarus install and press Enter to install icarus and its game database
4. Type make -C higan install and press Enter to install higan and its supporting files

This installs higan and its associated data files into the ~/.local directory hierarchy.

To confirm higan is installed correctly, type higan in a terminal and press Enter. If the higan window appears, everything is working. On the other hand, if you get an error message like "command not found", you should double-check that the directory ~/.local/bin is included in your $PATH environment variable by running the following command in a terminal:

echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n' | grep ~/.local/bin

If the above command prints the full path of ~/.local/bin (for example: /home/yourname/.local/bin) then you should be good. If it prints nothing, you need to add the following line to ~/.profile:

export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH

(this line must be in ~/.profile because most GUIs do not read any other files at login)

If you also have a ~/.bash_profile, make sure it reads the contents of ~/.profile with a line like this:

source ~/.profile

You will need to log out and log back in for changes to ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile to take effect.

Before you can actually play games, you'll need to import them and configure higan. If you want to play Game Boy Advance games, you will need a GBA BIOS.

Uninstalling a compiled build on Linux

To uninstall higan, as installed by the above instructions:

1. Open a terminal window
2. Type cd ~/higan-src (or wherever you put the higan source) and press Enter
3. Type make -C icarus uninstall and press Enter
4. Type make -C higan uninstall and press Enter

To remove higan's configuration, delete the directory ~/.config/higan as well.

To remove the games imported into higan's library (including in-game saves and save-states), delete the directory ~/Emulation.

You may also wish to delete the higan source directory.

Installing the GBA BIOS

For most of the systems higan emulates, the console itself contains (almost) no actual software, so emulating the system does not require infringing the copyright of the hardware manufacturer. However, the Game Boy Advance is different: every device contains a standard library of software routines for common functions games require, often called a "BIOS" by analogy with the Basic Input/Output System used in IBM PC compatibles.

For the same legal reasons that commercial games cannot be distributed with emulators, the GBA BIOS cannot be distributed with higan, but is required for GBA software to run.

If you have a real GBA and a flashcart, the Internet contains many tools that will extract the BIOS image so it can be copied to your desktop computer. The correct GBA BIOS file is exactly 16384 bytes long, and has the SHA-256 hash fd2547724b505f487e6dcb29ec2ecff3af35a841a77ab2e85fd87350abd36570.

Once you have the correct BIOS file:

1. rename it to bios.rom
   • if you're using Windows, turn off "hide extensions for known file types" so you don't wind up with a file called bios.rom.dat or whatever the file's original extension was.
2. Copy the file into higan's Game Boy Advance.sys directory, alongside the manifest.bml file that is already there.
   • In Windows, find Game Boy Advance.sys in the same folder as higan.exe
   • In Linux, find Game Boy Advance.sys in ~/.local/share/higan/

Note: If you upgrade this version of higan to a newer version, make sure the bios.rom file winds up in the Game Boy Advance.sys directory of the new version.

The higan interface

When you launch higan, the main window appears, with a menu-bar across the top, a status-bar across the bottom, and a large area in the middle where the game's video output appears.

The Library menu

The Library menu allows you to import games into higan's game library, and to load games from the library. higan organises the games in your library according to which console they were intended to run on.

To play a game for a particular console from your library, click on the Library menu, click on the console manufacturer submenu (Nintendo for the Super Famicom, Bandai for the WonderSwan, etc.) then click on the console menu item. A window will appear listing all the games in your library for that particular console. Select the game you want to play and click the Open button, or just double-click the game, and it will begin playing as though you'd just turned on the console.

To add a new game to your library, choose "Load ROM File ..." from the Library menu. A filesystem browser will appear, allowing you to pick any ROM image for any supported system, with any of the most common file extensions. It also allows loading ROM images from .zip archives, if the archive contains a single ROM image.

Note: Some games require extra steps to import correctly; see the Game Library for details.

To add many games at once, run icarus, or choose "Import ROM Files ..." from the Library menu (which just runs icarus anyway). See the icarus interface for more information about bulk-importing.

For more information about the higan game library, see The Game Library below.

The console menu

Note: The console menu does not appear until a game is loaded. Also, it's not named "console", it's named for the kind of console the loaded game runs on. For example, when playing a Game Boy game, you will have a "Game Boy" menu.

The console menu contains commands relevant to the particular console being emulated. All consoles will have some of the following items, but few consoles have all of them.

• Controller Port 1 allows you to connect different emulated controllers to the first controller port, if there is one.
  • See the Configuration dialog for information about configuring which host controller inputs are used for the emulated controllers.
  • This menu appears for the Famicom, even though the Famicom did not support alternate controllers, because the Famicom emulation core also emulates the NES, which did.
• Controller Port 2 allows you to connect different emulated controllers to the second controller port, if there is one.
  • See the Configuration dialog for information about configuring which host controller inputs are used for the emulated controllers.
  • This menu appears for the Famicom, even though the Famicom did not support alternate controllers, because the Famicom emulation core also emulates the NES, which did.
• Expansion Port allows you to connect different emulated devices to the console's expansion port, if there is one.
  • For the Super Famicom, the 21fx is a homebrew device that allows a program running on a PC to control a physical Super Famicom (or SNES). This option allows the same program to control the emulated SNES, for development or testing.
• Power Cycle restarts the loaded game as though the emulated console were switched off and on again.
• Unload stops the current game, as though the emulated console were switched off. You can load the same or a different game from the Library menu.

The Settings menu

The Settings menu allows you to configure things that aren't specific to any particular console.

• Video Scale determines the size and shape of the emulated console's video output in windowed mode (as opposed to fullscreen).
• Video Emulation applies various effects to the emulated console's video output to reproduce some behaviours that aren't technically part of the console itself.
  • "Blurring" simulates the limited horizontal resolution of standard-definition TVs by blurring together horizontally-adjacent pixels. Games like Jurassic Park for the Super Famicom depend on this to emulate a transparency effect. For hand-held consoles like the Game Boy Advance, this simulates the slow response time of the cheap LCD screens these consoles used by blurring each output frame with the previous one.
  • "Colors" simulates the way a console's display device differs from modern computer monitor's colour reproduction. In particular, it simulates the slightly-different gamma correction used by the Super Famicom, the dim, washed out colours of the original Game Boy Advance, and the pea-green display of the original Game Boy.
• Video Shader controls how the low-resolution video output of the emulated console is scaled up to suit modern high-resolution displays. The availability of items in this submenu depends on which video driver higan is using, so see Drivers for more information.
  • "None" draws each output pixel according to the colour of the single nearest input pixel, sometimes called "nearest neighbour" scaling. This produces unnaturally crisp and blocky images.
  • "Blur" draws each output pixel by averaging the colours of the four nearest input pixels, sometimes called "bilinear" scaling. This produces unnaturally blurry images.
  • When using the OpenGL driver, an additional item appears in this menu for each installed Quark shader. See Installing custom shaders for details.
• Synchronize Video (sometimes called "vsync") causes higan to wait for each video frame to be completely displayed before resuming emulation. This reduces visual "tearing", but tends to increase audio pops and glitches, even if "Synchronize Audio" is enabled.
• Synchronize Audio causes higan to wait for audio playback to complete before resuming emulation. This should reduce popping and glitching noises, but is less effective if "Synchronize Video" is enabled. If your PC cannot emulate at full-speed, (60fps for most consoles, 75fps for WonderSwan) this has no noticable effect.
• Mute Audio causes higan to not output sound from the emulated console. The sound hardware is still emulated.
• Show Status Bar causes higan to show or hide the status bar at the bottom of the window. This option has no effect in full-screen mode. See The status bar for more information.
• Video Settings ... opens the Video tab of the Configuration dialog.
• Audio Settings ... opens the Audio tab of the Configuration dialog.
• Input Settings ... opens the Input tab of the Configuration dialog.
• Hotkey Settings ... opens the Hotkeys tab of the Configuration dialog.
• Advanced Settings ... opens the Advanced tab of the Configuration dialog.

The Tools menu

The Tools menu contains features for manipulating the emulated console.

• Save Quick State stores the current state of the emulated console into one of the quick state slots. See Save States for more information.
• Load Quick State restores the emulated console to a state previously saved to one of the quick state slots. See Save States for more information.
• Cheat Editor opens the Cheat Editor window
• State Manager opens the State Manager window
• Manifest Viewer opens the Manifest Viewer window

The Help menu

The Help menu contains information about higan itself.

• Documentation loads the official higan documentation in your web-browser.
• About opens the About dialog, which displays basic information about higan, including the version number.

The status bar

The status bar appears at the bottom of the main higan window, while "Show Status Bar" is ticked in the Settings menu.

Before any game is loaded, the status bar displays "No cartridge loaded".

When a game is loaded and running, the status bar displays the current emulation speeed in frames-per-second. For PAL-based consoles, this should be around 50 FPS for "full speed" emulation, for NTSC and most portable consoles the ideal speed is 60 FPS, but the WonderSwan runs at 75 FPS. If the number is too low, you may need a faster computer, or a faster video driver. If the number is too high, you may need to Synchronize Audio, or you may have pressed the "turbo" hotkey.

The status bar displays "Paused" if you have pressed the "pause" hotkey, or if "When focus is lost: Pause Emulation" is ticked in the Input tab of the Configuration dialog and the main higan window is not the foreground window. To resume emulation, make sure the main higan window is in the foreground, and/or press the "pause" hotkey.

The status bar briefly displays "Selected quick state slot X" (where X is one of the Quick State slot numbers) when you press the "Increment Quick State" or "Decrement Quick State" hotkeys, to show which Quick State slot will be used the next time you press the "Save Quick State" or "Load Quick State" hotkeys.

The status bar briefly displays "Slot X quick state does not exist" (where X is one of the Quick State slot numbers) when you choose a slot from the Tools → "Load Quick State" sub-menu that has not had a save-state saved to it, or when you press the "Load Quick State" hotkey while the current Quick State slot has not had a save-state saved to it,

The status bar briefly displays "Power cycled" when you choose "Power Cycle" from [the console menu](#the-console menu), or press the "Power Cycle" hotkey.

The status bar briefly displays "Display rotation not supported" when you press the "Rotate Display" hotkey while the emulated console does not support display rotation.

The Configuration dialog

The Configuration dialog contains less-frequently-modified configuration options. Most of these can be safely ignored, or set once and never changed again.

The dialog has a tab for each main category of options:

• Video: This tab contains options that affect how higan displays the emulated console's video output.
  • "Saturation" adjusts the vibrancy of colours displayed, where 0% makes things pure grey, 100% is normal, and 200% is garishly brightly coloured.
  • "Gamma" adjusts how bright mid-range colours are compared to the brightest colours, where 100% is normal, and 200% makes mid-range colours much darker.
  • "Luminance" adjusts the overall brightness, where 100% is normal, and 0% is totally black.
  • "Overscan Mask" hides parts of the video output that would have been hidden by the bezel around the edge of a standard-definition television screen. Some games (particularly on the Famicom) displayed random glitchy output in this area, which can be distracting. The units are "pixels in the emulated console's standard video-mode". For example, setting "Horizontal" to 8 will clip 8/256ths from the left and right sides of the Super Famicom's video output, whether the Super Famicom is in lo-res (256px) or hi-res (512px) mode.
  • "Aspect Correction" (in both Windowed Mode and Fullscreen Mode) stretches the image to match the aspect ratio produced by the original console hardware, but can cause a "ripple" effect, due to rounding errors.
  • "Resize Window to Viewport" (under "Windowed mode") causes higan to resize its window to fit snugly around the emulated console's video whenever it changes size: because a game was loaded for a different console with a different display size or aspect ratio, because the "Overscan Mask" controls were adjusted, because the game switched to a different video mode, because the user pressed the "Rotate Display" hotkey, etc. When this option is disabled, the higan window stays at a fixed size, large enough to contain the video for any supported console, padded with black borders for all smaller video modes.
  • "Resize Viewport to Window" (under "Fullscreen mode") causes higan to stretch the emulated console's video output to touch the edges of the screen. Since most screens are not an exact multiple of the size of all emulated consoles, this may cause a "ripple" effect, due to rounding errors. When this option is disabled, higan stretches the emulated console's video output to the largest exact multiple of the emulated console's video output that is smaller than or equal to the screen size.
  • TODO: Update this to match 103r11, or whatever the latest version is.
• Audio: This tab contains options that affect how higan reproduces the emulated console's audio output.
  • "Device" allows you to choose which audio device higan sends the emulated game's audio to.
  • "Frequency" controls the sample-rate that higan will use when generating audio. If your PC's audio hardware has a "native" sample-rate and you know what it is, pick that. Otherwise, 44.1kHz or 48kHz should be fine.
  • "Latency" controls how much audio output higan calculates in advance. Higher values reduce the chance of "popping" or "glitching" noises, but increase the delay between an action occurring on-screen and the corresponding sound-effect being played.
  • "Exclusive Mode" appears if the current audio driver allows higan to take exclusive control of your PC's audio output, so no other applications can play sounds. This can improve audio quality, and lower the effective audio latency.
  • "Volume" controls the overall loudness of the emulated console's audio, where 100% is normal volume, and 0% is complete silence.
  • "Balance" controls the relative loudness of the left and right speakers, where 0% means only the left speaker produces sound, 50% means both speakers produce sound equally, and 100% means only the right speaker produces sound.
  • "Reverb" adds a slight reverberation effect to the emulated console's audio output, as though the console were in a tunnel or small room.
• Input: This tab controls which PC inputs are used for which emulated controllers. The exact PC inputs that can be mapped depend on the input driver.
  • "Pause Emulation" automatically pauses emulation when the main higan window is not the current foreground window.
  • "Allow Input" can be ticked when "Pause Emulation" is not ticked, and allows configured inputs to keep affecting higan even when higan is running in the background. This is particularly relevant if you configure your PC keyboard to control higan: if you tick this box, and switch to a different application leaving higan running in the background, typing in that other application may affect the emulated game running in higan even though you can't see it!
  • The console selector chooses which console's inputs to display in the mapping list below.
  • The port selector chooses which port of the selected console to display in the mapping list below.
  • The controller selector chooses which controller associated with the given console and port to display in the mapping list below.
  • The mapping list includes every button and axis on the selected controller, and the PC inputs that are mapped to it when it is connected to the selected port of the selected console.
  • To map a keyboard or gamepad button on your PC to a controller button, double-click the controller button in the list, or select it and press Enter. The window will grey out, and a message will appear in the bottom left: "Press a key or button to map [the button]". Press the key or button you want to map, and it should appear in the list next to the controller button it is mapped to.
  • To map a mouse button on your PC to a controller button, select the controller button in the list, then click one of the "Mouse Left", "Mouse Middle", or "Mouse Right" buttons in the bottom-left of the window.
  • To map a joystick axis on your PC to a controller axis, double-click the axis in the list, or select it and press Enter. The window will grey out, and a message will appear in the bottom left: "Press a key or button to map [the axis]". Press the joystick in the direction you want to map, and it should appear in the list next to the controller button it is mapped to.
  • To map a mouse axis on your PC to a controller axis, select the axis in the list, then click one of the "Mouse X-axis", or "Mouse Y-axis" buttons in the bottom-left of the window.
  • The "Rumble" setting for the Game Boy Advance is treated like a button, and can be mapped to a PC gamepad. When the emulated Game Boy Advance tries to use the rumble feature of the Game Boy Player, higan will turn on the force-feedback of whatever gamepad the mapped button is part of.
  • If you start mapping a button or axis, but decide you don't want to, you can press Escape to exit the "Press a key or button to map..." mode without actually mapping anything.
  • "Erase" removes the mapping for the selected button or axis.
  • "Reset" removes all the mappings currently in the list.
• Hotkeys: This tab is like "Inputs" above, except it contains controls for higan itself, instead of for the emulated console.
  • "Toggle Fullscreen" puts higan into fullscreen mode, where the menu and status bar are hidden, and the emulated console's video output is enlarged to cover the entire screen. Toggling fullscreen also automatically captures the mouse.
  • "Toggle Mouse Capture" hides the usual mouse-cursor, and captures the mouse so it cannot leave the higan window. This is useful when the mouse is being used to emulate a light-gun controller like the Super Scope.
  • "Save Quick State" saves the current state of the emulated console to the currently-selected Quick State slot.
  • "Load Quick State" restores the emulated console to the state saved in the currently-selected Quick State slot.
  • "Decrement Quick State" selects the previous Quick State slot. The status bar will briefly display the new current slot number.
  • "Increment Quick State" selects the next Quick State slot. The status bar will briefly display the new current slot number.
  • "Pause Emulation" pauses the emulated console until the Pause Emulation hotkey is pressed a second time.
  • "Fast Forward" disables audio and video synchronisation for as long as it's held down, so emulation proceeds as quickly as possible. If your PC struggles to hit "real time" (60fps for most emulated consoles), this likely won't have any effect.
  • "Power Cycle" turns the emulated console off and back on, (a "hard reset"), just like the "Power Cycle" menu item in the console menu.
  • "Rotate Display" will toggle the display of the Game Boy Advance and WonderSwan (Color) between the usual landscape orientation and a portrait orientation (90° counter-clockwise). These consoles have games that expect the player to hold the console in a different way.
• Advanced: This tab contains all the settings that didn't fit into one of the other categories.
  • "Video" controls how higan will draw the emulated console's video output to the PC screen. "None" means no video will be drawn. See Drivers for details.
  • "Audio" controls how higan will present the emulated console's audio output. "None" means no audio will be played. See Drivers for details.
  • "Input" controls how higan checks for input from the PC's input devices. "None" means the emulated console cannot be controlled. See Drivers for details.
  • "Location" selects where the Game Library looks for games to load. See Moving the Game Library for more information.
  • "Ignore Manifests" makes higan ignore the manifest file in the a loaded game's game folder in favour of asking icarus to guess a manifest on the fly. This means that incompatible or incorrect manifests generated by old versions of icarus won't cause problems, but means you can't fix incorrect manifests generated by the current version of icarus. See also the "Create Manifests" option in the icarus Settings dialog.

The Cheat Editor

For some consoles, higan supports applying temporary changes to the code of a running game. For example, you could disable the code that registers when the player takes damage, resulting in an "invulnerability" mode. Currently, higan supports cheats for the following consoles:

• Famicom
• Super Famicom
• Game Boy
• Master System
• PC Engine
• Wonder Swan

A cheat code of the format addr=data will cause the emulated console to obtain data whenever it reads from memory address addr. A cheat code of the format addr=comp?data will cause reads from addr to obtain data, but only if the true value at addr is comp. In both formats, data is a single byte expressed as two hexadecimal digits, comp is also a single byte expressed as two hexadecimal digits, and addr is a memory address in the emulated console, expressed as however many hexadecimal digits are required for the console in question (typically 4 for 8-bit CPUs, 6 for 16-bit CPUs, and 8 for 32-bit CPUs).

For compatibility with older versions of higan, the older syntaxes of addr/data and addr/comp/data are still supported.

For cheats that require more than a single-byte change, higan allows multiple codes to be combined with + so that all of them can have a single description and be toggled with a single click. For example, in Super Mario World, you can lock the time to 999 with these codes: 7e0f31=09+7e0f32=09+7e0f33=09.

Changes made in the Cheat Editor are saved to disk when the game is unloaded, or when higan exits. higan stores the known cheats for a particular game in higan/cheats.bml inside the corresponding game folder in the Game Library.

If your copy of higan includes a cheat database (a file named cheats.bml in the same directory as Super Famicom.sys and the other *.sys directories), you can click the "Find Codes ..." button in the bottom left to load all known cheats for the currently-running game.

To add a new cheat, select an unused row in the list, then type the relevant codes in the "Code(s)" field at the bottom, and a description in the "Description" field.

To enable or disable an existing cheat, tick the checkbox in the first column of the list. The code should take effect immediately.

To clear out an existing cheat, select it from the list and click the "Erase" button in the bottom right, or just manually delete the contents of the "Code(s)" and "Description" fields.

To clear out all existing cheats, click the "Reset" button in the bottom right.

The State Manager

The State Manager allows you to create, load, and remove Manager states. For more information on Manager states, quick states, saved games and how they compare, see Save States.

To create a new manager state, or to replace an existing one, select the slot in the list then click "Save" in the bottom-left corner. You can then type a description in the "Description" field, to help you find the state again later.

To rename a state, select the slot in the list and edit the "Description" field.

To load a state, select the slot in the list and click "Load" in the bottom-left corner, or just double-click it.

To clear the state out of a slot, select the slot in the list and click "Erase" in the bottom-right corner.

To clear all the slots at once, click "Reset" in the bottom-right corner.

The Manifest Viewer

As mentioned in Why game folders?, a game cartridge contains more than just the raw data of the game.

higan uses a "manifest" to describe how the various parts of a game cartridge are wired up together, and the Manifest Viewer lets you examine the configuration higan is using for the currently-running game.

For some games, an actual cartridge has been taken apart and carefully examined and its configuration has been recorded in icarus' database, so the manifest icarus produces is guaranteed accurate. For games that do not exist in icarus' database, icarus will make a reasonable guess. This is enough to get the game running, but does not necessarily reflect the original cartridge.

The Filesystem Browser

Sometimes higan will need to ask you to choose a file or folder. For this, it uses a special Filesystem Browser dialog. Although many operating systems provide a native filesystem browser, they do not all allow the same customizations. Therefore, higan provides its own filesystem browser that works the same way on every platform.

The filesystem browser shows the contents of some particular folder, and allows you to select one of those items.

Across the top of the window, a text-box displays the path of the current folder. If you want to browse a specific path, you may edit the contents of this box and press Enter to switch to the new location.

The button with two blue arrows at the top-right is "Refresh". Pressing this button will check for added (or removed) items in the current folder, and add (or remove) them to (or from) the list.

The button with the house at the top-right is "Home". Pressing this button will switch to your home folder.

The button with the green up-arrow at the top right is "Parent". Pressing this button will switch to the parent of the current folder.

Most of the filesystem browser lists the contents of the current directory. Double-clicking a folder, or selecting it and pressing Enter, will switch to showing the contents of that directory. If the list has keyboard focus, typing any text will jump to the first inem in the list whose name begins with the text you typed.

If a drop-down list appears in the bottom-left, it allows you to choose which files appear in the list, based on file-extension.

If this filesystem browser is asking for a file, you can choose one by double-clicking it, by selecting it and pressing Enter, or by selecting it and clicking the "Select" button in the bottom-right.

If this filesystem browser is asking for a directory, you can choose one by selecting it and clicking the "Select" button in the bottom-right. Double-clicking or selecting and pressing Enter don't work, they just switch to viewing that directory.

The "Cancel" button in the bottom-right closes the file-system browser without selecting anything.

The icarus interface

When launching icarus, directly or by picking "Import ROM Files ..." from higan's Library menu, the main icarus window appears. This is a filesystem browser, with customisations:

• The filesystem browser only lists files with extensions typically used for ROM dumps from consoles higan emulates, plus .zip files since ROM dumps are often compressed.
• Each matching file has a check-box next to it.
• You can tick the check-box next to every file at once by pressing "Select All" in the bottom-left.
• You can un-tick all the check-boxes by pressing "Unselect All" in the bottom-left.

Pressing "Settings ..." in the bottom-right opens the icarus Settings dialog.

Pressing "Import ..." in the bottom-right will close the filesystem browser then try to import all the files whose check-boxes are ticked into the Game Library. icarus displays a progress dialog during the import process.

Note: Some games require extra steps to import correctly; see the Game Library for details.

The icarus Settings dialog

The icarus Settings dialog contains the following settings:

• Library Location determines where icarus puts the games it imports. See Moving the Game Library for details.
• Create Manifests causes icarus to write out a manifest file describing each imported game to that game's game folder. This means that higan doesn't have to regenerate the manifest each time an imported game is loaded, but it means that a future version of higan with an incompatible manifest format may be unable to play these games. Note that higan also has an "Ignore Manifests" option in the Advanced tab of its Configuration dialog.
• Use Database causes icarus to use manifest information from its database of known-good manifests, if it's importing a game it recognises. For unrecognised games, and for all games if this box is unticked, icarus gueses the manifest data. This option is still relevant when "Create Manifests" is unticked: higan uses icarus to generate a manifest when a game is loaded, not just at import-time.

The Game Library

higan maintains a "game library" containing all the games you've played.

• In Windows, the default location of the game library is the Emulation folder inside your profile folder (To find your profile folder, press Win+R to open the Run dialog, then type %USERPROFILE% and press Enter).
• In Linux, the default location of the game library is the Emulation directory inside your home directory.
• On all platforms, the game library location can be configured. See Moving the Game Library below.

Inside the library directory there is a subdirectory for each system, and inside each system directory are the game folders for each imported game.

For more information about game folders, see Why game folders? and What's in a game folder? below.

Importing and playing regular games

icarus supports importing games in the most commonly-used formats for each supported console, and also those same formats inside .zip files. More advanced compression formats like RAR or 7-zip are not supported.

For most games that do not use special chips or co-processors, importing a game is straight-forward. From the Library menu choose "Load ROM File ..." to open a filesystem browser, choose the game you want to play, and it will be imported into the library and loaded.

To play the game again select the console the game runs on from the Library menu to open another filesystem browser that lists all the previously-imported games for that platform.

Importing and playing games with co-processor firmware

Many games included extra chips inside the game cartridge, to provide enhanced capabilities of one kind or another. Sometimes, those extra chips were separate CPUs running their own separate firmware, and for those cases higan requires a copy of the co-processor firmware as well as the actual game. Unfortunately, like games themselves, co-processor firmware cannot legally be distributed, so you'll need to obtain copies of the relevant firmware data yourself.

To import a game that requires co-processor firmware, you must copy the required firmware files beside the game you want to import. For example, if you want to import Megaman X2, which is stored in the file mmx2.sfc, the file cx4.data.rom must be placed in the same folder for the import to succeed.

Wikipedia lists which Super Famicom games use which co-processors, although not all co-processors require separate firmware. Once you've figured out which co-processor (if any) is used by the game you want to import, here's the firmware files you'll need:

Co-processor	Filename	Size (bytes)	SHA256
CX4	cx4.data.rom	3072	ae8d4d1961b93421ff00b3caa1d0f0ce7783e749772a3369c36b3dbf0d37ef18
DSP1/1A See Note 1	dsp1.data.rom	2048	0b5da6533e55852ee8fc397977ec5576c5b9f1fb2e05656d8f87123a121b076e
	dsp1.program.rom	6144	269584b347a22953a2989494c850a7c1c027f4ca5add517a60e0c7d8833d0fac
DSP1B See Note 2	dsp1b.data.rom	2048	8546cbac530830446bb8a277f6b139d4ad64d650bdbac7e4e150e2f095665049
	dsp1b.program.rom	6144	2eccb54a8f89374911f7e2db48f1b4cde855655e28103f7bda2982a5b418a187
DSP2	dsp2.data.rom	2048	3beef9bffdc1e84c9f99f3301d8bd3e520d2e62909a995320f9faeae8f46ec11
	dsp2.program.rom	6144	62a2ef8d2d7db638f4ec0fbcebf0e5bf18a75ee95be06e885d9519a10487f0da
DSP3	dsp3.data.rom	2048	7fe51796e9c97fee1fa2aab40592b7c78997f67dd00333e69d0f79a12f3cb69f
	dsp3.program.rom	6144	aea7b622e7c1de346cb15d16afcbedf92b6798507e179f83ed2a4cff40d0e663
DSP4	dsp4.data.rom	2048	ef3ffb4256dd896a60213269b4e2d3bdd120c97e2fd623bddabbf43c2be422af
	dsp4.program.rom	6144	89b1826e6038be3a0ea0f923e85d589ff6f02dc1a1819fb2ec8c0cea5b333dcd
ST010	st010.data.rom	4096	dc7056a51b53993d7a8ba5bacf9501f785d2fce5e5be748e9ff2737c5938d4a5
	st010.program.rom	49152	2c1f74bb5f466d81c64c326e71ac054489efe1abc9a5d6f91aac7747f2ddab67
ST011	st011.data.rom	4096	b5377d1bebe8adc507a024b6e2b9b8fdf4877e451da84fbad05dff4e4a70311e
	st011.program.rom	49152	d90a5cda380e81cb9ba11a9da7539b173c49b31bedc7a3ac9c3c8b3f97e89e14
ST018	st018.data.rom	32768	b5377d1bebe8adc507a024b6e2b9b8fdf4877e451da84fbad05dff4e4a70311e
	st018.program.rom	131072	d90a5cda380e81cb9ba11a9da7539b173c49b31bedc7a3ac9c3c8b3f97e89e14

Note 1: The DSP1 and DSP1A are physically different, but the firmware inside is identical.

Note 2: The DSP1B is very similar to the DSP1A, but has some bugs fixed. Note that icarus' heuristics cannot distinguish between a game that uses DSP1 and one that uses DSP1B, so if it cannot find your game in its manifest database, it will assume it uses DSP1B. Many games work just as well with either DSP1 or DSP1B, but Pilotwings is a notable exception.

If you try to import a game using the "Import ROM Files ..." option in the Library menu (or using icarus directly) but do not have the required firmware files in the correct place, a window will appear saying "Import completed, but with 1 errors. View log?" (or howevery many games were lacking the correct firmware). If you press "Yes", a new window will appear listing the games that couldn't be imported, and at least one firmware file that was missing or incorrect, like this:

[smk.zip] firmware (dsp1b.program.rom) missing or invalid

If you try to import a game using the "Load ROM File ..." option in the Library menu but do not have the required firmware files in the correct place, nothing will happen, and higan will just sit there with "No cartridge loaded" in the status bar.

Once a game with co-processor firmware is imported, you can play it just like any regular game.

Importing and playing Satellaview games

The Satellaview was a satellite modem peripheral released for the Super Famicom in Japan. As well as the actual modem (designed to sit underneath the Super Famicom), it also included a cartridge with software to control the modem, browse online services, and download games and data. This control cartridge was called BS-X Sore wa Namae o Nusumareta Machi no Monogatari, which translates as BS-X The Story of The Town Whose Name Was Stolen.

The control cartridge had a slot that accepted rewritable "memory paks", so that people could store the games and data they downloaded. A small number of games that did not use the Satellaview modem also had a memory pak slot, so the game's publishers could publish extra content for the game via the Satellaview service after the game's release. For the benefit of people who didn't own a Satellaview some read-only memory paks were sold in retail stores containing extra content for specific games.

Importing a game that has a slot for a memory pak is just like importing a regular game.

Importing a memory pak is like importing a regular game, but the name of the memory pak file must end in .bs (if it's in a .zip file, that's OK, but the name inside the .zip file must end in .bs) in order for it to be successfully imported. Sometimes memory pak filenames end in (BSROM).sfc, which will make higan try to import them as regular Super Famicom games, and fail miserably. Rename the file and it should work beautifully.

Playing a game that has a slot for a memory pak is just like playing a regular game, but after you have selected which game you want to play higan will open another filesystem browser to let you pick which previously-imported memory pak you want to insert into the game. If you press "Cancel" at this point, the game will load without any cartridge in its memory pak slot.

Note that although you can load the control cartridge into higan, higan does not emulate the Satellaview modem itself, so it's not very useful. For more information about the Satellaview service, a translation patch for the control cartridge and emulators that do a better job of Satellaview emulation, see the BS-X Project.

Playing a memory pak on its own doesn't make much sense, it's not a standalone cartridge. Play a game with a memory pak slot, and choose which memory pak you want when higan asks for it.

Importing and playing Sufami Turbo games

The Sufami Turbo was a special cartridge released for the Super Famicom in Japan. The Sufami Turbo on its own does nothing, but it has two slots in the top that accept Sufami Turbo mini-cartridges. The game in slot A is the one that actually plays, but some games can make use of additional data from a game in slot B.

Importing the Sufami Turbo cartridge is just like importing a regular game.

Importing a mini-cartridge is like importing a regular game, but the name of the memory pak file must end in .st (if it's in a .zip file, that's OK, but the name inside the .zip file must end in .st) in order for it to be successfully imported. Sometimes memory pak filenames end in (ST).sfc, which will make higan try to import them as regular Super Famicom games, and fail miserably. Rename the file and it should work beautifully.

To play a Sufami Turbo game, load the Sufami Turbo cartridge like any other game. higan will open another filesystem browser to let you pick which previously-imported mini-cartridge you want to insert into slot A. If you press "Cancel" at this point, the Sufami Turbo cartridge will boot without anything in slot A, which just displays an image telling you to turn off your Super Famicom, insert a game into slot A, and try again. If you chose a cartridge for slot A, higan will yet open another filesystem browser to let you choose a mini-cartridge for slot B. If you press "Cancel" at this point, the Sufami Turbo cartridge will boot without anything in slot B.

Importing and playing Super Game Boy games

The Super Game Boy was a special cartridge released for the Super Famicom (and all its regional variants around the world) that allowed Game Boy games to be played via the Super Famicom's controllers and video output. The Super Game Boy 2 was released in Japan, and had some minor extra features beyond the original Super Game Boy, but importing and playing games works the same way in higan.

The Super Game Boy cartrige includes the complete hardware of an original (black-and-white) Game Boy, so it needs a boot ROM:

Cartridge	Filename	Size (bytes)	SHA256
SGB	sgb.boot.rom	256	0e4ddff32fc9d1eeaae812a157dd246459b00c9e14f2f61751f661f32361e360
SGB2	sgb.boot.rom	256	fd243c4fb27008986316ce3df29e9cfbcdc0cd52704970555a8bb76edbec3988

Yes, the SGB and SGB2 have different firmware, but higan expects the same filename for both.

To import the SGB base cartridge, you must copy the required firmware file into the same directory. Then you may import it just like a regular game.

To play a Game Boy game in Super Game Boy mode, load the Super Game Boy cartridge like any other game. higan will open another filesystem browser to let you pick which previously-imported Game Boy game you want to insert into the Super Game Boy. If you press "Cancel" at this point, higan will crash, so don't do that.

Note that only games for the original, black-and-white Game Boy can be used with the Super Game Boy. Some games designed for the Game Boy Color were backward compatible with the original Game Boy and hence the Super Game Boy; see Playing Game Boy Colour games in Game Boy mode for details.

Importing and playing MSU-1 games

The MSU-1 is a fictional expansion chip invented by higan's author byuu for use with Super Famicom games, designed to allow streaming data and audio. Although the MSU-1 is not specific to any particular storage medium, it gives the Super Famicom similar capabilities to CD-based add-ons like the Mega Drive's Mega CD and the PC Engine's CD-ROM², such as CD-quality music and full-motion video.

To import an MSU-1 game:

1. If you have a single, large file with the .msu1 extension, that is a pack for use with Mercurial Magic, which can automatically set up a game folder in the correct format. Go read Mercurial Magic's documentation instead of these instructions.
2. Import the Super Famicom ROM with icarus, like a regular game.
   • If this is a homebrew game with MSU-1 support, there will probably be an ordinary ROM whose name ends in .sfc, which is the file you want to import
   • If this is a commercial game modded for MSU-1 support, there will probably be a patch file whose name ends in .ips or .bps. Get a copy of the correct version of the commercial game, apply the patch with a tool like Flips, then import the patched file.
   • If you have to choose between two patches, you want the "hardware" version, not the "emulator" version that lowers audio quality to match a bug found in old SD2SNES firmware revisions.
3. Find the game folder in the game library that icarus created when it imported the game.
4. Copy the MSU-1 data file into the game folder.
   • This should be named msu1.rom
   • If there's no file by that name, look for a file with a .msu extension and rename it to msu1.rom.
   • If there's no file by that name either, create an empty file with that name.
5. Copy the audio tracks into the game folder.
   • If you have to choose between two sets of audio files, you want the regular files, not the ones that are "boosted" (potentially losing quality) to work around a bug found in old SD2SNES firmware revisions.
   • These should be named track-1.pcm, track-2.pcm, ... track-9.pcm, track-10.pcm, etc.
   • If there's no files with those names, there should be other numbered .pcm files that you can rename to match what higan expects.
   • If the .pcm files have no numbers in the filenames, there maybe a .bml or .xml file that lists which number goes with which file.
   • If there's no .pcm files at all, that's OK, this game probably just doesn't use the audio-playback feature.

Once the game folder is set up, playing an MSU-1 game is just like a regular game.

Importing and playing patched games

TODO

Moving the game library

Moving the game library is a little complicated, because there's two parts to it: telling icarus where to put imported games, and telling higan where to find them.

1. If necessary, create the folder you want higan to use as its game library.
2. Launch icarus, then click the "Settings ..." button in the lower-right, to open the Settings dialog.
3. Click the "Change ..." button on the right. A filesystem browser window will appear, allowing you to choose where imported games will be stored.
4. Launch higan, then from the Settings menu, choose "Configuration ..." to open the Configuration dialog.
5. Click the Advanced tab then click the "Change ..." button. A filesystem browser will appear, allowing you to choose the same directory again.

Why game folders?

A game is more than just the raw data originally encased in a game's ROM chip. If a game allows you to save your progress, that information needs to be stored somewhere. If you use an emulator's save states, those save states need to be stored somewhere. If you use Game Genie or Pro Action Replay codes, information about what codes exist, what codes are enabled, and what they do needs to be stored somewhere.

On the technical side, a physical game cartridge contains a circuit board that makes the game data available to the console, and different games used circuit boards that work differently. That circuit-layout information needs to be stored somewhere. Some games included custom processors to do calculations the base console could not do quickly enough (like the SuperFX chip used in StarFox for the Super Famicom) and information about extra chips needs to be stored somewhere. Some of those custom processors require extra data to work that's not part of the main game data (like the DSP chip used in Super Mario Kart for the Super Famicom) and that data needs to be stored somewhere too.

higan keeps all this game-related information together in a single place: a game folder in the higan library.

For a more detailed motivation for game folders, see Game Paks on the higan website

What's in a game folder?

TODO

Configuring higan

TODO

Installing custom shaders

Controls

• mapping PC inputs to emulated controllers
• configuring which emulated controllers are connected to the emulated system

Drivers

TODO

Note that when changing a driver, you must restart higan for the change to take effect.

Video

TODO

The best option is "OpenGL" (since it allows you to use custom shaders), and the safest is "Direct Draw" (for Windows) or SDL (for Linux).

Audio

TODO

On Linux, "PulseAudioSimple" is the most likely to work.

On Windows, "DirectSound" is probably what you want. "XAudio" targets XAudio 2.7, (the last version to work on Windows 7), so it requires the latest (June 2010) version of the DirectX 9 End-User Runtime to be installed.

Input

TODO

On Linux, "udev" is the most flexble, but requires a modern Linux system, while "Xlib" should work on other Unix-like OSs but only supports a mouse and keyboard.

On Windows, "Windows" is the only input driver available, and automatically uses RawInput for keyboard/mouse, XInput for Xbox controllers, and DirectInput for other controllers.

Save States

TODO

Save states versus in-game saves

Quick states

Manager states

Notes on specific emulation cores

TODO

The WonderSwan rotates!

Shaders look weird on Super Famicom because of interlace/hi-res

Playing Game Boy Colour games in Game Boy mode

GBA in-game saves are Difficult

PSG volume for the Mega Drive (see https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?p=42158#p42158 for info)

Frequently Asked Questions

TODO

Why do Synchronize Video and Synchronize Audio conflict?

where is the vsync option, and the video/audio rate tradeoff https://board.byuu.org/viewtopic.php?p=43305#p43305

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