BlargSnes 3DS

Template:Infobox 3DS homebrew

blargSNES is a Super NES emulator for your 3DS. With a homebrew-enabled 3DS, you can enjoy SNES games on the go!

Features

• PPU modes 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8x8 and 16x16 tiles, sprites, windows
• Hardware-accelerated renderer (about on par with the software renderer)
• Sound
• Satisfying portion of the SNES hardware emulated
• Support for headered (.smc) and headerless (.sfc) ROMs, LoROM and HiROM
• SRAM with auto-saving
• Joypad for player 1 (circle pad also works)
• Custom borders
• Screen scaling

What's in the zip

• blargSnes.3ds -- 3DS ROM. Useful for Gateway.
• blargSnes.cia -- Installable version
• blargSnes folder -- files for use with the Homebrew Launcher
• blargSnes.elf -- ELF file. May be useful for alternate homebrew loaders. Provided for the sake of completeness.

Screenshots

How to use

You need a way to run ARM11 userland homebrew on your 3DS.

Gateway

Copy blargSnes.3ds to the Gateway's MicroSD.

Due to limitations, you will not get sound if you use this method.

Homebrew Launcher / Ninjhax

Copy the blargSnes folder into the 3ds folder on your SD card.

Due to limitations, you will not get sound if you use this method on a New 3DS. 'Old' 3DS users will get sound.

Also note that sleep mode (closing your 3DS) and the Home button don't work when using this method.

CIA

The method for using the CIA version will not be covered here because installation of CIA files involves warez. However, the CIA version gives you the best of all worlds-- sound AND working sleep mode on all systems, provided you're able to install and run it.

You will need either a Gateway or a CFW to be able to run unsigned CIA files. The normal Home menu will show them but will refuse to launch them.

On the 3DS's SD card (not the Gateway MicroSD), create a folder named 'snes' and put your SNES ROMs in there. In the same folder, you can also place savegames. They must have the same name as their corresponding ROM, and have a .srm extension. With that done, start blargSnes, and you see a ROM selection menu. Select your ROM and press A (or B). See what happens.

You can pause gameplay by tapping the touchscreen. When paused, resume by pressing A or tapping the touchscreen again. You can also select another game by pressing Select, or open the configuration screen by pressing Start, or take a screenshot by pressing both L and R (screenshot is saved to your SD card in .bmp format, includes both screens).

FAQ

• Where can I get SNES ROMs?

Google is your friend.

• How can I run this on my 3DS?

You can use either a Gateway or Ninjhax. Make sure that you meet the requirements for the method you want to use.

• Why is there no Launcher.dat in the zip? / Can I run this via the mset exploit?

Launcher.dat aka the mset exploit runs code on the ARM9. blargSNES is made to run in ARM11 userland, and ARM11 userland code is completely incompatible with the ARM9's environment.

• I get no sound!

Due to technical limitations, if you use blargSnes.3ds on a Gateway, or Ninjhax on a New 3DS, sound output is not possible yet. This will change in the future.

• When will <insert fancy feature> be emulated? ('fancy feature' includes 3D)

When I get around to doing it. There are several more important things to do in blargSNES.

• What is the point of this when I can just play games on the Virtual Console/my phone/my DS?

The Virtual Console will play your games smoothly, but that's all. It can only play the game it is provided with and doesn't support features like external borders, backing up and restoring your save file, and many more.

Your phone may be powerful enough to play SNES games smoothly, but unless you own one of those specific gaming phones with built-in joypad buttons, the gameplay experience is inferior to what a 3DS can provide. It is just impossible to play SMW with touchscreen controls, for example.

And the DS, well. Unless you own a DSTwo, the SNES emulators available to you are reasonably fast but their graphics support is far from perfect due to relying on the DS's 2D GPU. It's not that the emulators are bad, really they're doing their best, but there are just too many differences between the SNES's PPU and the DS's GPU for perfect emulation to be possible.

Changelog

Version 1.3b

• Hotfix release, compatible with latest 3DS hacks

Version 1.3

• Usage of geometry shaders and other speedups to rendering
• Hardware renderer: offset-per-tile, hi-res modes, and more fixes by DiscostewSM
• Much better sound quality, support for noise, echo and pitch modulation (thanks DiscostewSM again)
• Two added scaling modes: 4:3 and cropped 4:3
• Better open-bus emulation, and ability to execute code in open-bus regions (fixes Home Alone)
• Overall more accurate timings, IRQ fixes, etc
• ROM selector is no longer locked to the /snes folder
• the usual forgotten novelties, surprise

Version 1.2

• Brand new hardware-accelerated renderer
• Sound via CSND (not available to Gateway or Ninjhax on New 3DS)
• Scaling support
• Exit button (mainly for use with the Homebrew Launcher)
• Emulation fixes (namely, huge 'next EXP' in Earthbound is fixed)
• Support for the 256x239 mode
• Proper PAL support (actually uses PAL timings)
• Tries to prevent GPU freezes
• Synchronous SPC700 (fixes issues but also causes a little slowdown)
• As usual, more crap I forgot about. Hah.

Version 1.1

• No more garbled/blank screens or freezes when pressing Home or closing/reopening the 3DS or playing with the 3D slider
• Ability to run a new game without restarting blargSnes
• Screenshot function
• Support for external borders
• Support for backgrounds with 16x16 tiles. Super Bomberman games are finally playable.
• Brightness, color math (blending) and windows added. Many games look nicer this way.
• Several PPU speedups
• Speedhacking disabled (it was error-prone, not that efficient, and broke HDMA)
• Replaced forced 1/2 frameskip with automatic frameskipper (isn't perfect, though)
• More stable display (although tearing still occurs when frameskipping), VSync
• More things I forgot about. Surprise!

Version 1.0

Initial release. Dirty.

New 3DS with Sound - Shadowtrance version

So, what else is new in this build for N3DS, aside from sound using 3DSX? "Nothing really, just a fork of DiscostewSM's fork that had been updated to compile with latest ctrulib then i added the libkhax stuff to get sound on N3DS and changed the banner for the .3ds/.cia versions to the 3D banner gamesquest1 made.Otherwise it's basically the same as the official v1.3, that's about it really."

https://github.com/Shadowtrance/blargSnes/releases