Does anyone remember the Sony PocketStation? It's a tiny 1999 PS1 memory-card-with-a-screen peripheral that was only really found in Japan that ran its own tiny downloadable apps off an ARM7TDMI CPU. As far as I can tell there hasn't been a working open-source emulator for it before and so I built one.

The nearest thing I could find out in the wild was a in progress rust implementation. This one is in C because I want it to be usable for patching holes in other projects - libretro being the first of many.

I've tested it with a .mcr ps1 memcard save that has chocoboworld and it seems to run and save correctly without crashing.

You can find the repo here https://github.com/mentalfoundry/pokketstation

Full disclosure, this is my own project. I build 1Retro, a sync tool for retro emulators and handhelds, and I just shipped a big update I wanted to share here.

The short version: it watches your emulator save folders and keeps them backed up and synced across your machines. It auto-detects RetroArch, Snes9x, mGBA and others, and runs from a small local app so it only touches the folders you point it at.

New this month: - Rebuilt the desktop app from scratch (menu-bar app, native installers for macOS/Windows/Linux, per-device setup, light/dark). - Back up a save straight off a physical Game Boy cartridge with a GB Operator. GBA support coming. - itch.io sync: link your account and it pulls the games you own alongside your saves. It will download the paid games and a itch collection named 1Retro.

I know the obvious question is "why not just Syncthing or Dropbox?" Honest answer: 1Retro understands saves and handles conflicts appropriately, as well as keeping a version history so a corrupted write is not a loss. Also, it does not need to live on the same network as the device (pretty useful for those on the road), does not require special configuration, and does not require a server. Free tier is 20MB, which is thousands of saves.

Full notes are in the link. Genuinely want the criticism, including "this should just be a Syncthing config".

I've always considered Arisotura one of my favorite emulator developers. I've seen her struggle and persevere through so much, both with this project and in her personal circumstances, and I've often felt that our community never gave her or the melonDS team the recognition they truly deserved.

Seeing so much attention being given to low-effort projects and AI-generated hype these days makes me miss the golden years of this community, when things felt very different.

Please take a moment to read his blog, reflect on her words, show some appreciation, and share it around. The melonDS team deserves far more recognition, and Arisotura's thoughts are always worth reading.:

Source: https://melonds.kuribo64.net/comments.php?id=261

Yeah, I haven't been great at this. I told myself I would work on 2D filters, since it's one of the last things to do... then I ran into a bit of a wall: I need my filters to have alpha support, but the filter shaders I can find don't support it. I would need to spend some time figuring out how they work and how I can add that in based on other references (there is code for xBRZ or HQX filters with alpha support, but not in the form of shaders).

And I, well, didn't feel the desire to continue...

Maybe it's the nature of software development in itself. Unless you're working on a smaller, simpler project, you're never really done, and especially not with a project like melonDS. What started as a way to pass time has become a full commitment, in a way.

By comparison, my job has been a lot simpler, and better suited to my brain too. When you set out to repair something, it's a project with a clear end. Most of what I deal with is also fairly simple, but sometimes there are more complicated cases, requiring more time and research. For example, those HMI lamp ballasts I'm working on: they are quite complex. This has been an ongoing project for a while now.

Maybe it's the fact that the project still largely rests on my shoulders. While bigger projects like Dolphin or PCSX2 may have a bigger team and more of a workflow in place, things aren't really like that here...

I'll just quote Generic, because he put it well:

[18:55]Generìc "Yes, we can!": I think I stated this before, but how I see it melonDS never went through the professionalisation many other projects went through
[18:58]Generìc "Yes, we can!": just look at other projects (even with just a single maintainer) setting milestones, systematically "triaging" issues and so on
[19:00]Generìc "Yes, we can!": also tests
[19:01]Generìc "Yes, we can!": and throuroughly adoption of new fangled C++ features
[19:03]Generìc "Yes, we can!": if it wasn't for Nadia putting so much effort into the build system through the whole time, the codeblocks project file would still be the way to build melonDS

I feel bad about having so many issues, pull requests, etc, staying open and rotting in the backlog. At the same time, I just don't have the brain power to review every single PR alone.

And to make matters worse, now we have people submitting AI-generated code, which is problematic from several standpoints: code quality (AI tends to make a mess and not really understand what it's doing, and someone who's using AI isn't likely to understand those things any better), plagiarism, the usual ethical and environmental problems with AI too...

I like the idea of open source, but for a project of this caliber, it feels that we should have more of a system in place, with a bigger team, clearer roles... a proper organization.

One where different people with different skillsets and preferences can complement eachother. For example, while I enjoy researching the DS hardware, or figuring out why a game isn't working as it should, stuff like build systems can quickly feel very frustrating to me. As Generic put it, if it weren't for Nadia handling that work, we might not have nightly builds today, for example.

And it would be nice to have more of this... ideally, lack of involvement from me shouldn't feel like the project is stalled, like it does now.

I don't want to abandon melonDS. The project is going to be 10 years old, it's a lot of history, fun and less fun times, and I've grown to love it. At the same time, it's nice to work on other projects sometimes, and it would be nice to do so without the guilt of abandoning melonDS...

Maybe it's also the changing nature, I mean, what it's like to work on the project. The early days were a lot of hardware research, implementation, debugging; it was a lot of fun, as evidenced by the release rate I had, but I can't recapture that now. I still have ideas for melonDS features, but at this point it feels more like regular software development.

For a while, I've had the idea of adding a wiki to our site. The wiki would serve as a reference for user-facing things pertaining to melonDS: compatibility info, tutorials and FAQs for things like online play, and so on. It would also be one way to get the community involved: provided there is enough demand, we could have a sub-team dedicated to the wiki.

This became part of the bigger website work I want to do, but haven't yet had the motivation to start. I want to move the server to a better host. I want to make the blog easier to navigate, with categorization by date or by tags, maybe a search... I want to make it easier to use for those who post, too.

And it's like everything else. I have all those ideas, but it starts to feel "too much", too many big things to do, I don't know where to start and feel overwhelmed, and nothing gets done.

Progress report

NeXium is a modular Switch emulator with a Vulkan-backed GPU and two interchangeable AArch64 JITs. Available for Windows, macOS, Linux.

• GitHub
• Menu showcase
• In-game performance
• Discord

NeXium is a high-level emulator that requires no proprietary Nintendo firmware, keys, or system files to run.

Just published x-nes — a cycle-accurate NES emulator core written in Rust that runs from microcontrollers to desktops. It's a library, not a standalone emulator, so you can embed it in your own projects via Rust API or C FFI.

- Cycle-accurate 6502 CPU (all 56 instructions, 13 addressing modes)

- Scanline-accurate PPU with NMI generation

- APU with pulse channels and sample buffer

- iNES ROM parser with 6 mappers so far (NROM, UxROM, CNROM, AxROM, GxROM, MMC1)

- Tiny footprint — ~150–200 KB stripped shared library

- C-compatible FFI (`nes_*` functions) for embedding from Lua, C, or any FFI-capable language

- Ships as a Rust crate, shared library, and static library

Current accuracy: 86/141 on the AccuracyCoin test suite (61%), 20/21 Blargg tests passing.

Known issues:

- Audio timing is slightly fast, some tones are off

- Some games render incorrectly due to edge-case PPU behaviors

- MMC3 mapper (SMB3, Mega Man 3, etc.) not yet supported

- Around 55 AccuracyCoin edge cases still to fix — APU, DMA/bus, NMI/interrupt timing, PPU quirks, and dummy-read addressing

REPO: https://github.com/ChaoswareHQ/x-nes

Pre-Release of J2MPSX - The first PS1 emulator to J2ME!

Download:

This edition has two versions: the "FULL" and the "NOANIM" version. The "FULL" version includes the introductory animation and is approximately 1.7 MB, while the "NOANIM" version does not include it and is only about 300 KB.

J2MPSX-V1.3.zip on MediaFire

^(Any question? ask on this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/J2MEgaming/comments/1uylau6/prerelease_of_j2mpsx_the_first_ps1_emulator_to

SeedlessDS is an experimental Nintendo DS emulator project focused on low-end Android handhelds, especially devices where running melonDS can be too heavy for the available hardware.

SeedlessDS is based on a recompilation and reimplementation effort around the DraStic emulator.

This does not replace WatermelonDS

Title: Built a free open-source tool to sync emulator saves/save-states across devices (RetroArch, Dolphin, PCSX2, RPCS3, Yuzu/Ryujinx, Citra, Cemu, PPSSPP)

Got tired of my save states living on one machine and not following me to my Deck/laptop, so I built OpenSave — it watches your save/state folders and keeps them synced peer-to-peer across devices, no cloud account required.

Auto-detects and watches:

• RetroArch (states + saves), Dolphin, PCSX2 memcards, RPCS3, Ryujinx, yuzu, Citra, Cemu, PPSSPP, Xenia
• Including Flatpak install paths on Linux
• Also picks up Steam userdata, GOG/Epic saves, and repack-style saves if you've got a mixed library
• Fully open source (MIT), Go, no telemetry/accounts
• LAN sync is automatic; internet sync uses a relay that only passes encrypted frames through (self-hostable if you don't want to trust mine)
• Windows + Linux/Steam Deck, with a Decky Loader plugin for Game Mode

GitHub: https://github.com/sivadaboi/OpenSave

Happy to answer questions or take feature requests — still actively developed.

AI assisted project

erings is a newer Sega Saturn emulator with a focus on ease of use and a couch type experience. The UI can be navigated with a controller.

Game compatibility is pretty decent and it supports some nice features like

• HLE bios making a real bios optional
• MPEG video playback
• RetroAchievements
• Many other things you'd expect of an emulator

It's not the most efficient but a decently speced machine can play games at full speed.

GitHub repo: https://github.com/user-none/erings

So basically, I was curious to test 3DS system browser and check how many website's still run on this ancient browser but my current emulator had some sort of issue which always caused 3DS browser to freeze. Then after a full weekend of debugging I found and patched the CPU scheduling bug causing it. This was a local/personal Azahar fork that I had. But released it as a non-fork to develop it independently for further homebrew and hardware accuracy experiments. So I may or may not occasionally apply upstream Azahar upgrades or just keep focusing on my own pace priorities.

Curiosity went further when I also wanted to test homebrew app shops and universal-updater but they either didn't load properly and if loaded couldn't download content due to bad download streaming implementation. And then after debugging this, fixed it too.

Debugging this way made broader compatibility because these were not mere title specific hacks just to make an app/game load but rather a general quality patch and in-fact led to better hardware accuracy at-least in incase of browser fix.

One may ask why even bother fixing this ancient browser, to which I can only say curiosity. And this ancient browser also deserves the same preservation efforts as games.

Am happy to share the release with you guys to test and have fun.

Attaching screenshots of some website's I browsed like old.reddit , neocities , duckduckgo lite etc. Also attached screenshot of now fully functional universal-updater and other homebrew apps like Anemone the theme downloader.

Do let me know in case of any questions :)

Edit:

Github link : https://github.com/Denzen-Project/Denzen-3DS/releases/tag/0.1

Before asking for help:

• Have you tried the latest version?
• Have you tried different settings?
• Have you updated your drivers?
• Have you tried searching on Google?

If you feel your question warrants a self-post or may not be answered in the weekly thread, try posting it at r/EmulationOnPC. For problems with emulation on Android platforms, try posting to r/EmulationOnAndroid.

If you'd like live help, why not try the /r/Emulation Discord? Join the #tech-support
channel and ask- if you're lucky, someone'll be able to help you out.

All weekly question threads

Hey everyone. I'm Han, the developer of RPG Player. It's been about 7 months since my last post in reddit.

Yesterday I found out that someone assumed I'd abandoned the app, because the App Store version hasn't been updated in about 4 months. I want to set the record straight: we never stopped. We've been developing this fast the entire time — the updates just haven't reached the App Store yet because of the review process. Everyone on TestFlight (already 1,000+ people) has had all of it for months.

RPG Player runs your games natively on Mac, iPhone and iPad. No PC, no streaming.

RPG Maker: - MV and MZ in a full in-app engine (plugins, videos, encrypted assets) - XP, VX, and VX Ace natively via MKXP-Z

Pokémon Essentials fangames run natively too — Reborn, Rejuvenation, Infinity / Infinite Fusion, Fire Ash, Tectonic, and many more.

What's landed recently: - Save and input problems were fixed months ago — touch and mouse input work properly, including mouse-driven VX Ace games - Built-in real-time translation, now 100+ languages (even native-engine dialogue) - Fast-forward (1x / 2x / 4x) for grinding and long text - In-game gallery, screenshot capture, a cheat menu, and more - PC/storage crash and save-detection fixes for Pokémon fangames - Fixes for a lot of older Japanese and Chinese titles

And we also support Ren'Py. A while back I promised Ren'Py support — we delivered it, and it runs a wide range of visual novels (multiple bundled runtimes, auto-detected). Next on the roadmap: Wolf RPG and TyranoScript. We keep our promises, so consider those coming.

The one thing between us and a resubmission is a launch-screen issue that only appeared in Apple's review environment. It's being closed out now.

Play the current build on ** Testflight ** Join our Discord

The App Store release is in the final stretch and coming very soon.

Ask me anything in the comments.

So I've been hearing about some infighting between people on REDUMP and now we have 2 different sites: https://redump.info/ and http://redump.org/.

Which is the real one?

• auto-detects existing game collections so you can use Nostlan alongside other frontends, such as EmulationStation-DE, Playnite, and LaunchBox, without moving any files
• read game manuals while playing
• works with NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA, and DS games stored in .zip and .7z files
• new default directory ~/Nostlan
• support for Gopher 64 (N64 emulator) and Azahar (N3DS emulator)

Full devlog: https://quinton-ashley.itch.io/nostlan/devlog/1580653/nostlan-v41-use-alongside-other-frontends