• Introduction
  • Custom Palettes
  • Input
    • Zapper
  • File Formats
    • iNES Format
    • UNIF
  • Famicom Disk System
  • Game Genie
  • VS Unisystem
• Default Key Assignments
  • VS Unisystem
  • Famicom Disk System
  • Barcode Readers
  • Game Pad
  • Power Pad
  • Family Keyboard
  • HyperShot Controller
  • Mahjong Controller
  • Party Tap Controller
• Game-specific Emulation Hacks
• Settings Reference
• Credits

Introduction

Mednafen's NES/Famicom emulation is based off of FCE Ultra.

Custom Palettes

Custom palettes should contain 64 8-bit-per-color-component RGB triplets.

Input

Mednafen emulates the standard NES gamepad, the Four-Score multiplayer adapter, the Zapper, the Power Pad, and the Arkanoid controller. The Famicom version of the Arkanoid controller, the "Space Shadow" gun, the Famicom 4-player adapter, the Family Keyboard, the HyperShot controller, the Mahjong controller, the Oeka Kids tablet, the Party Tap, the Family Trainer, and the Barcode World barcode reader are also emulated.

Zapper

Most Zapper NES games expect the Zapper to be plugged into port 2. and most VS Unisystem games expect the Zapper to be plugged into port 1.

The left mouse button is the emulated trigger button for the Zapper. The right mouse button is also emulated as the trigger, but as long as you have the right mouse button held down, no color detection will take place, which is effectively like pulling the trigger while the Zapper is pointed away from the television screen. Note that you must hold the right button down for a short time to have the desired effect.

File Formats

Mednafen supports the iNES, FDS(raw and with a header), UNIF, and NSF file formats. FDS ROM images in the iNES format are not supported; it would be silly to do so and storing them in that format is nonsensical.

iNES Format

The battery-backed RAM, vertical/horizontal mirroring, four-screen name table layout, and 8-bit mapper number capabilities of the iNES format are supported. The 512-byte trainer capability is also supported, but it is deprecated. Common header corruption conditions are cleaned(let's go on a DiskDude hunt), though not all conditions can be automatically detected and fixed. In addition, a few common header inaccuracies for games are also corrected(detected by CRC32 value). Note that these fixes are not written back to the storage medium.

Support for the recent VS System bit and "number of 8kB RAM banks" is not implemented. Too many iNES headers are corrupt where this new data is stored, causing problems for those games.

The following table lists iNES-format "mappers" supported well in Mednafen.

UNIF

Mednafen supports the following UNIF boards. The prefixes HVC-, NES-, BTL-, and BMC- are omitted, since they are currently ignored in Mednafen's UNIF loader.

Famicom Disk System

You will need the FDS BIOS ROM image in the base Mednafen directory. It must be named "disksys.rom". Mednafen will not load FDS games without this file.

If a loaded disk image is written to during emulation, Mednafen will store the modified disk image in the save games directory, which is by default "sav" under the base directory.

Game Genie

The Game Genie ROM image is loaded from the path specified by the setting "nes.ggrom", or, if that string is not set, the file "gg.rom" in the base directory when Game Genie emulation is enabled.

The ROM image may either be the 24592 byte iNES-format image, or the 4352 byte raw ROM image.

VS Unisystem

Mednafen currently only supports VS Unisystem ROM images in the iNES format. DIP switches and coin insertion are both emulated. The following games are supported, and have palettes provided(though not necessarily 100% accurate or complete):

• Battle City
• Castlevania
• Clu Clu Land
• Dr. Mario
• Duck Hunt
• Excitebike
• Excitebike (Japanese)
• Freedom Force
• Goonies, The
• Gradius
• Gumshoe
• Hogan's Alley
• Ice Climber
• Ladies Golf
• Mach Rider
• Mach Rider (Japanese)
• Mighty Bomb Jack (Japanese)
• Ninja Jajamaru Kun (Japanese)
• Pinball
• Pinball (Japanese)
• Platoon
• RBI Baseball
• Slalom
• Soccer
• Star Luster
• Stroke and Match Golf
• Stroke and Match Golf - Ladies
• Stroke and Match Golf (Japanese)
• Super Mario Bros.
• Super Sky Kid
• Super Xevious
• Tetris
• TKO Boxing
• Top Gun

Default Key Assignments

VS Unisystem

Famicom Disk System

Barcode Readers

Game Pad

Power Pad

Family Keyboard

All emulated keys are mapped to the closest open key on the PC keyboard, with a few exceptions. The emulated "@" key is mapped to the "`"(grave) key, and the emulated "kana" key is mapped to the "Insert" key(in the 3x2 key block above the cursor keys).

To use the Family Keyboard emulation properly, press SHIFT + Scroll Lock, which will cause input to be grabbed from the window manager(if present) and disable Mednafen's other internal command processing.

HyperShot Controller

Mahjong Controller

Party Tap Controller

Game-specific Emulation Hacks

Settings Reference

Caution: Any settings that change emulation behavior as seen from the emulated game are shown with the setting name bolded in the table. One should be conscious of these settings if one has changed them from the default values when using network play or movies, as they can cause desychronizations if not set the same among hosts(or between the recording emulator and the playing emulator).

Credits

(This section is woefully outdated, being mostly copied from FCE Ultra)