Created by Near (ex byuu) and continued by Luke Usher ( PolyBlast / CxBx-Reloaded ) and others, Ares is a multi-system emulator whose development began on October 14, 2004. It is a descendant of higan and bsnes. It focuses on accuracy and preservation. Ares emulates the following 33 machines: – PC Engine + PC Engine CD + SuperGrafx – MSX + MSX2 – ColecoVision – Neo Geo Pocket + Neo Geo Pocket Color – Neo Geo AES – Sinclair Zx Spectrum – WonderSwan + WonderSwan Color + SwanCrystal + Pocket Challenge V2.
– Atari 2600
– Famicom + Famicom Disk System
– Super Famicom + Super Game Boy
– Nintendo 64/64DD
– Game Boy + Game Boy Color
– Game Boy Advance + Game Boy Player
– SG-1000 + SC-3000
– Master System + Game Gear
– Mega Drive + Mega 32X + Mega CD
– Nichibutsu – My Vision
– Playstation
MSU-1 packs are available here .
Here is the information since the last version of ares:
– Atari 2600
– Famicom + Famicom Disk System
– Super Famicom + Super Game Boy
– Nintendo 64/64DD
– Game Boy + Game Boy Color
– Game Boy Advance + Game Boy Player
– SG-1000 + SC-3000
– Master System + Game Gear
– Mega Drive + Mega 32X + Mega CD
– Nichibutsu – My Vision
– Playstation
MSU-1 packs are available here .
Here is the information since the last version of ares:
User Interface
– Systems that use MAME compatible Arcade roms (currently only Neo Geo) now use a dedicated roms folder (configurable in Settings -> Paths). When loading games for these systems, the user is now presented with a game browser dialog, so users no longer have to struggle to remember shorthand .zip filenames for their games.
– ares will now use the modern file browser dialog when browsing for a directory on Windows.
– Added a « Reset System » hotkey to allow quick resets of the running system.
Save States
– It is now possible to undo the last save, or load, of a save state; this is intended to reduce the chance of data loss on accidental saving (easily possible when using a hotkey).
Atari 2600
– Improved resolution handling/screen size calculation.
– Fixed an issue where the TIA audio would not correctly reset.
Bandai-WonderSwan
– Improved timing accuracy of the V30MZ CPU.
Sega Mega Drive / CD / 32X
– The following games have been added to the game database:
* Alisia Dragoon (E): Override for incorrect region flags in header
* Fifa Soccer 95 (Korea): Override for bad SRAM flags in header
* NBA Live 95 (Korea): Override for bad SRAM flags in header
* Sonic & Knuckles + Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (USA, Japan, Europe): Override for missing SRAM header
* Fixed an issue where loading a CD32X game could result on the logo lacking color.
– Implement correct sprite list termination behavior; fixes Power Drive’s vehicle select menu.
– Fix latching of window registers to before the scanline; fixes Landstalker’s text box rendering.
– Fixed a typo causing the 32X WDT to tick at the wrong frequency in some situations (2096 -> 4096).
– Fixed an issue where 32X internal timers would tick too slowly when using the recompiler.
– Fixed an issue where loading a CD game followed by a CD32X game would result in the 32X not being detected.
– Added support for the SH2’s mirrored cache control register; fixes Virtua Fighter.
– Fixed an issue where CD BRAM would be overwritten if the CD was loaded without a disc inserted (eg: via mode 1 cartridge).
– Fixed an issue where the SH-2 recompiler would not properly invalidate cache; fixes NBA Jam
– Fix an edge case that could cause the SH-2 recompiler to infinitely defer interrupts.
NEC – PC Engine / TurboGrafx / SuperGrafx / CD
– Added support for connecting/disconnecting the multitap; we could not safely leave it enabled as default as it caused some games to break.
– Fixed an issue where ares would incorrectly corrupt CD BRAM when loading a HuCard game.
– Fixed an issue where ares would not correctly zero BRAM on formatting.
– Fixed an issue where the BIOS would incorrectly detect BRAM size and not format it properly.
– Fix an off by one error in scanline interrupts; fixes blue characters in Akumajou Dracula X.
Microsoft – MSX
– Added preliminary support for loading cassette tape software/games. Currently, this requires .WAV format audio data. The following basic commands are used to load cassette tapes of each type:
Binary Data: `BLOAD »CAS: »,R`
Tokenized Basic: `CLOAD`
ASCII `RUN »CAS: »`
Microsoft – MSX2
– Fixed sprite rendering in Mode 2.
– Implemented support for vscroll, Text Mode 1 and Graphics Mode 5.
– Implemented just enough of the RTC to allow the use of a real MSX2 BIOS, rather than C-BIOS.
Nichibutsu – My Vision
– Support for this system has now been added to ares; ROM dumps should be raw binary images of an entire cartridge using the « .myv » file extension.
Nintendo – Famicom / NES
– Added support for the iNES 2.0 timing flag; ROMs that rely on this flag will now run at the correct speed.
– Added support for VRC2/4 sub-types; the VRC2 and VCR4 test ROMs now pass successfully.
– Fixed initial reset state, allowing reset test ROMs to pass.
– Added support for AVE NINA-03 and NINA-06 boards (iNES mapper 79).
– Added support for MMC3 multicarts (iNES mappers 37 and 47).
– Fixed an issue where FDS games would play some audio channels at an incorrect pitch.
Nintendo – Super Famicom / SNES
– Fixed an issue where games using real time clocks may crash the emulator.
Nintendo – Nintendo 64
– ares now correctly uses the virtual and physical addresses when simulating icache loads with the recompiler.
– Lots of performance tuning, mostly to offset the performance cost of the recent emulation improvements.
– Fixed handling of BADVADDR in TLB miss exceptions that are raised by SWR.
– Fixed an issue where PAL games would play audio at an incorrect frequency.
– Added support for Weave de-interlacing instead of only Bob de-interlacing, Weave is now the default.
– Added emulation of RSP SU pipeline stalls; fixes Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie.
– Added accurate PI DMA timing emulation; fixes Jet Force Gemini and Micky’s Speedway USA.
– Corrected out of bounds RDRAM behavior; RDRAM is not mirrored.
– Removed MAME RDP emulation; Parallel-RDP is now supported on macOS via MoltenVK so the fallback was no longer required.
Nintendo – Game Boy
– Fixed an issue where the stop() instruction would not correctly reset the internal div counter to 0.
Nintendo – Game Boy Advance
– Implement upper bounds for background fetch; fixes rendering issues in Monster Gate.
Sinclair – ZX Spectrum
– Added support for .tap and .tzx format tapes (no need to convert to .wav anymore).
– Component changes affecting multiple cores
– Fixed various audio inaccuracies in the SN76489 and YM2612 emulation.
– Fixed various inaccuracies in Z80 emulation.
– Fix various M68000 timing issues.
Command Line Interface
– All ares settings are now exposed to the command line interface: a setting can be changed from command line using –setting. The list of available settings can be dumped with –dump-all-settings.
– Added support for suppressing file dialogs and loading multiple roms at once; this allows the loading of complex configurations (e.g.: Super Game Boy) from the command line without needing to use the GUI.
Other
– Removed the non-functional Direct3D11 driver; no code for this ever existed, but the UI was displaying the option leftover from an experimental branch.
– Fixed an issue where ares would make incorrect assumptions about pregap in CHD files.
– Fixed the location/detection of Game Databases on POSIX systems (should reduce issues with third party builds).
– Updated the Linux builds to default to GTK3 rather than GTK2, as the latest version of ubuntu has removed GTK2 support from the core repositories.
– Added support for IPS softpatching, alongside the existing BPS support.