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About
Nintendulator is an open source Win32 NES emulator written in C++. The original goal was to emulate the NES down to its hardware quirks, and while it's not 100% perfect, it does emulate a variety of special cases that most other emulators neglect to handle. However, this emulation precision comes at a price - a 1500MHz (estimated) or faster CPU is required to emulate at full speed.
Supported file formats include .NES, UNIF, FDS (fwNES format), and NSF. Mappers are handled using external DLLs, complete with extra sound channels for most games which provide them. Other notable features include writing to FDS images (by storing the differences in separate files), authentic Game Genie support (limited to 3 codes), customizeable controllers (including 4 player), input movie recording and playback (with re-recording), AVI capturing, and a debugger with simple breakpoint support. Savestates and battery-backed RAM are saved within the current user's Application Data folder, allowing Nintendulator to function properly when not run as an Administrator.
To contact the author, send email to quietust at either @qmtpro.com or @gmail.com, or look in the #nesdev IRC channel on EFnet.
News
August 23, 2022
The NTSC palette generator has undergone a significant improvement and simplification - the standard palette should be mostly unchanged, but color emphasis should be much more accurate now.
July 18, 2022
Prompted by an online discussion about optimization, I made a minor optimization to the PPU's FrameSkip rendering code and a major optimization to the APU code when sound is disabled, allowing "fast-forward" to run much more quickly than before.
February 25, 2022
Today's build features numerous accuracy fixes centered around the APU and DMA, fixing a handful of failing test programs.
January 5, 2022
The first build for the new year adds support for an extremely obscure feature recently discovered in one revision of the Nintendo MMC1 mapper, along with a UNIF mapper fix for MMC3 boards that could be reconfigured for hardwired mirroring.
December 18, 2021
A few fixes and improvements before the new year:
- Add PPU Debugger option to rearrange pattern table tiles for 8x16 sprites
- Fix PPU Debugger to correctly flip Sprite tiles
- Update MMC5 to support CHR RAM, allowing it to run various ROM hacks which use it that way
Downloads
Here you may download various versions of Nintendulator and other related applications.
- Versions 0.985 and later are available in both 32-bit and 64-bit editions and are only officially supported on Windows 8.1 and later, though they'll probably also work on Windows 7, Vista, and XP.
- Versions 0.960 through 0.980 were 32-bit only but included both ANSI (for Windows 95/98/Me) and Unicode (for Windows XP and later) binaries.
- Versions 0.950 and earlier were 32-bit ANSI only.
Latest unstable build
This is a snapshot of my latest development code. Though this has features not present in the current release below, it may also have significant bugs, so download it at your own risk!
This is NOT a release!
- Nintendulator v0.985 Beta (last updated 2022-08-22 20:16:34)
Current release
This is the latest officially released version of Nintendulator. You are highly recommended to use this version instead of the latest build above unless you require any of the new functionality added since the last release.
- Nintendulator 0.980 (January 1, 2019)
Outdated releases
These are old releases of Nintendulator, archived here for historical purposes.
- Nintendulator 0.970 (January 2, 2010)
- Nintendulator 0.960 (January 11, 2006)
- Nintendulator 0.950 (March 14, 2005)
- Nintendulator 0.900 (June 20, 2002)
- NESten 0.61 Mappers
Mappers Supported
These mappers are supported in the latest released version of Nintendulator. Mappers listed in bold have been added or improved in the latest beta build; for iNES and VS, strike indicates what the compatibility was in the official release, while for UNIF it indicates boards that have been removed.
- FDS.dll: FDS (with sound)
- NSF.dll: NSF (FDS, MMC5, Namco 163, VRC6, VRC7, and Sunsoft-5 sound)
- iNES.dll: 154 mappers supported (155 in latest build)
- Full: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 19, 24, 26, 28, 31, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 73, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 101, 105, 114, 118, 119, 125, 126, 127, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 155, 159, 180, 182, 184, 189, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 211, 218, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 233, 234, 235, 242, 243, 250, 254
- Nearly: 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 48, 57, 64, 71, 72, 74, 76, 82, 83, 92, 107, 112, 113, 115, 132, 154, 164, 165, 185, 188, 191, 192, 193, 194, 200, 201, 203, 225, 232, 240, 245, 246
- Partial: 116
- VS.dll: 8 mappers supported (9 in latest build)
- Full: 0, 1, 2, 4, 67, 68, 75, 99, 151, 206
- Nearly: (none)
- Partial: (none)
- UNIF.dll: 101 boards supported
- Licensed:
- Plain: NES-NROM-128, NES-NROM-256, NES-RROM-128
- Discrete: NES-AMROM, NES-AN1ROM, NES-ANROM, NES-AOROM, NES-BNROM, NES-CNROM, NES-CPROM, NES-GNROM, NES-MHROM, NES-UNROM, NES-UOROM
- MMC1: NES-SAROM, NES-SBROM, NES-SC1ROM, NES-SCROM, NES-SEROM, NES-SFROM, NES-SGROM, NES-SH1ROM, NES-SHROM, NES-SIROM, NES-SJROM, NES-SKROM, NES-SL1ROM, NES-SL2ROM, NES-SL3ROM, NES-SLROM, NES-SLRROM, NES-SMROM, NES-SNROM, NES-SOROM, NES-SUROM, NES-SXROM
- MMC2: NES-PEEOROM, NES-PNROM
- MMC3: NES-TBROM, NES-TEROM, NES-TFROM, NES-TGROM, NES-TKROM, NES-TKSROM, NES-TL1ROM, NES-TL2ROM, NES-TLROM, NES-TLSROM, NES-TNROM, NES-TQROM, NES-TR1ROM, NES-TSROM, NES-TVROM
- MMC4: NES-FJROM, NES-FKROM
- MMC5: NES-EKROM, NES-ELROM, NES-ETROM, NES-EWROM
- MMC6: NES-HKROM
- FME-7: NES-BTR, NES-JLROM, NES-JSROM
- NAMCO 109: NES-DEIROM, NES-DEROM, NES-DRROM
- HVC-* (Famicom), UNL-* (unlicensed look-alikes), and BTL-* (bootleg look-alikes) also supported
- Unlicensed Singles: UNL-8237, UNL-A9712, UNL-DRIPGAME, UNL-H2288, UNL-SA-0036, UNL-SA-0037, UNL-SA-016-1M, UNL-SA-72007, UNL-SA-72008, UNL-Sachen-74LS374N, UNL-Sachen-8259A, UNL-Sachen-8259B, UNL-TC-U01-1.5M
- Bootleg Singles: BTL-MARIO1-MALEE2
- Bootleg Multicarts: BMC-1991SuperHiK7in1, BMC-1992Ballgames11in1, BMC-Generic115in1, BMC-Generic15in1, BMC-Generic20in1, BMC-Generic20in1A, BMC-Generic42in1, BMC-Generic52in1, BMC-Generic76in1, BMC-GoldenGame150in1, BMC-Mario7in1, BMC-NovelDiamond9999999in1, BMC-Reset4in1, BMC-SV01, BMC-StudyGame32in1, BMC-Super1Min1, BMC-Super24in1SC03, BMC-Super700in1, BMC-Supervision16in1, BMC-T3H53, BMC-WS