Latest versions

• retro-recomp.com is open. RetroRecomp now has its own website, with downloads, release news, the leaderboard and your account page.
• Sign in from the converter. Sign in in the header asks for your e-mail address and sends a 6-digit code; the converter then keeps a revocable token for this installation. No password is stored by the converter, and your address is never shown to others.
• Send your discoveries. Knowledge → Send my discoveries to the shared base, or Send and close on the closing card, uploads the same ROM-free file as an export, only for games whose discoveries changed since your last send. A large first send leaves as several files and resumes where it stopped if interrupted. Every upload is rechecked before it can help a future version; nothing enters the bundled knowledge without a qualified conversion.
• Your corner of the header. Your portrait (from the site), pseudonym, points, rank and paths awaiting confirmation sit at the right of the header, beside the console format and language fields. Signed out, a pixel-art question mark invites you to sign in.
• The leaderboard. A window with the trophy, a podium whose steps rise with the three best players and their crowns, Gold, Platinum and Diamond counts per player, all time or this month, your own line in gold.
• A help page. The ? button explains how RetroRecomp works in five steps (add, convert, play, learn while playing, share) and lists the keys every game shares.
• A new header. "Rediscover your games."; the version and platform now sit at the bottom right.
• Safer by default. The service is reached over HTTPS only, the converter never follows a redirect with its token, and on Windows the token file is readable by your account only.

Because one shared conversion input changed (the list of converter-only modules), the next batch converts each exported game in full once. Measured on Windows; Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41.

• What's new, before you download. When Check for updates finds a newer version, the dialog shows the published release notes of every version newer than yours, up to the one offered, newest first, before you choose Download and restart or Later. The notes are shown in English, as published. The Windows installer shows the same notes before installing.
• Already compiled games, asked once. When the ROMs you add to the queue (files, a folder or a mixed drop) include games that already have an export in the output folder, the queue asks once whether to keep them for a reconversion. No leaves them out and keeps only the games not compiled yet, and the log says how many were left out. Nothing is asked for ROMs given on the command line before the window opens.

No conversion input changes: games converted with 1.3.0 stay current. Measured on Windows; Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41.

• The whole convertible Neo Geo library. Of the 135 archives in the test collection, 134 exact identities are qualified: nine more than 1.2.9 (the four World Heroes, Zed Blade, Zupapa!, Tecmo World Soccer '96, Mutation Nation and Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer), with no observed 68000 or Z80 fallback on the qualified routes. Fight Fever stays out (incomplete archive). Full-game validation and physical latency are not measured.
• A Mega Drive collection campaign. 132 more exact identities are qualified (214 in all); three keep some 68000 fallback (Brian Lara Cricket, Brian Lara Cricket 96, Clay Fighter). Two timing corrections: the interpreted reference keeps the immediate Z80 rendezvous, and the Z80 no longer runs ahead while the VDP's Z80 interrupt changes. Known limits: the SVP chip (Virtua Racing), the RESET instruction (Boxing Legends, Dragon's Revenge), an undecodable opcode reached in the header (Barkley).
• CPS-1 drawn like MAME. Overlapping sprites follow MAME's order (Final Fight's characters pass behind objects), and a tile renderer cuts drawing time by ten (5.2 → 0.5 ms per frame on Windows). Three- and four-player boards take the third and fourth controllers (Captain Commando, The King of Dragons, Knights of the Round, Mercs). A DIP switches page on F2 sets each board's switches with MAME's names, kept per game. 26 parent sets are qualified at the Standard level, 25 without fallback; Street Fighter II': Champion Edition runs 0.06 % of its code from graphics RAM, interpreted and reported. Quick states now keep the sound chip's noise table (F9 on U.N. Squadron and Willow), and file names carry subtitles like the other consoles. Hardware fidelity means conformance with MAME 0.289, not with the real board.
• A 32-bit program counter after flagged pointer jumps, shared by Neo Geo, CPS-1 and X68000 native code (Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer needed it).
• X68000 sets and mice. The disks of one game, named (Disk 1 of 2), (Disk 2), (Disk B) in one folder, are queued once as an ordered playlist written under datas/x68000-sets, nothing beside the disks. Mouse controls come from a reviewed list of 84 collection sets (70 with a mouse) and, elsewhere, from the code a game executes (IOCS mouse calls or its own SCC driver, 1,000 reads on fresh routes). A short campaign of eight games ran without interpreted opcodes on the main, mouse and keyboard routes.
• Shared knowledge. The snapshot holds 1,305 exact identities (1,164 in 1.2.9, all byte-identical): 606 Game Boy, 258 Master System, 214 Mega Drive, 134 Neo Geo, 44 Super Nintendo, 36 NES, 13 Game Gear. Its decompressed bound rises from 64 to 128 MiB; loading it takes about 7 s once per process (4 s before).
• A renamed package. The converter's Python package is now retrorecomp (it was smsrecomp, the project's Master System name). Nothing changes for players or exported games; the C runtime keeps its internal names.

Because shared conversion inputs changed (the knowledge bound, a CPS-1 route step, Mega Drive Z80 timing and the shared 68000 form), the next batch converts every exported game in full once; later converter updates that only touch the player shell upgrade games without rediscovery. Measured on Windows; Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• No rescan needed. The collection remembers the sizes and dates of each game's files. When a game launched with Play closes, its new discoveries appear at once; when the window comes back, only games whose files changed are read again (about 0.2 s for 1,068 unchanged games). Scan games remains for new folders and moved games.
• New paths (N). One toolbar button, in both views, recompiles only the games whose play found new paths since their last conversion, upgrading them without rediscovery when nothing else changed. Games whose ROM cannot be found are left for later.
• Before closing. When games on Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy, NES, Mega Drive or Super Nintendo have new paths, an animated card offers to recompile them before closing. Send and close, and Send to the shared Retro-Recomp base in the Knowledge menu, are visible but disabled: sending arrives with the connection to the Retro-Recomp web server and database.
• Raw observations travel too. Exports now include gameplay observations not yet turned into hints by a conversion, as ROM positions: the recorded bytes are replaced by where they appear in your own ROM, and code a game builds in RAM stays on your computer. Whoever imports them rebuilds the bytes from their own ROM, under the same checks as their own observations, and a conversion they make fail sets them aside. A reconverted game shares qualified hints instead. Knowledge files are now version 2; version 1 files still import.
• Faster exports. Each game's contribution is cached, so an export only revisits games that changed: 20 s the first time on a 1,068-game collection, 0.1 s afterwards.
• A lighter toolbar. Add ROM folder, Remove, Clear list, Scan games, Add exe folder and Stop are pictures whose hover hint names them; the ROM and executable folders have distinct pictures. The switch no longer cuts its Russian caption, nor the Options close button its German one.
• A new README and website. A summary of what RetroRecomp does, with fresh screenshots in five languages.

Because the way conversions read gameplay hints changed, the next batch converts each game in full once; later converter updates that only touch the player shell upgrade games without rediscovery. Measured on Windows; Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• Upgrades without rediscovery. When a converter update only changes the player shell (menus, options, on-screen text, filters, sound output, artwork, notices) and a game has nothing new to learn, its export is rebuilt from the paths already learned instead of replaying discovery. The native code is still compared with the reference CPU on the quick routes, and any interpreter fallback is still reported. The report keeps the original discovery, and the collection still flags the fallback it met.
• When a full conversion still happens. A change to anything that can alter which code runs, how it is translated or how it is validated; new gameplay hints (F12) or imported knowledge for that cartridge; different scan settings; or a forced conversion from the queue. Reconvert in the collection upgrades when it can.
• One classification for every machine. Each converter input is either host (the interactive shell) or game. The same menu core, text, filters and sound output files are host on every console, plus one shell per machine family. Anything unclassified counts as game, so it triggers a full conversion. See upgrading exports.
• Game Boy cleanup. The Game Boy shell patches now live apart from the machine patches; the generated project is byte-identical.

Measured on Windows with real conversions: Bubble Bobble (Game Gear) took 23 s in full and 13 s as an upgrade; Columns (Mega Drive) 96 s and 51 s; an unchanged game is recognised as current in 0.1 s. The saving grows with the Extended and Thorough scan levels, whose routes are not replayed. The first batch after updating to 1.2.8 still converts each game once in full: older receipts do not record the game part. An upgrade is not a fidelity or latency measurement. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• Capcom CPS-1, experimental. MAME or FBNeo ZIP romsets of the standard CPS-1 boards (no QSound, CPS-1.5 or CPS-2) are recognised by their ROM CRCs and converted to native 68000 and Z80 code. A split clone needs its parent ZIP beside it; no BIOS is needed. Each conversion compares the native code with an interpreted reference in the same build, frame by frame, and checks F8/F9 in a fresh process. Games use the shared 16-bit menus, two players with up to six buttons, and vertical games are shown rotated. Final Fight and 1941 converted without interpreter fallback on the tested routes. Known limits: sprite/tile priority can be wrong in places (in Final Fight the player sometimes appears behind objects), players 3-4 and DIP switches are not available, and conversion on Linux has not been checked yet. See the CPS-1 guide.
• Discoveries, counted. Exporting first counts your discoveries and shows them on a small "achievement unlocked" card before asking where to save; with nothing new, no file is offered. Importing first checks the file and shows how many of its hints you do not know yet; with none, nothing is imported.
• Hints from every converter version. Imported hints are kept and used whatever compiler revision found them. Since they may be wrong for another revision, a conversion that fails with imported hints is run once more without them; if that succeeds, those hints are set aside and logged in datas/knowledge/imported-rejected.json.
• Old exports reconvert. Games exported by 0.2x versions, which carry neither an export receipt nor an embedded marker, can be converted again from the collection's right-click menu, as the conversion queue already allowed. Their old quick states may not carry over.
• Game Gear pause. Enter is the default Pause/Menu key and P is free, as on the Master System. Existing Game Gear games keep P until regenerated.
• A smaller header. Logo, wordmark and console artwork take less room.
• Fix. The Options window no longer fails on its new Capcom CPS-1 page.

Because conversion inputs changed, a conversion batch rebuilds games it previously considered current, once. The converter was checked with 765 automated tests and an interface test in eight languages; an old Master System export was reconverted on a copy and a Game Gear game converted with the new pause key. None of this measures physical input latency or certifies hardware fidelity. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• A switch that stays put. The Compiled Games button is now the first toolbar button and keeps its place and width. In the collection it reads Conversion queue and leads back. The buttons of the visible view follow it: Add ROMs, Add folder, Remove and Clear list in the queue; Play, Scan games, Add a games folder and Stop in the collection.
• More room for the collection. The title band and the second row of buttons are gone, and the game count moves to the filter row. While games are being reconverted, the converter's last two lines appear quietly under the progress bar.
• A lighter game card. Under the cover, the summary is small, light text without a frame or scrollbar. The mouse wheel scrolls it; left alone, it scrolls by itself and returns to the top.
• Shared discoveries. The Knowledge menu, beside Options in both views, exports one ROM-free .rrknowledge file for several games and consoles. It holds only the hints your qualified conversions added beyond the knowledge shipped with this version, with no ROM byte, path or artwork. Importing someone else's file adds to yours without touching the bundled snapshot or your library. Imported hints only guide discovery: every conversion still checks native code against the reference CPU and reports any interpreter fallback. Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy, NES, Mega Drive and Super Nintendo are covered; Neo Geo and Sharp X68000 keep their own knowledge. The export finds ROMs like Reconvert does, so setting each console's ROM folder in Options lets it include more games.
• A toolbar that fits every language. Toolbar buttons take their natural width, and updates and credits become icons with hover hints. All eight languages now fit at the default window size, and the version number shows again.

Generated games are unchanged and keep working as they are. Because the converter's knowledge code changed, a conversion batch rebuilds games it previously considered current, once. The window was checked with an automated interface test in eight languages and captured screens; the export was run read-only on a real 1,064-game collection. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• F2 gathers every setting. On all seven consoles, F2 opens pages turned with Left/Right (or Tab, LB/RB, the D-pad), with small squares at the top right showing how many pages there are and which one is open: each player's keyboard and gamepad controls, the gun page of recognised Light Phaser, Zapper, Menacer and Super Scope games, then Options. The options page lists the function-key settings with their current value (filter, display, sprite reduction, palette or enhanced Neo Geo, autofire, language, MVS/AES, fallback recording; Enter runs the same shortcut) and the audio filter. The quit and restart combinations close player 1's keyboard and gamepad pages.
• Freed keys. F10, G and the Mega Drive / SNES gun F5 no longer open anything; the controller Guide button opens F2 on its options page. The Master System pauses with Enter, its default Start/Menu key, and P is free. On Mega Drive, SNES, NES and Neo Geo, P no longer pauses: Enter, the cartridge Start, pauses the game itself, and P can be bound to a game action.
• Smaller menu text. Menus use 5 x 10 cells: help lists one function key per line, and every control of a page is shown at once, without scrolling.
• Computer function keys. On the Sharp X68000, an option on the last F2 page hands F1–F10 to the computer; Ctrl+F1 to Ctrl+F12 then reach Retro-Recomp (Ctrl+F2 opens F2, Ctrl+F8/F9 save and load). It is off by default.
• Sharp X68000 disk changes. Every set of two or more disks now changes disks automatically when a game ejects one and asks for another, instead of rules written for three titles.

Existing games keep their menus until they are regenerated; settings, quick states, libraries and cartridge saves are unaffected. Saved bindings and options are kept, including a Master System pause key explicitly saved as P; only the default changes. The menus were checked with synthetic SDL events, virtual controllers and captured screens; they do not measure physical input latency or certify hardware fidelity. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• Discovery scan levels. Every console tab in Options now sets how long discovery runs: Quick (one short pass to check a setting), Standard (the qualified default, unchanged from before), Extended and Thorough, which add one or two reproducible pseudo-random play routes of 18,000 frames seeded from the exact ROM and compared with the reference before any learning. Each tab also offers its own passes and frames (empty fields follow the shared values) and a short note on what is recommended and why. On Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, Extended runs a 12,000-frame attract test with one route and Thorough the former advanced scan; on NES, Extended is the former advanced scan and Thorough adds the routes; Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy and Neo Geo gain the routes for the first time. On the command line, --scan-level applies to a whole run; the former switches keep their meaning.
• Sharp X68000. The default scan is now Standard: main route plus mouse and keyboard exploration. Thorough keeps the three 36,000-frame routes that qualified the library, and the exploration routes now replay side by side within the game's share of the processor: two games converted together in 6 minutes instead of 21 on the test machine.
• Options in the main window. The Options button no longer opens a second window: the tabs take the place of the queue, like the compiled-games view, and close with "Save and close the options".
• Finished means finished. When a batch ends, the log shows a framed "RECOMPILATION FINISHED" line with the totals and the elapsed time, the window rings and changes its title for twenty seconds, the status line starts with "Finished", and the command line prints the same summary.

The generated games do not change: regenerating is not needed, and quick states, settings, libraries and cartridge saves are unaffected. Because the converter code changed for every console, it may report existing games as made by an earlier converter; regenerating them produces the same executables. The pseudo-random routes broaden the tested paths of the first level; they do not explore whole games, and none of the levels certifies hardware fidelity. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• Advanced 16-bit scan. The *Advanced Mega Drive scan* option becomes the Advanced 16-bit scan and now applies to Super Nintendo cartridges too. On both consoles it runs the attract sequence for 24,000 frames and adds two reproducible pseudo-random play routes of 18,000 frames each: long movement phases that often hold a button, short taps, paired Start presses that pause and resume, occasional Select and player-two input, and neutral pauses between phases. The routes are ordinary controller input seeded from the exact ROM, so every conversion of the same cartridge replays the same routes and the reference run receives the same script; the report records each route's seed and index. Mega Drive keeps its authored varied-input, early-start and menu replays. Measured with an empty library on Donkey Kong Country, the routes exercised 59 SPC700 opcode variants that the existing scenarios did not reach; on Sonic the Hedgehog they added one Z80 driver image. Neither game reached a later level this way, so the option broadens the tested first-level paths rather than exploring whole games.
• Documentation index and link check. docs/INDEX.md lists every public document by theme, and tools/check_doc_links.py verifies the relative links of the documentation; it runs in the test suite.

The generated games do not change: regenerating is not needed, and quick states, settings, libraries and cartridge saves are unaffected. Because the 16-bit compiler code changed, the converter may report Mega Drive and Super Nintendo games as made by an earlier converter; regenerating them produces the same executables. With the option enabled, a conversion takes about eight times longer than the standard scan (16 minutes for Sonic the Hedgehog on the test machine). The option stays off by default. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• F1 for help, Shift+F1 to restart, on every console. The H key is gone: F1 opens help and Shift+F1 restarts the game at once, without a confirmation screen (the Sharp X68000 used to ask). The Master System and the Sharp X68000 no longer have their own restart row in F2; they restart like every other console. Earlier restart entries in the INI are simply ignored.
• Restart and quit from the controller. By default, holding Start+Select for one second restarts the game and holding L3+R3 for one second quits it. The game options (F10, or O / Y from a menu) gain keyboard and gamepad rows for the restart combination; both can be changed or cleared, like the quit rows. A held restart fires once, then waits for the buttons to be released.
• Help in order. Every help screen lists the function keys from F1 to F12, then the console's own controls. The Master System, Game Gear and Game Boy help now mention F10.
• Finer menu text. Menus use the public-domain X.Org Misc Fixed 10x20 bitmap, drawn for the window's size: strokes are half as thick as before, solid pixels stay solid and only the edges are smoothed. Windows and Linux now draw the same letters (Windows used Consolas). The font adds 3.8 KB to a game; a 256x192 window keeps the previous 6x10 font.
• Plain letters only. In-game menus no longer draw accented characters: ñ becomes n, ó becomes o and German umlauts become ae/oe/ue. Games no longer carry a glyph table.

Regenerate games to receive these changes. Your compilation library, fallback hints, settings and cartridge saves are kept. F8/F9 quick states made with 1.2.1 Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Neo Geo executables are not loaded by regenerated games, because their state identity covers the runtime sources; make a new one after regenerating. NES, Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy and Sharp X68000 quick states are unaffected. The converter's own interface keeps its accents and its eight languages. Text rendering was checked on generated screenshots, not on every display. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.

• Adaptive sound reserve on every console. Games now watch their own sound output. When the sound device runs dry while the game is still producing audio, or stalls and forces old audio to be dropped, the output reserve grows by 5 ms (up to +60 ms). It shrinks again after a clean period of twice the interval between the last two gaps, four seconds at least. A machine with headroom stays at +0 ms, so its latency is unchanged; a small machine keeps the reserve it needs instead of crackling. Pauses and menus never count. The cost is a few integer operations per audio callback.
• Sharp X68000 music. The X68000 player started its sound with a single frame queued and no margin, so continuous music could break up on a small machine while short sound effects survived. Playback now starts with about 40 ms queued, plus the adaptive reserve. On the Debian test machine (AMD A4-5000), two minutes of R-Type played without a gap.
• Super Nintendo: Donkey Kong Country background colours. Light, brick-like tiles could appear in the jungle backgrounds and spread as you walked back and forth. When the CPU stopped on its wait instruction exactly as a raster palette transfer was due, the transfer was performed a line late, mid-picture, and landed in the background palettes. A waiting CPU now gives the bus to the transfer at once. The issue dated back to 1.0.0; quick states saved before this release keep the damaged colours until the game reloads its palettes.
• More sprites on screen: NES and Game Gear (F5). On every NES game, F5 now draws the objects the console drops beyond eight per line, behind the original ones and without changing what the game sees (overflow flag, sprite-zero hit and cartridge counters are untouched; MMC5 keeps the original limit). Zapper options are now a page of F2 (press Tab). Game Gear gets the Master System's existing F5 sprite option.
• One look for every in-game menu. All consoles now use the converter's identity: near-black panels and gold lettering. Only colours changed; games carry no new image or font.
• Quit with a single key or button. In the in-game options (F10, or O / Y from a menu), the quit binding now accepts one key or one controller button as well as a combination. Holding it for one second quits, as before.
• Lighter games: five in-game languages. Generated games now include English, French, Italian, Spanish and German. The converter keeps Chinese, Japanese and Russian for its own interface; games made from it in those languages start in English. Each game drops about 38 KB of glyph tables.

Regenerate games to receive these changes. Your compilation library, fallback hints, settings and cartridge saves are kept. F8/F9 quick states made with earlier NES, Mega Drive, Super Nintendo and Neo Geo executables are not loaded by regenerated games; make a new one after regenerating. Master System, Game Gear, Game Boy and Sharp X68000 quick states are unaffected. Sound figures come from host-side counters on the test machines; they are not physical latency or listening qualification. Linux remains qualified on Debian 13 / glibc 2.41; other baselines need testing.