RetroArch plays Sega Saturn games through several cores: Beetle Saturn, a fork of Mednafen Saturn; Kronos, a fork of Yabause that also plays the Saturn's arcade cousin, the ST-V; Emir, a port of the accuracy-focused Ymir emulator; and the older Yabause.
This page covers what you need, which core to pick and how to get your first game running.
.cue, .chd and .ccd work with every core on this page. If you only have a .bin file, Beetle Saturn needs a .cue sheet next to it that points to the image. For a single-track game, a text file named foo.cue next to foo.bin containing this is enough:
FILE "foo.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
Some Saturn games are multi-track, so their .cue files are more complicated.system folder:
sega_101.bin for Japanese games and mpr-17933.bin for American and European games, directly in the system folder.kronos inside system and put your Saturn BIOS there as saturn_bios.bin. Any valid Saturn BIOS works. For ST-V arcade games, add stvbios.zip to the same folder:
system/kronos/saturn_bios.bin system/kronos/stvbios.zipIf Kronos cannot find its BIOS there, it also looks in the places other Saturn cores use.
saturn_bios.bin in the system folder. Any valid Saturn BIOS works. Without it, Yabause falls back to an emulated BIOS that has lower compatibility, and multi-disc .m3u playlists need the real BIOS.system folder for Beetle Saturn and Kronos: mpr-18811-mx.ic1 and mpr-19367-mx.ic1 respectively.
.cue or .chd file in RetroArch and select the core you installed.Beetle Saturn is a fork of Mednafen Saturn and runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It supports rewind and netplay, and the widest range of Saturn controllers: besides the standard pad, it handles the 3D Control Pad, Arcade Racer wheel, Mission Stick, Twin-Stick, mouse and the Stunner and Virtua Gun light guns.
Kronos uses compute shaders on your graphics card, so it requires OpenGL 4.3. It plays both Saturn and ST-V arcade games, can render at higher resolutions than the original console, and is the only Saturn core officially supported by its upstream developers. On lower-end devices, its Frameskip core option can improve playability dramatically. Its saves can also be shared with Beetle Saturn through the Share saves with beetle core option.
Emir is a port of Ymir, a work-in-progress emulator focused on accuracy and compatibility, with software rendering. It is young but rapidly maturing, and supports rewind and netplay.
Yabause is software rendered, and its upstream has had no updates for years. YabaSanshiro is outdated, known for having many issues and unmaintained; use one of the other cores if you can.
| Feature | Beetle Saturn | Kronos | Emir | Yabause |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In-game saves | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Save states | Yes | Yes, can be unstable | Yes | Yes, can freeze a game |
| Rewind | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Netplay | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| RetroAchievements | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 6Player Adaptor (multitap) | Yes | Yes | — | Yes |
— means the feature is not listed in that core's documentation.
On Kronos and Yabause, enabling the 6Player Adaptor on both ports at once causes an "autofire" bug. On Kronos, start the core in the windowed or fullscreen mode you want and stay in it, as switching causes issues; RetroArch's "threaded video" setting may also cause problems with it.
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