Final Burn Neo (FBN/FBNeo) is the follow-up of Final Burn Alpha (FBA/FBAlpha), an alternative to MAME for arcade emulation. It’s more focused on playability than on accuracy/preservation. The team is composed of dink, iq_132, JacKc, kev and me. It supports most libretro features (netplay, runahead, retroachievements, …).
Regularly, I see misunderstandings about our playability focus. It doesn’t actually mean we don’t care about accuracy, when we add a new system we usually make it as accurate as possible, and we also revisit old systems for accuracy improvement purpose. In some edge cases we even end up being more accurate than MAME, it’s always a bit funny when someone comes reporting that “something is different from MAME, so that must be a bug”, and after investigating about the actual cabinet, we learn that FBNeo is actually the one emulating the game properly (in those cases, we let the MAMEdevs know, so I believe the inaccuracies are fixed shortly after on their side).
I can only remember of a few occurrences where we are intentionally inaccurate:
Our tms340x0 cpu core got rewritten, which allowed to add support for pretty much any midway game that was missing and not running on 3D hardware, the more recent additions include “2 on 2 Open Ice Challenge”, “Judge Dredd”, “NBA Hangtime”, “NBA Jam”, “NBA Jam TE”, “NBA Maximum HT”, “WWF: Wrestlemania”, “High Impact Football”, “Super High Impact”, “Narc”, “Smash TV”, “Strike Force”, “Terminator 2 – Judgment Day”, “Total Carnage”, “Trog”, “Revolution X”, and the recently dumped “Power-up baseball”.
Support for Sega System 32 was added : “Air Rescue”, “Arabian Fight”, “Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder”, “Dark Edge”, “Spider-Man: The Videogame”, “Dragon Ball Z V.R.V.S.”, “Holosseum”, “SegaSonic The Hedgehog”, “Alien3: The Gun”, “Burning Rival”, “F1 Super Lap”, “F1 Exhaust Note”, “Jurassic Park”, “Rad Mobile”, “Rad Rally”, “Slip Stream”, “Super Visual Football: European Sega Cup”, “Soreike Kokology”, “Soreike Kokology Vol. 2 – Kokoro no Tanteikyoku”, “Hard Dunk”, “OutRunners”, “Stadium Cross” and “Title Fight”. One of the hightlights of our emulation is the controls on racing games like “Rad Mobile”, they are very playable (apparently, the controls are a bit tricky on MAME).
Support for Jaleco Mega System 32 was added : “Tetris Plus”, “Tetris Plus 2”, “P-47 Aces”, “Best Bout Boxing”, “Desert War”, “The Game Paradise – Master of Shooting!”, “Gratia – Second Earth”, “World PK Soccer V2”, “Hayaoshi Quiz Grand Champion Taikai”, “Hayaoshi Quiz Nettou Namahousou”, “Idol Janshi Suchie-Pai II”, “Ryuusei Janshi Kirara Star”, “Mahjong Angel Kiss”, “Vs. Janshi Brandnew Stars”.
Support for Namco NA-1/NA-2/NB-1/NB-2 systems was added : “Bakuretsu Quiz Ma-Q Dai Bouken”, “Cosmo Gang the Puzzle”, “Emeraldia”, “Exvania”, “Fighter & Attacker”, “Super World Court”, “Tinkle Pit”, “Knuckle Heads”, “Numan Athletics”, “Nettou! Gekitou! Quiztou!!”, “X-Day 2”, “Nebulas Ray”, “Point Blank / Gun Bullet”, “Great Sluggers”, “Great Sluggers 94”, “Super World Stadium”, “Super World Stadium ’96”, “Super World Stadium ’97”, “J-League Soccer V-Shoot”, “The Outfoxies” and “Mach Breakers”
Support for Seibu SPI system was added : “Senkyu / Battle Balls”, “E Jong High School”, “Viper Phase 1”, “Raiden Fighters”, “Raiden Fighters 2 – Operation Hell Dive”, “Raiden Fighters Jet” and “E-Jan Sakurasou”
While the driver had been there since 2018, because of how bad it was (a parting gift from a certain person…) it was basically rewritten from scratch, nowadays I believe it’s a very nice alternative to FUSE. Also, I mentioned it above, we intentionally decided to be inaccurate on buzzer emulation.
Another home console gets emulated.
Thanks to the efforts of an external contributor (eziochiu), the last 2 unplayable pgm games (and their clones) finally became playable : “Dragon World 3” and “Photo Y2K 2 (3-in-1)”.
We now support “Gladiator”, “LSA Squad” and “Daikaiju no Gyakushu”
“Battletoads” is now supported, this game is actually the main reason our tms340x0 cpu core was rewritten.
“Exterminator” is now supported, that’s yet another game using tms340x0 (actually, 2 of them !), this is an odd game to say the least.
Yet another system using tms340x0, their games – “Cheese Chase”, “Stone Ball” and “Ultimate Tennis” – are actually pretty cool.
Some features that were left over from standalone until now got implemented in the Libretro port :
And much more! This article is far from being exhaustive.
If you want to help FBNeo, keep sending us bug reports when you see something wrong.
Our forum : https://neo-source.com/
Our github : https://github.com/finalburnneo/FBNeo
Our discord : https://discord.gg/8EGVd9v
RetroArch 1.9.2 has just been released.
Grab it here.
Remember that this project exists for the benefit of our users, and that we wouldn’t keep doing this were it not for spreading the love with our users. This project exists because of your support and belief in us to keep going doing great things. If you’d like to show your support, consider donating to us. Check here in order to learn more. In addition to being able to support us on Patreon, there is now also the option to sponsor us on Github Sponsors! You can also help us out by buying some of our merch on our Teespring store!
PlayStation Vita users will be happy to learn that the issues with gpSP (Game Boy Advance emulator) are now resolved, and it should work as reliably as it did before 1.9.1 (and perhaps even better now thanks to increased performance). We hope you get a lot of mileage out of this core as a lot of work and effort went into it to really optimize the performance of this core over the past few months!
Text To Speech support is now enabled for the macOS Universal build. You can access this by going to Settings -> Accessibility and enabling ‘Accessibility Enable’.
Some nice changes under the hood that are more technical in nature: config file loading performance has been improved immeasurably which should help out with initial startup times of RetroArch, loading config files as well as loading shader presets. Core info file loading itself has also seen many performance improvements. We are aware that despite all this, loading all the assets in the more feature-rich menus like MaterialUI/XMB/Ozone can still take a long time on systems encumbered by slow disk I/O, but we have some special things in store for future versions that should increase asset loading performance significantly.
There is now multi soft-patching file support. We will explain this in more detail below.
If an IPS/BPS/UPS patch is found, will replace the last character in the filename with a counter and loop until another patch is found (in any format).
Example matching filenames:
Contra (Japan).nes
Contra (Japan).ips # Applied first
Contra (Japan).ips1 # Applied second
Contra (Japan).ups2 # Applied third
…
Notice that if one filename breaks the loop, the following patches won’t be applied too. e.g.:
Contra (Japan).nes
Contra (Japan).ips # applied
Contra (Japan) (Translation).ips1 # Partial name match, not applied
Contra (Japan).ups3 # Not applied either
…
1.9.2 adds the same search filter functionality that currently exists for playlists to the file browser when selecting Load Content. This means:
For example:
In order to support file browser navigation, the search filter implementation had to be rewritten. Instead of having a single menu-driver-level search filter, independent search terms are now stored for each menu list. This is a far more robust solution, and means that filters can be enabled for other menus far more easily (and without any hacks). To demonstrate this, 1.9.2 also enables search filters when selecting shader presets/passes via the file browser (I will try to add this in more places as time permits):
Finally, 1.9.2 makes the following changes to existing search functionality:
In addition to all this, 1.9.2 also enables search filter support when using the file browser to select cheats and overlays.
At present, when using XMB/GLUI/Ozone, enabling the menu screensaver will cause the screen to be blanked when the screensaver timeout has elapsed. 1.9.2 adds three optional animations that may be displayed instead – these can be selected via the new Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation entry; animation speed may be adjusted via Settings > User Interface > Menu Screensaver Animation Speed. The options are as follows:
OFF: Screen will be blanked
Snow:
Starfield:
Vortex:
These effects are rendered using font glyphs; the performance overheads of all the animations are therefore low. This should also give you some indication as to how we are planning to reduce file I/O overhead across the board when it comes to asset loading, but that is something that we will be unveiling for a future release!
When using GLUI/Ozone, the screensaver will be tinted (somewhat) according to the current menu colour theme (XMB uses a fixed screensaver colour, since it does not have a ‘proper’ colour theme implementation).
All devices running OpenDingux Beta have native support for both 60 Hz and 50 Hz display modes. 1.9.2 enables 50 Hz functionality in RetroArch. The refresh rate can be toggled between 60 Hz and 50 Hz via the Settings > Video > Output > Vertical Refresh Rate menu entry; the value can be saved on a per-core/content directory/game basis via regular config overrides.
This makes OpenDingux devices (running the Beta OS) pretty much the only affordable/easily available handhelds that can run both NTSC and PAL content smoothly. The VICE core in particular benefits enormously from this addition.
Further testing of the OpenDingux Beta port has revealed several more resolutions which are mishandled by the IPU hardware scaler. 1.9.2 updates the resolution blacklists accordingly, fixing scaling for the following content:
1.9.2
Today we’re releasing an alpha version of the PCSX2 libretro core on the buildbot. It’s available for Windows only right now, but the same core has been tested to work on Xbox One/Series systems as well.
You need a working BIOS inside
Update policy for this core
Hard-forked core for now. Govanify is going through many (necessary) refactors in PCSX2 upstream to make the code more portable, and he has also expressed his interest in an upstreamable libretro core somewhere down the line when the final refactoring of the GUI is complete. So either of two things can happen when that happens, if this is more closely aligned to upstream core is better in every way including performance, this will be replaced. If not, we will likely have two cores, one being the upstream-friendly core and this being the hard-forked one. As of this moment a lot of work remains to be done on PCSX2 to sort out all the internals that are chockful of nonportable code. Therefore, for now, the experimental PCSX2 core kinda is doing its own thing. PCSX2 still has a lot of inherently nonportable code in it, from WxWidgets to libglib. It’s for that reason that we don’t have a Linux core yet on our buildbot. We hope that we will be able to figure out a proper portable core for Linux users soon.
Expect a lot of Quality of Life enhancements to this core soon. We wanted to share this with you now rather than sit on it for even longer, now that it’s on the buildbot we can at least push regular updates to it, people can report issues and developers can contribute. Everyone wins.
The Play! libretro core is back on our buildbot! It took some time for this to be readded to our modern new buildbot but here it is!
Available right now for: Android (AArch64/ARMv7/x86), macOS (Intel), Linux (32bit/64bit), and Windows (32bit/64bit).
Update policy for this core
Upstream. Updates are pulled straight from the upstream repository.
The DuckStation/SwanStation core has been updated to a build from a week ago.
Update policy for this core
This will remain a shallow fork and attempts are being made to make the surface area for patches small so that we can easily pull in updates. Some new contributors have jumped onboard and they want to ensure this core remains updated.
The mainline MAME core is now available for iOS and tvOS users! It is also available for Mac Intel x64 users, and we hope that we can make it available for ARM Mac users soon as well.
Also important to note we will be updating to version 0.330 soon.
Update policy for this core
This is pretty much a shallow fork. It just attempts to pull in the latest changes from upstream without making many changes.
Many changes have been made under the hood to significantly increase performance of gpSP. One of the big changes that led to at least a 5-6% performance improvement was the removal of libco (a library used for cooperative threading). 3DS users especially should be in for a treat with gpSP, but realistically everyone benefits across the board, whether you’re on an ARM or x86 system. We can quite comfortably state you will be hard pressed to find a better and more well performing version of this emulator anywhere else right now.
* Support for generic MIPS (including Dingux)
* Built-in BIOS that ships internally and requires no external files/dependencies
* Removal of libco (5-6% perf or so) and some performance fixes for x86/arm/mips (for perf)
* Fixed the x86 dynarec and the ARM dynarec, that were pretty much broken. Good speedups (or power savings on portable devices)
Immediate roadmap for gpSP: PS2 support (coming soon (TM)), rumble and tilt sensor support, AARch64 dynarec (mid-term goal)
One caveat right now is that these changes have unfortunately caused it to no longer work on PS Vita. However, the plan is to fix this soon, and for this to be only a temporary thing.
Update policy for this core
Hard fork, self-maintained.
This has received many speed improvements and enhancements courtesy of irixx, 32X support has seen plenty of improvements, and the results speak for themselves. Works wonderfully on OpenDingux-based devices and PS Vita, some of the lower end systems out there.
A separate blog article might be written about all the changes soon.
Hard fork, self-maintained
Some important new updates from New Rising Sun that adds more mapper support (PR notes are his):
Add features to mapper 332/BMC-WS:
I wanted to add a couple of multicart mappers that use the J.Y. Company ASIC and fix a few bugs while doing so. I ended up rewriting the whole thing by porting the code from NintendulatorNRS. This improves the modularity of the code by wrapping the PRG and CHR sync functions with mapper-specific ANDs and ORs, which is necessary for multicart use, and hopefully improves the readability (though I understand that’s a matter of taste). Previous save states had to be invalidated in any case since the previous code only saved four of the eight CHR LSB registers.
Source organization changes:
Combine duplicate code from 90.c, bmc13in1jy110.c and sc-127.c into one new file jyasic.c.
Features/corrections:
Window text not shown at the beginning of Tiny Toon Adventures 6 (“Baabs is dreaming about becoming an actress”).
Bad cursor sprite on “Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers III”‘s title screen.
Some mapper 295 multicarts not working, such as SC-126.
Added Adder to ALU (not used by any game).
Add IRQ mode 3 (writes to CPU address space).
Save all eight CHR LSB registers (previous code only saved the first four).
Ignore writes to x800-xFFF except 5800 and C800, needed for Final Fight 3 on SC-128.
Allow DIP setting to be read from all possible locations: 5000, 5400, 5C00, necessary for a few multicarts.
Adds the following mappers: 282, 358, 386, 387, 388, 397, 421.
Remaining issues:
IRQ timing is not as perfect as the NintendulatorNRS code from which it was taken, which had been verified against real hardware. This is due to there not being a true “PPU Read Handler” in the mapper interface (as far as I can see), and PA12 timing in the core PPU emulation being not accurate enough to replace the “clock IRQ eight times per horizontal blanking” solution that I kept from the previous code.
There remains one J.Y. ASIC-using mapper: 394, which mounts both the J.Y. ASIC and an MMC3 clone and uses extra register bits to switch between the two. That is a bit difficult to code and will be for another day.
Successfully tested with:
Mapper 35:
Warioland II (JY039)
Mapper 281:
(晶太 JY-052) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列阿拉丁雙Ⅲ组合卡
(晶太 JY-052) 1997 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列叢林泰山組合卡
(晶太 JY-053) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列獅子王超强组合卡
(晶太 JY-054) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列快打旋風Ⅱ组合卡
(晶太 JY-054) 1997 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 超級新系列大金鋼4代組合卡
(晶太 JY-055) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列阿拉丁Ⅲ.致命武器組合卡
(晶太 JY-066) 1996 Power Rangers HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列金鋼戰士專輯組合卡
(晶太 JY-066) 1997 Power Rangers HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列金鋼戰士專輯組合卡
(晶太 JY-068) 1996 Super HiK 3-in-1 – 新系列阿拉丁Ⅲ.激龜Ⅲ組合強卡
(晶太 JY-080) 1996 Super HiK 3-in-1 – 新系列中國兔寶寶全輯組合卡
(晶太 JY-088) 1996 Super HiK 5-in-1
Mapper 282:
(晶太 JY-062) 1996 Super Mortal Kombat Ⅲ Series – 新系列真人快打三代組合卡 18-in-1
(晶太 JY-064) 1996 新超強 18-in-1 阿拉丁組合系列卡 – Super Aladdin Ⅲ Series Card
(晶太 JY-069) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列忍Ⅲ.沼澤怪獸組合卡
(晶太 JY-070) 1996 Super HiK 3-in-1 – 新系列眞人Ⅲ.兔寶寶組合強卡
(晶太 JY-071) 1996 Super HiK 3-in-1 – 新系列眞人Ⅲ.小新2.明王組合卡
(晶太 JY-079) 1996 Super HiK 3-in-1 – 新系列眞人Ⅲ.金鋼4.蜜蜂組合卡
(晶太 JY-084) 1996 Photo Gun 9-in-1
(晶太 JY-098) 1997 Super HiK 6-in-1
(晶太 JY-101) 1997 Super HiK 18-in-1
(晶太 JY-105) 1997 Super HiK 21-in-1
(晶太 JY-114) 1998 Super HiK 5-in-1
(晶太 SC-128) Super 25-in-1 Final Fight
(晶太 SC-130) Super Photo-Gun 13-in-1
Mapper 295:
(晶太 JY-010) Super Ball Series 18-in-1
(晶太 JY-014B) 1996 Soccer 7-in-1 – 足球專輯 (rev0)
(晶太 JY-014B) 1996 Soccer 7-in-1 – 足球專輯 (rev1)
(晶太 JY-050) 1997 Super HiK 8-in-1 (rev1)
(晶太 JY-095) 1997 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-096) 1997 Super HiK 7-in-1
(晶太 JY-097) 1997 Super HiK 8-in-1
(晶太 JY-099) 1997 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-100) 1997 Super HiK 5-in-1
(晶太 JY-109) 1997 Super 9-in-1
(晶太 JY-110) 1997 Super 13-in-1
(晶太 SC-126) 方塊專集 HiK Block 14-in-1
Mappers 90/209/211:
(晶太 CK-124) Super HiK 8-in-1
(晶太 JY-118) 1998 Super 3-in-1
(晶太 JY-120A) 1998 Super 45-in-1
(晶太 JY-122) 115 超強合卡
Aladdin – 阿拉丁
Aladdin III, Popeye II꞉ Travels in Persia
Contra Spirits (1995)
Donkey Kong Country 4
Final Fight 3
Mickey Mania 7
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers III
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers IV꞉ The Movie
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! (JY021)
MK3 – Special 56 Peoples
Mortal Kombat 2-in-1
Mortal Kombat II Special
Super Aladdin꞉ The Return of Jafar
Super Mario & Sonik 2 (rev1)
Super Mario World
Super Mortal Kombat 2-in-1
Tiny Toon Adventures 6
中國兔寶寶 Rabbit
真 Samurai Spirits 2꞉ 覇王丸地獄変
鉄拳 – Tekken 2
mappers 358/386/387/388/397/421:
(晶太 JY-016) 1997 Super Game 7-in-1
(晶太 JY-056) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1 – 新系列真人快打Ⅱ特別版 (rev0)
(晶太 JY-056) 1996 Super HiK 5-in-1 – 新系列眞人快打Ⅲ56人特別版 (rev1)
(晶太 JY-082) 1996 Soccer 6-in-1
(晶太 JY-087) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-089) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-090) 1996 Super HiK 5-in-1
(晶太 JY-093) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-094) 1996 Super HiK 4-in-1
(晶太 JY-113) 1998 Super HiK 5-in-1
(晶太 JY-117) 1998 Super HiK 6-in-1
(晶太 SC-129) 98 街頭快打格鬥 15-in-1
Widescreen SNES emulation on your iDevice and ARM Mac is now available!
Update policy for this core
Upstream, gets built straight from DerKoun’s upstream repository.
Another welcome addition to the Apple fold – the widescreen-enhanced version of Genesis Plus GX! For more on that, read this article here.
Update policy for this core
Hard fork, as it makes many sweeping changes to Genesis Plus GX to achieve widescreen support, which would make resyncing with upstream very hard to do.
Here is a list of other cores that have received updates, but for which we cannot post any changelogs due to lack of time. We might go into some more of the changes here later on.
Beetle PSX
FB Neo
MAME 2003 Plus
VICE
P-UAE (Amiga emulator)
Written by jdgleaver
This is a followup article to our main release blog post, which can be read here.
Official support for OpenDingux devices such as the RG350M, RG280V and GCW-Zero was added last December; a full round-up of features and highlights can be found in the original announcement here. Version 1.9.1 represents the first stable release for this platform.
As an integrated member of the RetroArch family, the OpenDingux port benefits from all frontend development work – but a major addition for this release is a separate, optimised build for OpenDingux Beta (link here). This is an updated, modern firmware (compatible with many devices) which offers significantly improved performance. RetroArch is one of the first applications on OpenDingux Beta to enable configuration of the hardware IPU (Image Processing Unit), with menu-based control of aspect ratio/integer scaling and image filtering method (available on Beta releases after 16/03/2021). Users who prefer to remain on stable operating systems need not fear, however: RetroArch will always be optimised for both beta and stock firmwares.
Aside from RetroArch itself, expanding the library of available cores has been a major focus of this release. Launching initially with 20 hand-picked cores, a further seven have been added to the list:
All of these cores have excellent performance on OpenDingux devices (with the mild exception of TIC-80, which can be a demanding system on many platforms – yet a number of popular carts run full speed). It should also be noted that when building cores for OpenDingux, we don’t just hit compile and call it a day. This is a curated port, and care is taken to clean up code and add features wherever possible – and these additions improve the user experience on *all* platforms. For example:
And one more gift for OpenDingux users: the gpSP core now has a fully functional dynarec, courtesy of davidgf. This means full speed GBA emulation, with plenty of headroom for video filters, colour correction and inter-frame blending!
(gpSP has also seen many other fundamental improvements, too many to list here – further updates will be covered in a separate post)
