SSF

From Sega Retro

This article is about the emulator. For the audio format, see Saturn Sound Format.
SSF 0.10 showing the PAL Saturn BIOS.

SSF is a Windows-based emulator of the Sega Saturn and Sega Titan Video (ST-V, an arcade board very similar to the Saturn). Despite the historical difficulty of emulating the Saturn's rather idiosyncratic and complex architecture, and the fact that SSF is developed by a sole developer (Shima), it has overtaken other Saturn emulators to the point of being able to run the majority of games with few to no issues. It is designed to run game CDs directly, so images must be mounted with a virtual drive program (e.g. Daemon Tools) in order to be played.

Features

  • BIOS file not required, but may improve compatibility in certain cases
  • All regions (PAL & NTSC) emulated
  • Backup memory emulated
  • Savestates supported
  • Joystick support
  • Can dump screenshots in BMP format, and audio in WAV format
  • Unoptimized PAL games can be made run at the speed of their NTSC counterpart by setting the "Emulation Speed" lever to 1.20, often without unwanted acceleration of music and sound playback.

Compatibility

SSF currently has a very high level of compatibility, running more than 80% of known Sega Saturn games. A frequently updated compatibility list is available at segasaturn.org, and the SSF Tribute sites (see below) also offer lists.

Component %
SH2 emulator 100%
68000 emulator 100%
VDP1 block 95%
VDP2 block 95%
SCU block 100%
SMPC block 100%
SCSP block 95%
CD block 85%

Minimum system requirements

Operating system Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP 64-bit Edition
CPU Any CPU supporting: FPU, MMX, SSE, SSE2, TSC (P4-class or higher)
RAM 256 MB or more
Graphics card DirectX 9.0c capable, graphics card supporting Vertex Shader 3.0 and Pixel Shader 3.0
Sound DirectX 9.0c compatible, able to play 44100 Hz stereo PCM
CD drive Drive supporting MMC3 read command

Download

Download.svg Download SSF
File: SSF_012_beta_R4.zip ("SSF_012_beta_R4.zip" does not exist) (info)
Current version: 0.12 alpha, revision 4''

Prior versions

The most recent version is usually the best to use, though a few games may work better with previous ones (see compatibility lists). A repository of previous versions (starting from version 0.06 alpha 4) is maintained on the official site. For convenience, those available at the time of writing have been bundled below.

Known issues

The emulator has a certain amount of input lag, which can't be reduced to the levels of e.g. Yabause. This can be problematic for games that require fast reaction, such as shooting games. The author acknowledges these input lag issues but and gave reasons for these on the project homepage. He also offers some suggestions to reduce the problem, e.g. use a high spec PC, disable V-sync (emulator settings, causes tearing) and enable "VDP2 RAM write timing".

External links