SMS_SDL(6)

NAME
sms_sdl - Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator.

SYNOPSIS
sms_sdl [--options] <filename.<SMS|GG>>

DESCRIPTION
SMS Plus/SDL is an emulator for the Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear video game consoles.

OPTIONS
Note: The filename may appear anywhere on the command line.

--fm
    Enable YM2413 sound.

--japan
    Set the machine type as DOMESTIC instead of OVERSEAS.

--usesram
    Load/save SRAM contents before starting/exiting.

--fskip <n>
    Specify the number of frames to skip.

--fullspeed
    Do not limit to 60 frames per second.

--fullscreen
    Start in fullscreen mode.

--joystick
    Use joystick.

--nosound
    Disable sound.

--filter <mode>
    Render using a filter. Available modes:

    2xsai
    super2xsai
    supereagle
    advmame2x
    tv2x
    2x
    bilinear
    dotmatrix

KEYBOARD

F1  Screenshot in BMP format

F2  Save state

F3  Load state

F4/F5
    Dec/inc frame skip value

F6/F7
    Dec/inc state slot

1..8
    Switch rendering filter

C   Button 1

V   Button 2

ENTER
    Start (GG) / pause (SMS)

ARROWS
    Directional pad

TAB Console hard reset

The key bindings may not be remapped.

FILES
ROM image files may be in raw dump format, or may have a header (details are system-specific). Also, ROM images may be zipped (not gzipped), in which case the first file in the zip file's directory must be the ROM image (any other files are ignored).

sms_sdl looks at the filename to determine the type of ROM image in use. Any file whose name ends in .gg (case-insensitive match) is considered to be a Game Gear ROM. Any other file is treated as a Sega Master System ROM. In the case of a zipped image, this refers to the file inside the zip file; the zip file itself doesn't have any special naming requirements.

Screenshot filenames (F1 key) are generated by replacing the filename extension with -NNN.bmp, where NNN is a 3-digit number (000 for the first screenshot, 001 for the second, etc). The numbering starts at 000 every time the emulator is started, and existing files will be overwritten without confirmation.

State save filenames (F2 key) are generated by replacing the filename extension with .stN, where N is the number of the save slot (one or more digits). Again, existing files are overwritten without confirmation.

Screenshots and savestates are stored in ~/.sms_sdl.

CONFIG FILE
sms_sdl is launched by a shell script wrapper which reads the file ~/.sms_sdl/config if it exists. Any of the options above may be placed in this file (one option per line, with or without the leading -- characters). These options will be passed as command-line arguments to the real sms_sdl binary every time it runs.

See /usr/doc/sms_sdl-VERSION/sample_config for further information.

PATCHES
This build of sms_sdl has been patched to add the following features and fixes:

-   The --fm and --japan options now work (patch by Ellington Santos).

-   sms_sdl can be built and will run on x86_64 systems (patch by B. Watson).

-   The emulator no longer segfaults when the ROM filename doesn't contain a dot (patch by B. Watson).

-   ROM filename can appear anywhere on the command line, before or after options (patch by B. Watson).

-   Wrapper script, supports config file and snapshots/savestates in ~/.sms_sdl (script by B. Watson).

AUTHORS
The original SMS is (C) Charles Mac Donald in 1998, 1999, 2000.

SDL Version by Gregory Montoir (cyx@frenchkiss.net).

This man page by B. Watson, for the SlackBuilds.org project.