fMSX

VGB

VGBA

iNES

MG

ColEm

Speccy

AlmostTI

Windows

Android

Symbian

How?

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The latest released version of iNES is 6.1
The latest iNES 6.1 for Windows and Linux, released on March 15 2021, adds optional frame rate display and should support most command line options on Windows. I have also improved sound reliability on Windows. The previous iNES release has added support for homebrewn UNROM-512 (mapper #30) and Cheapocabra (mapper #111) cartridges. This allows running recently written NES games. If you have an Android device, the iNES-Android has now become part of VGBAnext, my universal GBA, GBC, GB, and NES emulator, with the free APK available from this site. I had to do this because Google Play thugs have banned the original iNES app saying that its built-in NES cheats "violate Google Play policies" (really?). If you encounter any problems, report them via the discussion group. The complete list of features and the list of new features and fixes can be found in the documentation.

What is iNES?
iNES is a program that emulates Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Famicom videogame consoles on your computer. It plays NES games on PCs, PocketPCs, Macs, Unix boxes, etc. The idea to write a NES emulator originated from Alex Krasivsky who found some Famicom programming information on the Net and wrote the initial code. At some point, Alex lost interest in the project, while I eventually rewrote the code, made it closely mimic the quirks of the original hardware, and expanded it to support many different cartridge types and hardware add-ons. At the time of iNES release in 1996, there was only one other NES emulator, Pasofami, written by a Japanese author and really difficult to use. iNES became the first NES emulator usable by a non-expert, and also the first emulator to use the .NES cartridge file format.

Unfortunately, releasing a playable emulator for such a popular console as NES has started a wave of piracy. At the time, I received emails from a few people warning me of such an outcome, but discarded them as unrealistic: after all, the Virtual GameBoy emulator did not cause too much of a ruckus. But iNES somehow was different, probably because so many people had fond memories of their first videogames. Looking back, I think that the rise in console gaming piracy was inevitable as computers became fast enough to emulate popular consoles from the past.

Over the years, I and other people all over the Net have found more details on how NES hardware works, either by experimentation or by looking at the old programming documents. The current version of iNES supports seven dozen different cartridge types, loads software from Famicom Disk System disk images, and even runs VS System arcade games. You can also use GameGenie cheat codes and even program NES in BASIC with the FamilyBASIC keyboard emulation. For those who still develop their own software for the NES, there is a built-in debugger. If you just use iNES to play games, the game state saving feature lets you restart gameplay from any point in the game. Finally, if you like game tunes, save them to MIDI files with the soundtrack logging feature.

Licensing iNES
iNES is written in portable C language. It will run on any sufficiently fast computing device, be it a videogame console, a PDA, a cell phone, an MP3 or DVD player, or even a digital camera. If your company is considering the use of NES emulation in its products, you can license the iNES source code from me. I am also available for consulting work in the software emulation, embedded programming, and other fields. See my resume and contact me if interested.

Playing Your Games With iNES
None of the iNES versions contain any games, as the games are copyrighted by the companies which produced them. You will have to find the cartridge images yourself, using Google or other search engines. I do suggest you buy the original cartridge for every image you are using, or use a copier on the cartridges you own.

At This Site

iNES Windows now free for all Windows versions iNES Android is now part of VGBAnext (GBA, GBC, NES emulator) Free iNES Android APK for people unwilling to pay for VGBAnext iNES Linux for Ubuntu Linux iNES 3.6.5 Maemo for Nokia N800/N810 tablets (or install directly to device) iNES 3.0 FreeBSD (5.x-RELEASE) binaries for 80x86 iNES 3.0 Solaris binaries for SPARC iNES 3.0 Linux (RedHat) binaries for 80x86 iNES 0.7 SunOS binaries for SPARC iNES 0.7 AIX binaries for RS6000 iNES 1.0 OSF/1 binaries for DEC Alpha iNES MSDOS is no longer developed, as MSDOS is dead :( iNES Symbian for S60e3 and UIQ is dead too (but see the old site) NES/Famicom Hardware Information EMUTools, 6502 emulation core, etc. The Address Book (look up email addresses here)

Other Stuff
Cartridge copier for NES and other consoles by Pascal Felber Schematics of an old NES cartridge copier

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