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PC Engine SuperGrafx

Overview

The SuperGrafx application is an emulator for the PC Engine SuperGrafx game console.

SuperGrafx Demo by Chris Covell

Controls

The emulator supports up to four controllers. The keyboard and gamepad mappings are listed in the tables below.

Keyboard

Keyboard support is only available for controller one.

Name
Keys
 Comments
Move
I or A Key only available in 2-button mode.
II or S Key only available in 2-button mode.
III Only in 6-button mode.
IV Only in 6-button mode.
V Only in 6-button mode.
VI Only in 6-button mode.
Run
Select The Right Shift Key.
Show Pause Screen

Gamepad

Gamepad support is available for both controllers.

Name
Gamepad
 Comments
Move  or 
I or X Button only available in 2-button mode.
II or Y Button only available in 2-button mode.
III Only in 6-button mode.
IV Only in 6-button mode.
V Only in 6-button mode.
VI Only in 6-button mode.
Run Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the Menu (Start) Button.
Run
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.
Select Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate)

Press the View (Back) Button.
Select
(Alternate)		  and  Hold down the Right Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the Menu (Start) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the Left Trigger and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 2)		  and  Not available for Xbox and not recommended for iOS (see alternate 3 or 4)

Hold down the X Button and press the View (Back) Button.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 3)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Left Thumbstick.
Show Pause Screen
(Alternate 4)		  and  Hold down the Left Trigger and click (press down) on the Right Thumbstick.

Battery-backed SRAM

Some SuperGrafx cartridges may include battery-backed SRAM as a means of preserving state between sessions. The SuperGrafx application supports persisting this SRAM state into the browser's local storage or optionally to cloud-based storage. The SRAM contents will be persisted to storage whenever the pause screen is displayed (or the game is exited). Therefore, the menu should be displayed periodically for games that support battery-backed SRAM to ensure the state is properly persisted.

Feed

This section details how SuperGrafx application instances can be added to feeds.

Types

Two PC Engine SuperGrafx application types are available, each offering different trade-offs in compatibility, features, and system resource requirements. Libretro Mednafen SuperGrafx is the default (⭐) and is mapped to the sgx alias. The default can be overridden globally in Settings > Applications, or on a per-item basis in the Feed Editor.

Name Type Filters Cheats Low CPU
Libretro Mednafen SuperGrafx ⭐ retro-mednafen-sgx ✅ ✅
Mednafen mednafen-sgx ✅

Properties

The table below contains the properties that are specific to the SuperGrafx application. These properties are specified in the props object of a feed item.

Property Type Required Details
cheat URL No URL to a cheat file for the current ROM. See the Cheats Tab in the Item Editor for details on assigning cheat files.

(Libretro Mednafen SuperGrafx only)
mapRunSelect Boolean No Whether to map RUN and SELECT to standard buttons.
pad6button Boolean No Whether to use 6-button control pads (2 button is the default).
rom URL Yes URL to a SuperGrafx ROM file or a zip file containing a ROM file.
zoomLevel Numeric No A numeric value indicating how much the display image should be zoomed in (0-40).

This property is typically used to hide the black borders that are present on some games.

Example

The following is an example of a complete feed that consists of a single SuperGrafx application instance (type value of sgx). The rom property value is a URL that points to a Dropbox location that contains the excellent SuperGrafx Demo by Chris Covell.

{
  "title": "SuperGrafx Feed",
  "longTitle": "SuperGrafx Example Feed",
  "categories": [
    {
      "title": "SuperGrafx Games",
      "items": [
        {
          "title": "SuperGrafx Demo",
          "type": "sgx",
          "props": {
            "rom": "https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/mu78bstb7teulyn/Axelay_Demo%20%281%29.zip"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

This example can be tested by adding a feed with the following URL within the webЯcade player:

https://tinyurl.com/sample-sgx-feed

References

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