snes9x VS higan

Compare snes9x vs higan and see what are their differences.

snes9x

Snes9x - Portable Super Nintendo Entertainment System (TM) emulator (by snes9xgit)

higan

higan is a multi-system emulator focused on accuracy, preservation, and configurability. (by higan-emu)
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snes9x higan
50 9
2,462 1,107
3.3% 2.7%
8.6 4.4
1 day ago 2 months ago
C++ GLSL
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

snes9x

Posts with mentions or reviews of snes9x. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-05-22.
  • I can't emulate SNES games on my Android phone, it lags. What do I do?
    1 project | /r/RetroArch | 8 Jun 2023
    I didn't know that bsnes demands so much on Android, I tested it years ago probably only for a few minutes and I only remember the core being unstable. I used to use Snes9x on desktop as well as Android, but I switched to bsnes on desktop because Snes9x had graphical issues in some games that just recently got fixed (see here the issue I opened in 2021). On the desktop I haven't seen any significant change in power demand between Snes9x and bsnes, and I've played a lot of games since then, so I don't regret it. As for Mesen-S, the project had been paused by the developer years ago, I saw that it has recently resumed the development on a new emulator, but I don't know how (or if) the changes and improvements are being ported to the cores, so, Mesen is my choice for NES, but I have doubts about Mesen-S for my choice for SNES as the emulator still needed a lot of improvement when the project was paused, so if the bsnes core ever has issues on desktop I'll probably just go back to Snes9x unless I'm sure the Mesen-S core is being maintained. As for my choice on Android, I have no doubt that Snes9x is the best option for me, it's lightweight, doesn't demand power and is directly maintained by the emulator developers, so I didn't changed even when I changed the core I use on the desktop.
  • List of Appimage *
    4 projects | /r/AppImages | 22 May 2023
    Snes9x - Portable Super Nintendo Entertainment System (TM) emulator.
  • Downgrade to SNES9X Current Core
    2 projects | /r/RetroArch | 9 May 2023
    The Current version of the Emulator Snes9x 1.62.3 was on the Updater but now Update goes back to 1.61
  • [PC][2000's] Classic team RPG, where you are playing as a hero that for some reason was sent away from his village just to come back seeing it destroyed by a red/fire demon (?)
    2 projects | /r/tipofmyjoystick | 3 May 2023
    Nestopia for NES Snes9x for SNES
  • Emulator to play multiplayer
    1 project | /r/Roms | 1 May 2023
  • Snes netplay not working, auto-disconnects
    2 projects | /r/RetroArch | 28 Apr 2023
    whoops I linked the wrong page by accident: https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x/releases scroll down to 1.61, grab snes9x-1.61-libretro-x64.zip and put the dll from it inside your retroarch cores folder (overwriting the old one)
  • Snes9x downloading
    1 project | /r/snes | 17 Apr 2023
    Github. https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x/releases
  • ryujinx doesn't save my games
    2 projects | /r/Ryujinx | 3 Apr 2023
    I would also recommend doing this, the SNES app for switch is literally just a SNES emulator so you're literally emulating an emulator. There's no reason to do this, so I'd imagine that it's going to be hard to find someone who can actually help. It would be far easier and make far more sense to just use Snes9x or bsnes or something. Plus you'd be able to play rom hacks and stuff!
  • [SNES Emulator][1990? 2000?] Sailor Moon videogame.
    1 project | /r/tipofmyjoystick | 24 Mar 2023
  • Any actually useful uses for Raspberry Pi and alternative sbc?
    11 projects | /r/homelab | 24 Mar 2023
    Also I just run retro gaming on my windows pc since i'm always on it. I use SNES, Gameboy, PS1, PS2, PS3, XBox, and XBox 360. If sure it's not efficient to run them all separately but it works for me

higan

Posts with mentions or reviews of higan. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-03-21.
  • JOGANDO NINTENDO NO LINUX
    6 projects | /r/u_player8800 | 21 Mar 2023
  • Best way to play classic Nintendo/Super Nintendo?
    1 project | /r/retrogaming | 18 Feb 2023
    Analogue SuperNT if you want close to actual hardware, cart support, controller support on an hdmi platform. But if you just want to play the games, a good emulator will do wonders. Higan will do most old systems flawlessly.
  • Self learning about concurrency, threading, parallelism.
    1 project | /r/computerscience | 20 Oct 2022
    Self taught developer in what systems with what languages? If you want to learn these concepts implement them in your language of choice. You would likely learn the most using C to do so. A great starting point are the various flavors of coroutine. There are a few great implementations on github, in various projects. It's good to read those while learning so that you understand WHY the various types of coroutines exist. Why does the Higan emulation project use cooperative coroutines on a single thread? https://github.com/higan-emu/higan/tree/master/libco You can study both the implementation of some idea and its use by finding projects like this on github and reading the source.
  • Feint of Severodonetsk (2022 colourized)
    3 projects | /r/NonCredibleDefense | 5 Jun 2022
    mGBA runs on everything and has tons of features, but isn't 100% accurate. If you have a decent PC and want the best possible experience, try Higan instead: https://github.com/higan-emu/higan
  • Resources that will help you out with replaying old games.
    4 projects | /r/patientgamers | 18 May 2022
    Don't forget the emulator Higan (formerly bsnes) for your older needs (Famicom / NES, Famicom Disk System, Super Famicom / SNES, Super Game Boy, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Player, SG-1000, SC-3000, Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive / Genesis, Mega CD, PC Engine, SuperGrafx, MSX, MSX2, ColecoVision, Neo Geo Pocket, Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, WonderSwan Color, SwanCrystal, Pocket Challenge V2)
  • Final Fantasy VI pixel remaster launches February 2022
    3 projects | /r/Games | 21 Dec 2021
    Snes9X is generally considered the best general emulator, if you happen to try to run one of the 20 or so games that Snes9X has issues with, Higan is there to save you as it's cycle accurate on SNES games, however, be warned that Higan is quite resource intensive because accuracy isn't cheap, so only do so if you really want to play that, as even Higan's original dev recommended to use Snes9X over Higan for most emulation
  • I’m looking for an emulator they works on Mac. Any recommendations?
    3 projects | /r/snes | 6 Sep 2021
    Download Hub -- https://github.com/higan-emu/higan/releases
  • China bans under 18's from playing video games more than 3 hours a week
    3 projects | /r/LivestreamFail | 30 Aug 2021
  • What's the best way to create a cross-platform emulator?
    4 projects | /r/EmuDev | 17 Jul 2021
    In the second scheme, you build some abstract interface to system GUI libraries, whereby they can be polled for input and asked to lay out widgets. Then you implement the interface in terms of every host that you want to support. This is essentially how higan&co work (see specifically hiro).

What are some alternatives?

When comparing snes9x and higan you can also consider the following projects:

bsnes - bsnes is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator focused on performance, features, and ease of use.

OpenEmu - 🕹 Retro video game emulation for macOS

old-RetroBat-obsolete - RetroBat is the best way to play your ROMs collection on Windows !

BizHawk - BizHawk is a multi-system emulator written in C#. BizHawk provides nice features for casual gamers such as full screen, and joypad support in addition to full rerecording and debugging tools for all system cores.

bsnes-hd - bsnes fork that adds HD video features

mednaffe - A front-end (GUI) for mednafen emulator

dolphin - Dolphin is a GameCube / Wii emulator, allowing you to play games for these two platforms on PC with improvements.

TotalSMS - Sega Master System emulator

mgba - mGBA Game Boy Advance Emulator