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Nintendo · Home console · 1983 Experimental

NES emulator for PC

Nostyra plays NES (Famicom) games through the Mesen libretro core. Nostyra downloads the core from the libretro buildbot the first time you play an NES game.

Written by vivusk, Nostyra maintainer Last reviewed Based on the Nostyra README and release notes

Game files

  • Files with the .nes extension and an iNES header are listed as NES games.
  • A .nes file without a header is shown as "not scanned" instead of being guessed.
  • Folder names are never used: an NES game can sit anywhere in your ROM folder.

Identification and saves

  • Each file is hashed and matched against the No-Intro NES DAT (from libretro-database) to get the official title, region and metadata.
  • Battery saves go to saves/nes/<ROM name> [<ID>]/save.srm. The ID comes from the file hash, so moving or renaming the ROM keeps its saves.

Controls

  • The editor shows B, A, Select, Start and the D-pad.
  • Default keyboard: arrow keys = D-pad, Z = B, X = A, A = Y, S = X, Q / W = L / R, Enter = Start, Right Shift = Select.

Known limits

  • Marked Experimental: automated tests pass, manual testing on real games is still in progress.

Before you start

Nostyra does not include, download or link to NES games or BIOS files. Use games you own, dumped from your own cartridges or discs. See the disclaimer.

Features for NES games

Save states A save state stores the whole emulated machine at one moment, so you can continue from any point, not only where the game lets you save. Rewind Rewind keeps a short history of the game in memory. Holding the rewind key plays it backwards at 2× speed. Run-ahead Many games react to a button press one or more frames late, even on original hardware. Run-ahead emulates ahead and rolls back each frame to hide 1–2 frames of that delay. CRT and LCD shaders Shaders change how the picture is drawn, for example to imitate the scanlines of a CRT TV or the pixel grid of a handheld screen. Soft patching Translations, bug fixes and hacks are often shared as patch files. Nostyra applies them in memory when the game starts; the ROM file is never changed. RetroAchievements RetroAchievements is a community service that adds achievements to classic games. Nostyra supports it on 14 systems using rcheevos, the same library RetroArch uses.

Play NES games with Nostyra

Free and open source. Portable zip, no installer, no account.

Download for Windows
macOS (planned) Linux (planned) iOS (planned) Android (planned)

Version 0.1.0 · 25.9 MB zip · Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit

Hosted on GitHub Releases. First time? Read the install guide.