RetroArch is a modular Emulation system. Basically it is a central executable to run Emulation modules. Emulator authors have less work, as video, audio, joystick support etc. is all managed in the central
executable (and "Cores" as the modules are named are much easier to get ported to all sorts of
Amiga Systems, including MorphOS).

The versions for MorphOS, AmigaOS4, WarpOS and OS3.x 68k are currently in Betatesting.

RetroArch is the "leading" Emulation system on PC Operating systems, and now it will come also to
various Amiga Systems, including MorphOS.

If you do a small donation to my PayPal account you can get access to the Beta Versions. I am thinking
of something like 10-20 EUR (10+ EUR you get the Beta, 15+ EUR you get the Beta and some additional "Cores").

There is a large amount of Cores already available, from stuff like NES, SNES, Sega 8/16 Bit to stuff
like C64, Atari Lynx and NeoGeo. Some verrsions of Mame of course too.

You might ask what is the advantage over "singular" Emulators ?

You get a nice GUI, and all your ROMs or Games can be handled with one emulator. Of course an installer
(which also simplifies installation of game machine BIOS by telling you what files you need and where
you need to put them) is also included.

It is planned the "final" release will be released on aminet, os4depot and MorphOS Storage (respective versions). But Donations help me to be able to spend more time on it (like porting more "Cores" or in the future implementing GL Support - currently it is only Software Rendering).

RetroArch WarpOS and RetroArch MorphOS BTW have already been successfully tested on the Mirari Hardware!

On The Games Sub-Channel of the MorphOS Channel on Discord you can see some videos of it running on MorphOS on the Mirari Hardware (both WarpOS and MorphOS versions).

Also some videos of RetroArch running on an x5000 (OS4 version though) are at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkSxwhlwOdo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJY5gWPYAtQ

The MorphOS Version is like the AmigaOS 4 version based on the latest RetroArch Source-Code, V1.21.

Steffen "MagicSN" Haeuser
tirionareonwe@gmail.com

Hopefully RetroArch on MorphOS will get to use cores for PlayStation 1, Nintendo 64, GameBoy Advance, Sega Saturn, and maybe some others that are slipping my mind. Being able to utilize RetroArch with game libraries from those consoles on a high-end G4 Mac would be killer! Right now, I see that TurboGrafx-16 (aka PC-Engine) nor GameBoy cores have yet to be made available on www.morphos-storage.net

I have a Playstation 1 Core compiled, it is a bit slow though. On x5000 (or Mirari Hardware) it would be okay I guess. Not sure about sound, if it will jerk even on those. FPSE will be faster. In the future I want to do 3DHW Support (though first for AmigaOS 4/MiniGL, later backport to MOS/TinyGL) but that is for now out of scope. Once I do this this should make things faster.

Nintendo 64 -> No JIT. Code for 3D HW probably hard to port.
Sega Saturn -> Compiles. But crashes in SH2 Emulation. Probably Endian related ?
Gameboy Advance -> I have a MGBA Core, which supports Gameboy Advance

A lot of Cores are not yet released as they are in the main package which is still in Beta. You can get access against a donation

Currently in the Beta 28 are cores for:

- A5200
- CPC (Caprice32)
- ZX Spectrum (Fuse)
- Atari Lynx (Handy)
- NeoGeoPocket (Mednafen)
- PC-Engine/Supergrafx16/PC-Engine CD (Mednafen)
- Gameboy/Gameboy Color/Gameboy Advance (MGBA)
- NES (QuickNES)
- Atari2600 (Stella2014)
- C64 etc. (Vice)
- Atari Jaguar (Virtual Jaguar, though this one like the PSX one is very slow)

In "Premium Packages" (only for people who donated) are still:

- NeoGeo MVS/AES (Geolith)
- NeoGeoCD (NeoCD)
- Playstation 1 (Mednafen)
- Video and Audio Filters

In the uploaded Cores on MorphOS Storage there are:

- NeoGeo (FBNeo)
- Mame 2003 (0.78), Mame 2003+ (0.78+), Mame 2009 (0.135u4), Mame 2010 (0.139)
- Picodrive
- Genesis Plus

Gruß,
Steffen

RetroArch for MorphOS has been released and should soon be available for download at MorphOS Storage.

RetroArch 1.21 MorphOS download

Good idea with the link @cyfm ^^

And here is the Link with the additional Cores (SNES9x, Mame, PicoDrive, etc.):

Extra Cores for RetroArch MorphOS

[ Edited by MagicSN 05.09.2025 - 10:39 ]

Retroarch is very convinent. Thank you. Time to dust off my Pmac with crt :).

Just did something stupid. I ran the RetroArchMOS.exe from "Ram Disk:RetroArch/Exes/mos/RetroArchMOS.exe" and found a bug. :D

Yes, I know! It should not be run without installation, but it fails with

"Can´t find Ram
assign fehlgeschlagen. Return value 20"

Come on. It is 2025. Spaces in filenames or paths should be a solved problem.

Its not the first time I have problems with using RAM Disk in paths. What I dont remember is if It was on Morphos or aos classic..sorry XD

Quote:

Yeah. It happens when you launch applications or tools from inside an application.

Usually you sprintf() a path, which is used to execute the external tool. And the pattern looks like this: "C:Dir %s" while it should be "c:Dir \"%s\"".

The result is 'C:Dir RAM Disk:Hello' vs 'C:Dir "RAM Disk:Hello"'.

As you can see the first version has a stray "RAM", which is interpreted as the first argument. The C:Dir command would try to list "RAM" and "DISK:Hello", while the second example sees "RAM Disk:Hello" as one argument.

I have to admit I never use Blanks in directory paths. Blanks should not be used there. And starting RetroArch from RAM is no sensible use case, as you need the ROMs in the same directory. This would be a lot of copying...

Still, I can confirm the problem, and I think it is pretty easy to fix (it is in the Dynamic Library Call). Actually I suspect *all* my ports having dynamic Libraries of this model will have this problem (Gorky 17 for WarpOS for example - also Settlers 2), as they use the same method for dynamic library. Nobody noticed during Betatest (I guess most people do not use Blanks in paths).

I will look to fix it for RetroArch in an update. For Settlers 2 it comes too late to fix it as DVD Production has started.

Hmm, something like „Siedler 2“ in path
should not be this unusual.
Can fix it for download, because
all users who bought the physical
edition will also get the digital download version.

Correction: Settlers2 and Gorky17 probably not affected. They do not use a path to dynamic lib but directly the filename. Managed to fix the issue for RetroArch (currently only tested for OS4 version).

Quote:

I, as most people would do, just extracted the archive into RAM: to install. Launching it from there is just a double click away. Also users should be expected to do the unexpected anyway and users usually exclude the small group of beta testers, too :D

Usualy I extract things to RAM Disk but in this case, as I have been betatesting various versions, i had all in my hard Drive.

I have to admit with software which loads ROMs which can be several hundred Megabytes sized, I find installing to the RAM Disk not a supported use case

Just install it to the HD, and now as you know do not use a blank in the name ^^

So, I got the chance to test out this port of RetroArch on my Mac mini (the same one in my signature) and ... the results weren't pretty by any means. Right off the bat, RetroArch idles at about 60% CPU usage before we even get to loading cores and ROM files.

I compared RetroArch with five other emulators already available on MorphOS for years; FCEU (Nintendo Entertainment System), mGBA (Nintendo GameBoy Advance), SNES9x (Super Nintendo), and SMSPlus (Sega Master System), and GenesisPlus (Sega Mega Drive).

Below are the results of my tests and comments on the playability or performance given by RetroArch, making note of the difference in stability when compared to the emulators already available for MorphOS:

-----------------
FCEU uses 17% CPU
RetroArch uses ~60% CPU and gameplay frequently stutters

mGBA uses 30% CPU
RetroArch uses ~90%, gameplay frequently stutters and audio plays at seemingly 0.75x speed

snes9x uses 60% CPU
RetroArch uses ~60% and yet gameplay is incredibly laggy somehow and barely playable

SMSPlus uses 8% CPU
RetroArch (with GenesisPlus GX) uses ~30% and is so far the only instance of RetroArch to not suffer a downgrade in performance, but still uses a substantial increase in CPU usage despite offering comparable performance to SMSPlus

GenesisPlus uses 23% CPU
RetroArch uses ~70% CPU, gameplay frequently stutters and audio plays at seemingly 0.75x speed
------------------

I could have tested more systems, but with the already high idle CPU usage and the fact that only ONE in FIVE of my RetroArch tests produced a result that was comparable with what was already available on MorphOS for years, I had my fill.

If there is any way users can dramatically increase performance and drop the CPU usage in half while playing games, I'm all ears. The other Macs supported by MorphOS are not that faster than a 1.5 Ghz Mac Mini, and some are even weaker. All eMac, iBook G4, PowerMac G4, and PowerBook G4 models supported by MorphOS (I guess 80% of users?) will yield similar or, more often than not, WORSE performance in RetroArch to what I have experienced and demonstrated. That is frustrating...

I had a similar experience with VICE, basically the only one I tried. It is considerably slower than the MOS version.