CEN64(1)

💖 CEN64 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because today we're talking about cen64 — the Cycle-Accurate Nintendo 64 Simulator — and she is literally the overachiever of emulators. this page lives in the General Commands Manual section (section 1, iykyk) and it's about to be your whole personality. ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

cen64 [Options] <PIF IPL ROM Path> [Cart ROM Path]

so like. options, then your PIF IPL ROM path (that one's mandatory, no skipping, she's required ✋), then optionally your cart ROM path. simple. elegant. iconic.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

CEN64 is a new Nintendo 64 emulator and she has one (1) goal: perfect emulation. and how does she do it?? by simulating the hardware inside the Nintendo 64 itself, all the way down to the register-transfer level (RTL). yes. that deep. 💅

now, real talk — she is still heavy under development and currently does not have any sound emulation. so if you were expecting audio, bestie, no. not yet. 🙈

here's the thing though: because she's cycle-accurate, CEN64 has considerably high hardware requirements to hit passable performance when emulating most Nintendo 64 titles. so she's demanding. she's high maintenance. she's worth it. 💅 but — and this is the slay — similar to the higan emulator, that cycle accuracy guarantees very high compatibility, and despite being in her early development stage, CEN64 already lets you run several commercial titles with no glitches or only minor ones. ate. 🔥

and now for the main character feature: among Nintendo 64 emulators, CEN64 offers emulation support for the 64DD external disk drive — the one that was never released outside Japan and even in Japan is considered rare. so CEN64 gives anyone the unique possibility to play any of those rare titles that were exclusively released on the 64DD. like, that's genuinely historic behaviour. 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

ngl, CEN64 currently supports only a very limited amount of options — here's the whole menu, bestie:

• -debug [addr][:port] — starts the debugger on interface:port. by default, CEN64 uses localhost:64646. 💀
• -profile — profiles the ROM (cpu-side).
• -multithread — runs in a threaded (but quasi-accurate) mode. > ⚠️ heads up: this mode cannot be run with the debugger.
• -ddipl <path> — path to the 64DD IPL ROM (this is what enables 64DD mode 🎀).
• -ddrom <path> — path to the 64DD disk ROM (requires -ddipl, no exceptions).
• -headless — runs the emulator without user-interface components.
• -noaudio — runs the emulator without audio.
• -novideo — runs the emulator without video.
• -is-viewer — IS Viewer 64 present.
• -controller num=<1-4> — controller with no pak.

Pak options:

num=<1-4>,pak=rumble
num=<1-4>,mempak=<path>
num=<1-4>,tpak_rom=<path>,tpak_save=<path>

• -eep4k <path> — path to 4 kbit EEPROM save.
• -eep16k <path> — path to 16 kbit EEPROM save.
• -sram <path> — path to SRAM save.
• -flash <path> — path to FlashRAM save.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• cen64-qt(1).

up-to-date info lives on the upstream website at https://www.cen64.com. and if you need help, the forums are at https://forums.cen64.com. 🫶

💀 BUGS 💀

okay so, important distinction, don't get it twisted:

• the Debian bug tracker should be used for packaging-related bug reports only.
• any bugs concerning the actual emulator go directly to the upstream bug tracker, which can be found at: https://github.com/tj90241/cen64/issues.

send them to the right place or they will not find you, bestie. ✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> with contributions by Dan Hasting <maintainer@hasting.email>.

and that's the whole vibe, bestie — CEN64, from the General Commands Manual, dated February 27, 2018. go emulate something rare for me. mwah. 💖✨🎀🦋