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'''SSF''' was once renowned as being the best Saturn emulator from its inception in early 2000's till around mid-2010's when a slate of newer and open-source Saturn emulation software was first launched. These included the [[Mednafen]] versions from late 2010's and onwards with much improved Saturn compatibility, and two WIP derivatives of the old [[Yabause]] base called Kronos and [[Yaba Sanshiro]]. SSF is superior to [[Yabause]] and was initially superior to [[Mednafen]] with its early Saturn core versions for due to higher accuracy and higher game compatibility, but however it is Windows only and closed source. It also has features other Saturn emulators lack such as support for true 3d transparencies (instead of checkboard mesh) and a proper de-interlacer for reducing flicker in 480i games. It no longer requires mounting ISO files in a virtual drive to run them (see below). The source code was uploaded to GitHub just once in late January 2021, and a couple release packs with various builds were uploaded there, which added confusion to the emulator's development. There has been no more commits since then. Moreover, a large number of Saturn games require manual and pernickety editing in the emulator's configuration options to run properly, which furthermore prevents SSF from being recommended for most users, bar for the most devout followers.
SSF requires either an external virtual drive or a specific loader to read disc images. Close and restart the emulator (as it says in the Japanese dialogue popup appearing) whenever you modify the options for them to take effect.
SSF
,→Review
==Review==
The author Shima was, for a time, probably the longest-time active developer on any emulator from the emulator's public launch (Labelled 'SSF 001') in 1999 till 20 years later in late November 2019. It is unknown when the first ever version was released publicly, however, the next version of 'SSF 002' was released on 5th December, 1999.<ref name="20Years_reddit">{{cite web|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/e3u9wz/ssf_saturn_emulator_has_been_actively_developed/ |title=Thread: 'SSF (Saturn emulator) has been actively developed by the same single author for 20 years now.' |author='ZarkonD' |publisher=Reddit |date=30 November 2019}}</ref>
A recent major update to 0.12 improved compatibility for certain games and broke others. It added support for some of the games such as Astal (needs "Enable SH2 Cache"). Keep both versions, pre- and post-0.12 just in case. To raise compatibility, you can try with "No Bios" enabled or disabled, and you'll want to start with the MaxCompatibility (slow) option, then try with the faster options (that do not always work).
Even though it has a "No Bios" option, you'll sometimes need the BIOS files, of course specifying the correct region in the options.
