Symphony Of The Night On Mac Emulator
Help
You can play Castlevania: Symphony of the Night right on your computer with a Playstation (PS1) emulator. The other games require a PSP emulator and Saturn.
Getting Started
Compressed archives (such as .rar, .zip, .7z, etc) are NOT supported for CD-based games — you must uncompress them first.
Importing
Dumped copies of CD-based games must be loaded in with Cue sheets or CloneCD files only.
Simply drag and drop a .cue
or .ccd
file into your library and OpenEmu will add all associated files along with it from the same folder. If a game is made up of multiple discs, please follow the multi-disc guide instead.
Please make sure you are importing valid files by carefully reading the sections below.
Supported Formats
PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD, PC-FX, PlayStation, Sega Saturn (using Mednafen)
- CUE+BIN, both single and multiple .BIN tracks
- CUE+IMG, CUE+ISO
- CUE + BIN/IMG/ISO + CDDA tracks with WAV/OGG/FLAC. MP3 is NOT supported.
- CloneCD CCD+IMG+SUB
Mega CD/Sega CD (using Genesis Plus GX)
- CUE+BIN, CUE+IMG, CUE+ISO
- CUE + BIN/IMG/ISO + CDDA tracks with WAV/OGG. MP3 is NOT supported.
Cue Sheets
A cue sheet is a plain text file with a .cue
extension containing metadata used to describe the layout of a CD, normally accompanied by one or more data files dumped from the original disc.
Below demonstrates how a cue sheet could be written for a PlayStation game with CDDA, depending on how it was dumped.
Wacom xd-0405-u driver for mac. Single binary track
Single binary track — pregap length and subcode flags
Single binary track — pregap start time with INDEX 00
Multiple binary tracks. Data track + separate file for each audio track (common with Redump)
Single binary track with WAVE audio track file
How to Dump a Physical CD
Try Redump's CD dumping guide.
Help
Q. My cue sheet or CCD won't import
It is important that cue sheets are saved as plain text, without 'smart quotes' or 'smart dashes' and that tracks do not contain hardcoded paths, only filenames.
Open your cue sheet in TextEdit or another plain text editor and verify that the filename for BINARY
:
- matches the filename of your
.bin/.img/.iso
file and is in the correct case - has an extension:
FILE 'CASTLEVANIA.BIN' BINARY
and NOTFILE 'CASTLEVANIA' BINARY
- does not contain a hardcoded path:
FILE 'C:WINDOWSDESKTOPCASTLEVANIA.BIN' BINARY
If using a CloneCD .ccd
, you must also have a .img
and .sub
with matching filenames.
Q. I have no music at all, only sound effects most of the time
It means you have a bad dump or the cue sheet is missing correct CDDA track information. There is no solution but to obtain a proper dump.
Q. I only have a single .BIN or .ISO file
It is strongly recommended to simply obtain another dump that is packaged properly.
This is considered a bad/incomplete dump. It is necessary your game dump has an associated cue sheet because they are used to describe data and audio for the disc. Attempting to create your own without knowing the layout of the disc and how it was dumped, especially for a game that uses CD Audio (CDDA), will only result in problems.
Q. I have a multi-disc game
You need to create a .m3u
file containing the filenames of all the cue sheets for the game. The file must be saved in a folder together with all the cue sheets and their associated files in order for them to be automatically imported. Also, the cue sheets for the game must not already be pre-imported in your library. Note: Mega CD/Sega CD is not supported.
Example:
You have a multi-disc game such as Chrono Cross with two cue sheets
Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue
andChrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue
.Now create a
.m3u
file by opening up your favorite plain text editor and copy and pasting the filenames of your cue sheets, one per line appearing as:
Note: For CloneCD rips, only add the .ccd
filenames to the .m3u
file.
IMPORTANT — Save the file as plain text (if using TextEdit, select 'Make Plain Text' from the Format menu) with a .m3u extension, for example
Chrono Cross (USA).m3u
Import only the
.m3u
file into your library as normal and the cue sheets will be automatically imported. It will appear in your PlayStation library and you can load it.
Now, when you reach a point in-game where you must swap discs, select the required disc from the HUD control bar 'Select Disc' menu like so:
Q. I have an .ECM or .APE file
Dumps with .ecm
and .ape
are compressed data and audio tracks. These files must be uncompressed before they can be used.
Our example will use a cue sheet named Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).cue
with the contents and files:
ECM
The .ecm
file must be decoded and renamed to match the BINARY
track filename from the cue sheet.
- Download unecm (via the Command-Line Pack v1.03 by Neill Corlett)
- Uncompress cmdpack-1.03-macosx-x86_64.tar.gz and copy the
unecm
file to the same folder as your game with the.ecm
file
- If you have the Homebrew package manager, you might also use
brew install ecm
Open your cue sheet in TextEdit or another plain text editor and notice the filename of the
BINARY
track and also the.ecm
filename in your folder. e.g.Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin
anddata.bin.ecm
Navigate to your game's folder in Terminal. Follow guides here or here to do this.
Decode your
.ecm
. In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter, making sure to add the correct filenames:./unecm 'data.bin.ecm' 'Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin'
APE
The .ape
file must be converted to PCM and renamed to match the AUDIO
track filename from the cue sheet.
- Download X Lossless Decoder (XLD)
- Open XLD.app — the application is not signed, so you must right click and select Open
- Go to XLD > Preferences menu and set the Output format to PCM (little endian)
- To convert your file, just click on Open from the File menu, and navigate to your
.ape
file - The converted file will be named, for example,
Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).pcm
which must then be renamed - To rename, right click on the
.pcm
file and select Get Info. From the Name & Extension section, change the file extension from.pcm
to match the corresponding audio track inside the cue sheet, presumably.bin
, resulting inCastlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).bin
Q. I have a .CHD file from Archive.org
Some CD dumps are stored in a MAME/MESS-specific format capable of multiple layers of compression (LZMA/zlib/FLAC/Huffman) called CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data or Compressed Hard Disk images), containing a .cue
and .bin
file. These files must be uncompressed with chdman
before they can be used.
Download and install the SDL2 framework for OS X.
Download a pre-compiled version of MAME or MESS 64-bit (x86_64) from SDLMAME
Uncompress the
.zip
file and copy thechdman
file found inside the 'tools' folder to the same folder as your game with the.chd
fileNavigate to your game's folder in Terminal. Follow guides here or here to do this.
Extract your
.chd
. In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter, making sure to add the correct filenames:./chdman extractcd -i 'sonic cd (usa).chd' -o 'sonic cd (usa).cue' -ob 'sonic cd (usa).bin'
Q. I have a .MDF and a .MDS file
These are an alternative format to iso/bin images created by some software like Alcohol 120%. They are very easy to convert into .bin/.cue.
Install a command-line tool named mdf2iso using either macports or homebrew.
$ brew install mdf2iso
In the directory with both .mdf and .mds files, run the following command to convert into .bin/.cue.
$ mdf2iso --cue name_of_file.mdf
This will generate compatible .bin/.cue files in the same directory, with the same name as the original image.
Q. I have a .SBI file
Hundreds of PAL region PlayStation games used LibCrypt, a copy protection mechanism that stored non-standard data in subchannels on the disc. If missing from a backup, this crippled games by disabling input (Ape Escape), impossible difficulty (Lucky Luke: Western Fever), mysterious bugs (Spyro: Year of the Dragon) or freezing at boot (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis) or during a level (Wip3out).
Dumped copies that use cue sheets require additional .sbi
subchannel data files in order for these games to work.
Download .sbi
files for affected games from redump.org by first choosing your game and then finding 'SBI subchannels' at the top of the page.
Drag and drop the .sbi
to import it alongside your game. IMPORTANT — The .sbi
file must be named exactly as the base filename of your cue sheet including case e.g.
Ape Escape (Europe).cue
andApe Escape (Europe).sbi
Wip3out (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).CUE
andWip3out (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).SBI
Note: multi-disc games such as Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Galerians and Parasite Eve II must have all .sbi
files for each disc imported.