Yabause

Yabause is a well-regarded open source Sega Saturn emulator. It was built to run on many systems, including Windows, FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X and even the Dreamcast. The original project has not been actively developed for some years, but its code lives on in forks such as YabaSanshiro and Kronos.

The Saturn’s hardware is very complicated and notoriously difficult to emulate, but Yabause steadily improved its compatibility over the years.

Its compatibility never matched the closed source SSF emulator, although later versions narrowed the gap.

Yabause does offer things SSF doesn’t, such as OpenGL and software renderers that can output the Saturn’s graphics at higher resolutions, giving a much cleaner image than simply stretching the original output to a modern display.

If you use Windows and want the best compatibility, we recommend SSF. On other systems, Mednafen offers more accurate Saturn emulation.

Yabause is also available as a system package on many Linux distributions.