Copy the Snes9x application from the disk image (.dmg) to your hard disk and double-click it.
Choose 'Open ROM Image...' in 'File' menu, select the game and start it. You can also drag and drop the ROM image onto the Snes9x icon. You may open a ROM image by double clicking on its icon in the Finder as well.
SNES ROM images come in lots of different formats. Snes9x supports zipped ROMs as long as there is only 1 per zip file. Also Snes9x can open gzip/jma compressed file.
By default, Snes9x displays the ROM information when a ROM is first loaded. Depending on the colors used you can tell whether or not a ROM is a good working ROM, or if it's been altered or is corrupted.
| white | the ROM should be a perfect working copy. |
| green | the ROM is mode 1 interleaved. |
| orange | the ROM is mode 2 interleaved. |
| aqua | the ROM is Game Doctor 24M interleaved. |
| yellow | the ROM has probably been altered. Either it's a translation, PD ROM, hacked, or possibly a bad ROM. It may also be an overdumped ROM. |
| red | the ROM is definitely hacked and that a proper version should be exist. Some ROM Tools such as NSRT can also fix these ROMs. |
When asking for help on the Snes9x forums, please list the color and CRC32 that is displayed. This will help to find out what the problem is.
These colors do NOT signify whether a game will work or not. It is just a means for reference so we can understand what may or may not be a problem. Most often the problem with games that don't work it's because they are corrupt or are a bad dump and should be redumped.
The default key mapping for joypad 1 is as follows:
| up arrow | Up direction |
| down arrow | Down direction |
| left arrow | Left direction |
| right arrow | Right direction |
| command | A button |
| option | B button |
| control | X button |
| shift | Y button |
| Z | L button |
| X | R button |
| tab | Select button |
| return | Start button |
To pause the game, press pause key (esc key by default), choose 'Pause' in 'Emulation' menu, or click the game screen in case you aren't playing the game that uses a mouse. Double-click the game window or choose 'Resume' in 'Emulation' menu to resume the game.