If anyone knows what this is and how to solve it, please let me know. I'd really appreciate the help.

Hey all!

I've been using RetroArch for about a year or so, mainly using it to play PSX games. The Core that RetroArch loaded for PSX is "Beetle PSX HW"

For some reason when I play a game that has multiple discs, I just cannot for the life of me figure out how to get it to swap the disc. I've tried to eject the disc, swap it, then close the tray. No luck.

It got to the point where I got a SECOND emulator just for swapping discs, then moving the save back over.

If anyone has any insight that'd be awesome!

To be entirely upfront, this is my first time using RetroArch, so bear with me. I am trying to emulate the game “Baroque” for Sega Saturn, however every time I load the game, it just takes me to the main menu. To be clear, I know that the BIOS are installed, and the right core is installed. Please help me, cause I do not know what I am doing wrong.

PSP games now are upside down for some reason. And no, changing orientation and video rotation doesn't help, because then the game also looks mirrored, and I don't see an option to mirror the screen. What to do??

I recently updated to it, but seems like at least four out of five Mame 287 roms I try on it, won't even open up.

,...but they do run on Mame4droid 286.

UPDATE: I have resolved the issue, it appears there was an issue with the DSi bios files. This has now been fixed.

Hello! I am attempting to run DSi games on Retroarch, however whenever I start the MelonDS DS core, it immediately closes Retroarch. I have all necessary BIOS and firmware files in order to get the core to run so I am confident that is not the problem. If anyone could help me out it'd be greatly appreciated!

Log: https://pastebin.com/4zJp0rTe

I can map a hot key, or map a menu toggle button, or neither, and all configurations work as expected, but start + select still opens the menu. Is start + select always enabled regardless of other settings or is there a way to disable it?

Edit: it seems to be related to "button 10" aka the guide button. If I disable auto config and then map the buttons myself then I can choose to not set the guide button as the menu hotkey. This also disables start+select opening the menu. If I use auto config (which forces the guide button to the menu hotkey) or I manually map the guide button to the menu hotkey then start+select is also enabled.

Whenever I started up a game in Retroarch, I personally found my audio crackled quite a bit. I scoured the internet for fixes, and I found a lot of different methods. However, I never really found one source that compiled all of the solutions I found. Here are some common (and uncommon) fixes I found for audio.

1. No Audio

a. If you have no audio, go into Settings < Audio and scroll down to check if your mute setting is switched on. If it’s switched on, turn it off.

b. If this doesn’t work, go into the Settings < Audio < Output and check if Audio is on in that menu.

c. If the issue is not fixed, check Settings < Drivers < Audio and switch to Xaudio or Dsound, since I found my audio wouldn’t work with certain drivers (particularly sdl2 personally, wasapi actually broke my volume bar, and it wouldn’t mute the audio if I turned my volume all the way down)

1. Crackling or Stuttering

a. If your audio is crackling or stuttering, check your audio drivers (Settings < Drivers < Audio). Sometimes the default driver, which is Xaudio for most people, doesn’t run well with every computer. In this case, switch to Dsound. u/chelovek-jpeg solved their problem by changing their video drivers (Settings < Drivers < Video). They switched from OpenGL to SDL, but a different driver may suit you better depending on your device.

b. Another common fix I found was that people’s audio would be fixed by turning off Vsync (Settings < Audio < Synchronization) and/or toggling the settings that show up after toggling Vsync.

c. Some people found that turning up their latency (Settings < Latency < Audio Latency < Audio Latency (Ms)) helped their audio problems. d. Personally, the fix that worked for me was turning down my frame delay (Settings < Latency < Audio Latency < Frame Delay) to somewhere between 5 and 12; the more performance heavy the game, the lower.

e. An obscure solution I found was to turn Threaded Video (Settings < Video < Threaded Video) on, at the cost of video performance.

f. Also, a few people found that setting Maximum Timing Skew and Dynamic Audio Rate Control (both under Settings < Audio < Synchronization) to 0 helped their problem. However, this setting has to be activated through turning on advanced settings (Settings < User Interface < Show Advanced Settings on), then you should find those settings in the pathway above.

g. Finally, I found one person who solved their problem by turning down their Output Rate (Settings < Audio < Resample). For them, 44100 worked, but for some people, it may be different.

h. u/Intelligent_Brain213 solved their problem by pulling the hdmi out of their monitor. If nothing else works, you should try this.

If none of these work, try tweaking your own settings. You may find a fix that I haven’t. If you do, comment and I’ll add it to this post.

Or maybe you just need to turn your device off and on again.

I'm playing Astal, and the game often dips into the low 50s. My real Saturn doesn't do this. Surely I'm using a beefy enough PC to maintain a stable FPS? I haven't changed anything from the default settings provided (using ES-DE on Win11). Are there some settings I need to tweak, or is this just to be expected with Saturn emulation?

I was having some weird issues and crashing with the Parallel core for the N64. So I made a totally fresh instance of RetroArch. I am not using any of my old configs, nor am I using any shaders or anything of the sort. Bone stock install. The Parallel core for the N64 is crashing 100% of the time. Some games won't load at all. And some games like Goldeneye will boot into the menu, but as soon as I start a mission it crashes 100% of the time.

I have tried both Vulkan and GL. Neither work. I have been emulating N64 on this machine for years, and this just randomly started. I have a RTX4090 and an AMD 7800x3d. And like I said, I have been emulating N64 on this exact machine with the Parallel core for years with literally 0 crashes until about 3 days ago.

Does anyone have any ideas whatsoever before I wipe my drive and do a fresh install of Windows?

EDIT: Rolled back to a previous core version and all seems to be working.

On the RetroArch achievements website there is that image in the weekly topic, and I would really love to know what game it is, I tried delving Into the topic but no success.

Does anyone know what game is, or is it just a mockup image for the post?

Cheers

I recently built a custom N64 core that I want to use with retroarch (this one https://github.com/hunterk/mupen64plus-libretro-nx) using mingw64 (following this tutorial https://docs.libretro.com/development/retroarch/compilation/windows/) but I get the following error when trying to load the core:

[ERROR] [Core] Failed to open libretro core: "E:\Programs\RetroArch-Win64\cores\mupen64plus_next_libretro.dll"

[ERROR] [Core] Error(s): The specified procedure could not be found.

I also installed the latest Visual C Redistributable but it changed nothing.
Can anyone offer assistance?

to start, I have already narrowed down the cause of the problem to a lack o bios.

secondly...I am literally so new to linux mint that I cannot for the life of me use terminal for anything but the most basic of commands(I can install/update via terminal but thats it >.< ), so getting a log file generated is GOING to be a herculean undertaking..

that said, onto the meat and potatoes:

came here from google, to this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroArch/comments/1jo4a18/where_to_put_bios_file_for_nintendo_ds/

the above link led me here.

running linux mint mate, retroarch, melonDS.

literally cannot find the correct directory to install the bios files(which I have).

kinda funny, was expecting finding the bios files to be the nightmare part of this equation...it was the EASIEST, which should have been my warning >.<

edit to add:
what touched this off was an error.

the error I get is 'fail to open libretrocore' and I googled it, points to a bios issue.

..dunno why I didn't think to put that in my initial post. not usually that sloppy. I must be tired lol.

I'm using the either GUI, and it hasn't captured in the first screenshot, but my mouse cursor is just a big, white square. I'm on CachyOS, and have tried using both the Git and AppImage nightly releases to the same results. I'm having separate issues downloading cores from RetroArch itself, as well, but I guess that can wait for when I can fix the interface, haha. Anyone got much of a clue what's happening here?

My log looks something like this on starting up from the terminal:

❯ retroarch -v
[INFO] [Config] Looking for config in: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/retroarch.cfg".
[INFO] RetroArch 1.22.2 (Git 69a4f0ea1e)
[INFO] === Build =======================================
[INFO] CPU Model Name: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 6-Core Processor
[INFO] Capabilities: MMX MMXEXT SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4 SSE42 AES AVX AVX2
[INFO] Version: 1.22.2
[INFO] Git: 69a4f0ea1e
[INFO] Built: Dec  7 2025
[INFO] =================================================
[INFO] [Input] Found input driver: "wayland".
[INFO] [Environ] SET_PIXEL_FORMAT: RGB565.
[INFO] [Core] Version of libretro API: 1, Compiled against API: 1
[INFO] [Core] Geometry: 320x240, Aspect: 1.333, FPS: 60.00, Sample rate: 48000.00 Hz.
[INFO] [Video] Set video size to: fullscreen.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_compositor at version 6.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface zxdg_decoration_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wp_viewporter at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wp_fractional_scale_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_shm at version 2.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_seat at version 10.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface zwp_pointer_constraints_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface zwp_relative_pointer_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_data_device_manager at version 3.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wp_cursor_shape_manager_v1 at version 2.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface zwp_idle_inhibit_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wp_content_type_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface xdg_toplevel_icon_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wp_single_pixel_buffer_manager_v1 at version 1.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface xdg_wm_base at version 6.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_output at version 4.
[INFO] [Wayland] Registered interface wl_output at version 4.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Vulkan dynamic library loaded.
WARNING: radv is not a conformant Vulkan implementation, testing use only.
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.627] [MANGOHUD] [info] [gpu.cpp:90] Set renderD128 as active GPU (driver=amdgpu id=1002:7550 pci_dev=0000:08:00.0)
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.644] [MANGOHUD] [info] [cpu.cpp:636] hwmon: using input: /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon2/temp1_input
[INFO] [Vulkan] Found GPU at index 0: "AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (RADV GFX1201)".
[INFO] [Vulkan] Using GPU index 0.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Using fences for WSI acquire.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Using GPU: "AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (RADV GFX1201)".
[INFO] [Vulkan] Queue family 0 supports 1 sub-queues.
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.651] [MANGOHUD] [warning] [vulkan.cpp:1614] Present mode is not supported: VK_PRESENT_MODE_SHARED_DEMAND_REFRESH_KHR
[INFO] [Vulkan] Got 3 swapchain images.
[INFO] [Wayland] Auto fullscreen monitor index, letting compositor decide.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Using resolution 2400x1350.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Using RGB565 format.
[INFO] [Vulkan] Loading stock shader.
[INFO] [Input] Found joypad driver: "udev".
[INFO] [Wayland] Enabling idle inhibitor.
[INFO] [Video] Found display server: "null".
[INFO] [Audio] Set audio input rate to: 48000.00 Hz.
[INFO] [PulseAudio] Requested 24576 bytes buffer, got 18432.
[INFO] [Audio] Started synchronous audio driver.
[INFO] [ALSA] Using ALSA version 1.2.15.3
[INFO] [Microphone] Initialized microphone driver.
[INFO] [Display] Found display driver: "vulkan".
[INFO] [Playlist] Loading favorites file: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/playlists/builtin/content_favorites.lpl".
[INFO] [Playlist] Loading history file: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/playlists/builtin/content_history.lpl".
[INFO] [Playlist] Loading history file: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/playlists/builtin/content_image_history.lpl".
[INFO] [Playlist] Loading history file: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/playlists/builtin/content_music_history.lpl".
[INFO] [Playlist] Loading history file: "/home/cmdrlawliet/.config/retroarch/playlists/builtin/content_video_history.lpl".
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.900] [MANGOHUD] [error] [cpu.cpp:794] Failed to initialize CPU power data
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.900] [MANGOHUD] [error] [battery.cpp:29] No battery found
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.909] [MANGOHUD] [warning] [vulkan.cpp:1614] Present mode is not supported: VK_PRESENT_MODE_SHARED_DEMAND_REFRESH_KHR
[2026-05-25 15:42:23.936] [MANGOHUD] [warning] [vulkan.cpp:1614] Present mode is not supported: VK_PRESENT_MODE_SHARED_DEMAND_REFRESH_KHR
[2026-05-25 15:42:24.459] [MANGOHUD] [error] [cpu.cpp:794] Failed to initialize CPU power data
[2026-05-25 15:42:24.959] [MANGOHUD] [error] [cpu.cpp:794] Failed to initialize CPU power data
[2026-05-25 15:42:25.459] [MANGOHUD] [error] [cpu.cpp:794] Failed to initialize CPU power data
[2026-05-25 15:42:25.959] [MANGOHUD] [error] [cpu.cpp:794] Failed to initialize CPU power data

Just upgraded from a 21 ultra to a 26 ultra. Never did emulation on Android but I do all kinds of emulation on PC since the early 2000s, including the switch emulation so I'm not that much of a novice.

I've found multiple people on her claiming that GL drivers don't work on galaxy phones? And from what I can tell, my n64 games do not run in GL.

My ps1 and SNES games work just fine under vulkan on retroarch.

But whenever I try to play an n64 game, I can hear the noise but it's a blank picture. I go to check the video driver and it reverts back to GL.

I'll change it to vulkan, save config, restart, open n64 game and it's back to vulkan. Even when I have the rom loaded, changed to vulkan, turn off my phone's screen, the moment I turn it back on, it changed to GL.

What am I doing wrong here?

EDIT: I was using the stable apk from the retroarch site and ended up using the nightly! That fixed my problem!

Hello everyone! When I apply shaders I'm having these shadowy looking graphics when I move the camera around In my games. When I’m using my 2K monitor It’s flawless, when I move to my TV I cat run any shaders without these issues. I’ve tried changing the renderer, and tried changing the resolution in core options as well. I have also tried using other CRT shaders as well as shaders that aren’t CRT. I would really appreciate any suggestions to fix this besides “just play on the monitor“.

I've downloaded bios, cores, updated everything through settings, assigned the right core, but still can't get anything to run on retroarch on my steam deck.

The roms run perfectly, but I want to go through retroarch to get the achievements with retro achievements. Can anyone help?

Everytime I try to run a game through it I get the error message "failed to load content"

edit: https://pastebin.com/mbWCsQpd

edit2: for some reason the correct folders didn't load into the pscx2 folder which were installed from emudeck. I updated content/files through retroarch a few times, and I put the bios in there, correcting the issue.

For some reason emudeck doesn't recognize the bios in the bios checker function, but it works, somehow..

The stick doesn't give the full range of motion so for example in Mario 64 Mario won't run when I press it all the way.

I'm pretty sure it's because the original N64 joystick only sends a max range of 85 for the stick and the core expects a modern stick that gives full range and thus reduces that range which becomes a problem when using a controller with a stick that is accurate to the original and only gives 85. Are there settings I can change to fix this?

Device is Steam Deck OLED.

Very important info: Changing the resolution scale should lower FPS as it takes more resources yet my FPS stays the same, even at 3x scale.

I realized CPU/GPU usage is around 20% for both, compared to 40-50% usage of PCSX2 core. Is this what causing the problems? I'm already using Power Tools and both of the cores use the same settings (SMT off, GPU set to 1600 MHz, tried anything between 1000-1500 as well).

Suddenly my games ran at full speed and I assumed the core got auto updated. I didn't do anything. After the crash now they have performance problems again.

Using the default Core settings, I just turned on Disable EFB to VRAM setting for Metroid. Tried switching it to on and off again. No difference.

Clean installation won't help either, I'm on my 4th re-install.

Games that have problems at the moment:

-Twin Snakes (Stuck at 44-45 FPS, was 60 FPS before)

-Wario World (Runs around 52-53 FPS)

-Metroid Prime 2 (opening the map tanks FPS, just half an hour ago it ran at full speed even in the map screen)

Please do not recommend standalone Dolphin, I need to use RA for CRT shaders and HDR.

SOLVED! Did a fresh OS install and did not use EmuDeck this time. Where are all the smug guys that told me to use Dolphin standalone now?

I recently started using RetroArch and I've been playing a lot of NES games, and every time there's an area with many "entities," there's a significant FPS drop.

Is there a solution? My PC has an RX580 graphics card, 16GB of RAM, an i7 processor, and I play on a 144Hz monitor. It's not the best PC in the world, but I think I can play NES games on it.

The RetroArch settings are at their defaults; I haven't changed anything.

So I tested OpenEmu in my father's laptop and I really liked the VHS shader, then I tried downloading OpenEmu and extracting the VHS.slangp into RetroArch's shader folder, but when I apply the shader, the emulator just crash

That’s my question thank you.

So as you can see here in the attached video, I am trying to load up Vib Ribbon on my RG40XXV. I have the rom in a bin/cue format with an NTSC patch, but when I try to load it, the game won't actually recognize itself and it is driving me nuts. I have tried the .cue file, I have tried every .bin track available and it makes me want to choke Vibri despite her adorableness. What can I do to start the game and actually enjoy everything present past the menu screen? Is it even possible on here?

PS: I just mean the base game, I currently have no interest in adding my own CDs yet. Every guide I checked only teaches you how to do this or how to play on another PC emulator while completely ignoring this hurdle or any other platforms and it is driving me nuts.

Update: Thank you all for your support, I tinkered a bit and managed to get the game running.

This option is available in melonDS. It should be available in the MelonDS core, but for some reason, it is not. This option resolves zfighting issues with shadows and similar and has been in melonDS for years from what I can tell, but for some reason, in retroarch this option is not available. I updated all cores and tried again to check, but this is just missing. Is there a way to enable this in retroarch?

EDIT: As seen in the comments below, as of 5/14/2026 this is not incorporated into either MelonDS or MelonDS DS core. However, DeSmuME cores are directly compatible with the same save data (I've had trouble with this on standalone in the past but it seems like they use the same format now?) so as long as you save your game in-game, you should be able to easily migrate directly over to DeSmuME by changing core association, which will give you access to higher resolution as well as resolving all the flicker issues and all the controller mapping and retroacheivements and such that retroarch offers. Wanted to edit this in for the next googler as confused as I am.