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Star Engine/Sonic Retro Engine

Star Engine (formerly Sonic Retro Engine) are multiple engine ports developed by Rubberduckycooly. They were released in 2021.

These engines, part of the Ports section of Batocera, are enhanced versions of the original Sonic 1, 2 and Sonic CD for the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and CD32. They require additional game files from the recent iOS/Android ports to setup the games.

This system scrapes metadata for the “sonicretro” group(s) and loads the sonicretro set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Grouped with the “ports” group of systems.

sega-sonic-logo.jpg

  • Accepted ROM formats: .son, .scd
  • Folder: /userdata/roms/sonicretro
Emulators
sonic2013
soniccd

The Star Engine itself does not need any BIOS file to run, however it is non-functional without the appropriate .rsdk file for the Sonic game you wish to play.

This port requires the .rsdk files from the Android or iOS versions of Sonic 1 & Sonic 2.

The Android APKs can be opened up in an extractor program like 7-zip. You need to extract the file /assets/Data.rsdk.xmf and rename it to Data.rsdk and place it in a folder named [Game Name].son (for example Sonic 1.son).

For Sonic CD, you can use the files from the Android, iOS, or Steam versions, as well as the video files from the Steam version.

The APK can be extracted the same way. If you're using the Steam version, the Data.rsdk file is in the game's folder.

The Data.rsdk file and videos folder should be in a folder named [Game Name].scd (i.e. roms/sonicretro/Sonic CD.scd/).

Here are the checksums of some data files that have been reported to be working.

Sonic game Game file md5 Android APK versions Notes
Sonic 1 Sonic 1.son/Data.rsdk f679e87477bbed17ff1bdb9a6793f49c Unknown
ad10f658daf0f09b367ad7f23e35ff57 v3.0.0 - v3.3.0_57
39d3aa33504909a1f0771a7b3045f952 v3.3.0_60 - v3.4.9
150e44dfea6a140dbf5575cc18944c51 v3.5.0 - v3.5.1
b0a17e35bbc95b00ede921c1c0b80d40 v3.8.1
Sonic 2 Sonic 2.son/Data.rsdk b7339e7a4cf4ae6264449eec06465c7c Unknown
2b2e44eaacbed7a12823e87a500f236f v1.0.1 - v1.2.9
7c638025b63d2da158dfaa70a402ec51 v1.3.0 - v1.3.1
4d0821083a7cdb36a39e5cc1afb2e640 v1.6.1
Sonic CD Sonic CD.scd/Data.rsdk 78a03b962acf3e2622addab9cdb8e2ce Unknown
8c373a84d66bec9eedfbe178f2de39d2 v3.4.5
1bd5ad366df1765c98d20b53c092a528 Unknown Controller doesn't work
Mouse works (but no visible mouse cursor)
May be a Steam version?

Batocera will auto-select the port to use based on the folder's extension - sonic2013/rsdk4 for .son folders, or soniccd/rsdk3 for .scd folders.

Selecting the wrong emulator will be ignored as the two versions are not compatible. The options are slightly different between the two, so you may need to manually select the emulator to change them.

The dev menu option is needed to run mods.

sonic2013 configuration

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: sonicretro.videomode

ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
LANGUAGE sonicretro.language Change the game language
⇒ English 0, French 1, Italian 2, German 3, Spanish 4, Japanese 5, Portugese 6, Russian 7, Korean 8, Chinese 9.
VSYNC sonicretro.vsync Enable vertical sync
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
SCALING MODE sonicretro.scalingmode Screen scaling options
⇒ Nearest Neighbour 0, Integer Scale 1, Sharp Bilinear 2, Regular Bilnear 3.
HQ Mode sonicretro.hqmode Enable High Quality effects for special stages
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
SKIP START MENU sonicretro.skipstart Bypass the pre-game menu
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
DEV MENU sonicretro.devmenu Modding and other advanced options
⇒ Off 0, On 1.

soniccd configuration

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: sonicretro.videomode

ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
LANGUAGE sonicretro.language Change the game language
⇒ English 0, French 1, Italian 2, German 3, Spanish 4, Japanese 5.
VSYNC sonicretro.vsync
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
SCALING MODE sonicretro.scalingmode Screen scaling options
⇒ Nearest Neighbour 0, Integer Scale 1, Sharp Bilinear 2, Regular Bilnear 3.
HQ Mode sonicretro.hqmode Enable high quality effects for special stages
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
SPINDASH TYPE sonicretro.spindash Spindash type
⇒ By Save -1, Sonic 2 0, Sonic CD 1.
DEV MENU sonicretro.devmenu For modding and other advanced options
⇒ Off 0, On 1.

Here are the default Sonic Retro Engine's controls shown on a Batocera Retropad:

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/sonicretro.1677090500.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 3 years ago
  • by maximumentropy