Opening and Running Snes9x

Browse to the directory you extracted the zip file to and double click "snes9x.exe". You might want to create a shortcut to this file on your desktop, this will make it easier to run in future.

Now that we have it up and running, lets see what we can do.
Snes9x makes it as easy as possible to start playing games without having to mess about with settings or other weird stuff. Open Snes9x then select "File" > "Load Game" (or CTRL + O) and browse to your rom folder.
If your roms are in a compressed format, such as .zip, you will not see any extra information in "Description" or "Size". This information is only displayed for uncompressed files, such .smc .fig .sfc.
Select which game you want to play and click the "Open ROM" button.
Viola, you are now in Retro Gaming Nirvana.

The Default control keys are as follows: -
Up - Cursor Up
Down - Cursor Down
Left - Cursor Left
Right - Cursor Right
Start - Enter
Select - Space
A - D
B - C
X - S
Y - X
L - A
R - Z
(Bold characters are SNES controls)

These can be changed to suit your needs, you can even reconfigure the keys to correspond to joypad directions and button presses.
To edit the controls, select "Input" > "Joypad Configuration" (or press ALT+F7), you will now have a screen like this.

Click on one of the white boxes and replace the default control with your preferred key and repeat for each white box. If you have a joypad or controller you want to use just replace the key presses with button & directional presses and the pad will work in Snes9x.

Using a Joypad is the best control method due to the fact that all keyboards have a limit on the maximum keys that can pressed simultaneously. I personally use a SNES pad connected to the LPT (Parallel Port) on my PC, this is my favourite way to play SNES games.

Cheats never prosper, or do they?

Once you have a game loaded, there are a few extra features in Snes9x available to you.
The cheat system is easy to use, as long as you learn the basic. I will use Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts to show you how to obtain infinite lives. Any help is appreciated on this difficult game.
First load the game, start playing the first level and pause it as soon as possible, this makes it a little easier. Now select "Cheat" > "Search for New Cheats" (or press ALT+A)
In the "Comparison type" select "Equal", in "Compare To" select "Entered Value" and in "Enter a Value" type "2", for the number of lives you started with, then click "Search".
You should now have about 100 matches, we need to narrow this down a bit to find the value we want.
Click "OK" and return to the game, now lose a life. On your next life try to return to the same place and go back into the cheat window.
Now enter "1" into the "Enter a Value" section and click "Search" again.
Now you should have narrowed the list down to between 1 and 4 different values, if you have more than 1 value then try losing another life and repeating until you get only 1 value.
Now we have just one value "7E02A4", select the entry and click "Add Cheat". In the section marked "Enter a New Value" type any number between "1" and "9", it doesn't really matter which value you choose, then click "OK".
Now select "Cheat" > "Apply Cheats" and you will now be invulnerable.

Rather than go through all that hard work, you can use "Game Genie" and "Pro-Action Replay" codes as well, just as if you had the original cheat cartridge in your PC.
A quick search at www.gamegenie.com reveals 61 codes for "Street Fighter 2". I think I will try out "DD61-6DA9" as this will make it possible to do special moves in mid air. I remember playing an arcade machine in a seedy back alley arcade with this hack activated, I loved it.
Select "Cheat" > "Game Genie, Pro-Action replay codes" (or press ALT+A) and enter the above code into the box marked "Enter cheat code" and click "Add" then "OK"
Select "Cheat" again and ensure that the "Apply Cheats" section is ticked.
Start playing the game and choose you favourite character and start kicking ass with mid air fireballs, sonic booms and whirlwind kicks.

Problem solving

What to do if things are not going to plan.
Here are some solutions to common problems, if these don't solve your specific problem try www.snes9x.com and pay a visit to the forum.

Resetting the Settings
If you have been playing around with the settings to try and get a feature or game to work and can’t remember what you have changed or the program will not open any more, you might want to reset the settings. This is easily done by clicking START > Run, now browse for the snes9x.exe file and click OPEN.
You should be back at the RUN program with the correct path to your Snes9x program, now you need to add "-restore" to the end of the line, like this:
"C:\ snes9x-1.41-1\snes9x.exe" -restore
Make sure that you leave a space before the -restore command.

My Game will not work
Don't worry, this has happened to most emulator users at one time or another and can be caused by a few different reasons.

1. Bad ROM image

This is the most common problem. Try extracting / downloading the ROM image again, if this still fails try to get the file from a different source as your original download source may be corrupted.

2. Corrupted Graphics but sound is OK

This happens because the original game cartridges stored the graphics in a "Graphic Pack" (S-DDS1 or SPC7110 chip) and this cannot be extracted from the original cartridge.
You can get "Graphic Packs" from www.dejap.com for these games.
Games include "Star Ocean", "Streetfighter Alpha 2", "Streetfighter Zero 2" and "Far East of Eden Zero"
To solve this problem extract the "Graphics Pack" (see above) to your hard drive and open Snes9x. Click on "Options" > "GFX Pack Configuration", you will now have a list of all the games that require patching. Select which game you want to patch and browse for the "Graphics Pack" you have extracted. Click "OK" and load your file, now instead of looking like this

It should look more like this

3. I can't play "Super Mario 3"

This is because that game is for the NES console and is not a SNES game.
SNES games will usually have the following extensions, SMC, SFC, FIG and ZIP.
ZIP files are the most common format for ROMs, especially when getting them from the Internet. The only disadvantage to using ZIP files rather than the uncompressed ROM image, is when you go to load the file, you do not get a description or file size in the list just the ROM filename.
ZIP files are a great bonus as the storage space required for them is a lot less than the uncompressed ROM image, as much as a quarter of the size.

4. My game still will not work

There are some games that currently do not work with any version of Snes9x. This is due to newer chips in the cartridge that have not been emulated yet and may never be.
"SD Gundam GX", "Topgear 3000" and "Exhaust Heat 2" and such games.

5. My game plays but there is no sound / sound is corrupt

The first port of call should be to make sure that you have the latest drivers for your sound card and that it supports DirectX. Make sure that your volume control in Windows is not turned down/off as well. Also make sure that your speakers are connected and working, just to be on the safe side.
If the problem still persists, check your settings in Snes9x. On the "Sound" drop down select "Playback Rate" and make sure that "No Sound" is not selected.
If this doesn't solve your problem, try changing the "Playback Rate", "16-bit Sound", "Stereo" and in the "Settings". Don't worry about messing things up because you can always reset all Snes9x settings as stated near the start of the article.

6. It runs too slow

The minimum specification for Snes9x is a Pentium 200Mhz processor with 32Mb but this still may not be powerful enough to run games full speed, so here are some changes you can make to get games to run faster. It is possible to run games on less powerful machines than the minimum specification but don't expect them to reach full speed, even with these tips.
You can display the fps (frames per second) on screen, so that you can see straight away if there is a speed improvement, if any. Turn on fps display by selecting "Options" > "Display Configuration" or ALT+F5, then check the box marked "Show Frame Rate"

Full Screen mode is actually faster than windowed mode, you can do this by selecting "Window" > "Full Screen" or by pressing ALT+ENTER. Pressing ALT+ENTER again will return you to windowed mode.

Turning the Sound off should give you a speed boost, select "Sound" > "Playback Rate" and select "No Sound".
Alternatively you might want to lower the quality so that you still get some sound. Select "Sound" and un-tick the following options, "16-Bit Sound", "Stereo" and "Interpolated".
You may want to try one at a time so that you can see what performance gain you receive.

Hopefully you should now be able to play any SNES game on your PC as if it was the real thing.