mzNES

A lightweight, educational Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator written in Zig + SDL3.
The source code is licensed under the MIT license.

Project started: Sep.1.2026
Project finished:

Overview

zmNES is a low-level NES emulator built from scratch to explore Zig's capabilities.

Status & Features

• iNES Format Parsing: Header validation, Mapper ID extraction, PRG/CHR ROM loading.
• Memory Management: Zero-leak guarantee via explicit allocators & errdefer semantics.
• CPU Core (Ricoh 2A03): MOS 6502 instruction decoding, address modes, and interrupt handling.
• PPU (Picture Processing Unit): Background rendering, OAM sprite rendering, and NMI logic.
• APU (Audio Processing Unit): Pulse, Triangle, Noise, and DMC channel synthesis.
• Mappers:
  • Mapper 0 (NROM)
  • Mapper 1 (MMC1)
  • Mapper 3 (CNROM)