ONScripter - RetroBIOS¶
| Type | libretro |
| Source | https://github.com/iyzsong/onscripter-libretro |
| Version | 0.3 |
| Profiled | 2026-03-18 |
| Cores | onscripter |
| Systems | onscripter |
No BIOS or firmware files required. This core is self-contained.
ONScripter is a clone of NScripter, a Japanese visual novel engine by Naoki Takahashi. The libretro port by iyzsong wraps the upstream engine (ogapee/onscripter, tag 20230825) with an SDL-to-libretro shim layer.
No BIOS or system files are required. The .info file declares no firmware entries and the core never calls RETRO_ENVIRONMENT_GET_SYSTEM_DIRECTORY.
Game content is loaded directly from the archive path containing the script file. The core opens txt, dat, ___, or ons script files via ONScripter::openScript() and reads all game assets (graphics, audio, fonts) from the same directory.
The engine looks for a font file named default.ttf in the game directory. This is a per-game asset shipped with each visual novel, not a system-level file managed by RetroArch.
Dependencies (bundled at build time via Guix): freetype, libjpeg, libogg, libvorbis, libmad, bzip2, SDL (shimmed to libretro).
The core is marked is_experimental = true. It does not support save states (retro_serialize_size returns 0).
Supported script formats: .txt, .dat, .___, .ons needs_fullpath = true, block_extract = false.
Generated on 2026-03-20T19:12:20Z