Super ZSNES 0.310 adds portrait mode, TV apps and a rough Star Fox rebuild

Version 0.310 of the SNES emulator Super ZSNES brings Apple TV and Android TV support, mobile portrait mode, and an early GPU-based Star Fox enhancement, alongside controller fixes.

AI-drafted from 3 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

Super ZSNES, the SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) emulator that relaunched under developer zsKnight, has reached version 0.310. The update adds a portrait display mode for phones, native apps for Apple TV and Android TV, and a first attempt at rebuilding Star Fox's polygon graphics on the GPU, according to the developer's own changelog posted to the r/emulation thread and confirmed by RetroRGB's writeup.

The headline feature for living rooms is TV support. Super ZSNES now runs as a proper app on Apple TV and Android TV boxes, with a local web server handling file transfer: point a browser at the address the app shows, drop in ROMs and save files, and they appear on the box without a cable in sight. RetroRGB's report describes trying exactly this on an Apple TV connected to an LG OLED, loading A Link to the Past with its MSU-1 enhanced audio track working immediately. The outlet also flags something easy to miss: TVs left in Filmmaker or cinema picture modes will add visible input lag, so the advice is to switch the HDMI input to Game Mode before blaming the emulator.

Why the Star Fox work is the interesting bit

The changelog's biggest technical claim is the “first pass Starfox Enhancement”, credited to contributors named Kandowontu, Sunlit, Alexander and what's described as “the Starfox EX team”. Rather than just upscaling the SNES Super FX chip's flat-shaded polygons, Super ZSNES now recreates the game's 3D models and sprites as actual GPU-instanced 3D objects, then layers on widescreen, higher resolution and interpolation. It is, for now, narrow in scope: the changelog says it only works with the original version 2 ROM of Star Fox. Controls have been extended to match, with the right analogue stick now steering the new 3D layers mode and a held press of the left stick triggering a zoom.

The wider enhancement system behind this is what zsKnight calls .zsmod files: custom packages that sit next to a ROM, named to match it, which the emulator loads automatically. There's also early support for .zlua scripts, and the developer says an enhancement editor is being beta tested in the project's Discord server, though no public release date is given. A previously shipped Super Metroid widescreen patch has been fixed in this build, and internal widescreen now switches off automatically when a game-specific widescreen option is active, presumably to stop the two fighting each other.

What's still rough

RetroRGB's hands-on notes several problems worth knowing about before installing. The reviewer couldn't work out how to reach the enhancement toggle menu using either an Apple TV remote or a PS5 controller. Scanline filtering looked uneven without a vertical integer scale option. There's no subfolder support yet, which matters for MSU-1 audio files that are typically organised in their own folders. Most strikingly, the outlet reports the app worked fine on a device running iOS 26 but crashed instantly on an Apple TV running the newer tvOS 27, a gap RetroRGB expects to be fixed quickly.

Pricing splits along platform lines: the Apple TV and Android TV builds cost $3, while the PC version remains free, according to RetroRGB. The Reddit changelog says the next release, 0.320, will focus on RetroAchievements support (described as “almost done”), a downloader for enhancement data, and further visual customisation options. Given how new the Star Fox work and the TV apps both are, treat this as an early build rather than a finished product: useful to try, not yet the definitive way to play.

Sources

Image: RetroRGB -

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