Yabadabadoo

Yabadabadoo is a Sega Saturn core tuned for low-power handhelds. The optional Yabadabadoo pak adds it as an alternate core for the Saturn system, next to YabaSanshiro, which stays the default. The pak doesn’t add a system, and nothing appears in the Apps tab.

Yabadabadoo is by ProRapSuperstarOriginalMaster, a fork of the libretro port of Yabause built to make Saturn games playable on the Miyoo Mini. The pak packages its releases for Leaf.

Experimental

Yabadabadoo is early work, and its author describes it as largely AI-assisted. Expect some games to glitch, run slowly, or not start at all, and keep YabaSanshiro for the games it already runs well. The upstream release notes list the games known to have problems.

Requires Leaf 0.13

The pak needs Leaf 0.13 or newer. Older releases don’t offer it in Pak Rat.

Install

Open System with the Menu button, go to Actions, then choose Pak Rat. Pick Yabadabadoo and install it over Wi-Fi. The download is about 33 MB, and the pak takes about 71 MB on the card. Most of that is a 32-bit graphics driver; see How it works.

The pak is open source and independently packaged in the Yabadabadoo-pak repository. It doesn’t include any games or BIOS files.

Play a game on Yabadabadoo

To play one game on Yabadabadoo, press X on that game, choose Core, then choose Yabadabadoo (experimental). To use it for every Saturn game, do the same on the Saturn system. To go back, choose YabaSanshiro, or use Reset Overrides on a game to return it to the system’s choice. See the Options menu.

Yabadabadoo runs .chd, .cue, .iso, .mds, .ccd, .m3u, and .zip games from Roms/SATURN/.

BIOS

Yabadabadoo needs a real Saturn BIOS. Put one of these in BIOS/SATURN/ on the card the game is on:

• sega_101.bin - Japan v1.01
• mpr-17933.bin - USA and Europe v1.00
• saturn_bios.bin - either of the above, renamed

It picks the BIOS that matches the game’s region on its own. Without one, it shows a screen asking for a BIOS instead of starting the game. The Saturn BIOS option applies to YabaSanshiro Standalone only.

Controls

The face buttons follow the shape of a Saturn pad. Y, B, and A, left to right around your thumb, are the Saturn’s A, B, and C buttons, and L1, X, and R1 are its X, Y, and Z:

Saturn	MLP1
A, B, C	Y, B, A
X, Y, Z	L1, X, R1
L, R	L2, R2
Start	Start

To move a button for one game or for all of them, open RetroArch Settings in the in-game menu, change it in Quick Menu > Controls, and save a remap file there.

Everything else matches Leaf’s other RetroArch cores.

• Menu opens Leaf’s in-game menu over the game, with save states, reset, and the rest; see The in-game menu. Choose Quit there to leave the game. RetroArch’s own menu is under RetroArch Settings, and core options are in its Quick Menu.
• Menu held with another button works as it does on other cores. By default, Menu + Select opens the Game Switcher, Menu + L1 takes a screenshot, and any RetroArch hotkey you’ve bound works the same way. See Hotkeys and RetroArch hotkeys.
• With a controller connected, it’s player 1, as everywhere else in Leaf, and its Guide or Home button opens Leaf’s in-game menu.

Saves and states

• In-game saves go to Saves/Yabadabadoo/ on the game’s card. They’re written a moment after the game saves, so a crash or a flat battery doesn’t lose them.
• Save states go to States/Yabadabadoo/ on the game’s card. Each slot in Leaf’s in-game menu shows a thumbnail.
• Saving a state when you hold the power button, and resuming after power-off, work as they do on other cores.
• RetroArch settings, core options, and remaps for Yabadabadoo are kept with the rest of Leaf’s RetroArch settings, in .umrk/mlp1/retroarch/ on your main card.

Yabadabadoo’s saves and states are separate from YabaSanshiro’s, so switch back to the core that made a save rather than moving files between them.

Removing the pak removes the core on the next rescan. It doesn’t remove your files under Roms/, BIOS/, Saves/, States/, or .userdata/.

Settings

Yabadabadoo runs with the same RetroArch settings as Leaf’s other cores, so a change you made in RetroArch Settings for another game applies here too. Leaf still sets a few things itself on every launch; see RetroArch settings.

A change you make from inside Yabadabadoo’s RetroArch is saved to Leaf’s shared settings only when its RetroArch is the same version as Leaf’s. If a change doesn’t carry over to your other games, make it from a game on another core.

Limits

Recording and Bluetooth audio aren’t available with this core.

How it works

Most of Yabadabadoo’s speed comes from its recompiler, which turns Saturn code into ARM code as the game runs. That recompiler only exists for 32-bit ARM. The MLP1 can run 32-bit programs, but Leaf and its RetroArch are 64-bit, so the pak brings its own 32-bit RetroArch and every library it needs, including a 32-bit build of the MLP1’s graphics driver. It doesn’t need PortMaster or any other pak.

Leaf runs that RetroArch in place of its own, with the same settings, and controls it the way it controls its own. That’s why the in-game menu, the Game Switcher, and hotkeys work, and why this version needs Leaf 0.13.