RetroXR v0.5.0: consoles you can stack

Sep 3, 2026 - 4 min read

Full changelog · Download · SideQuest · Discord

Major new features

🧱 Expansion hardware

Half the consoles in this room were never one box. v0.5.0 makes the add-ons real objects you assemble by hand: Satellaview, Sega CD, 32X, Nintendo 64DD, Jaguar CD, Super Game Boy and Super Game Boy 2, Sufami Turbo, and the CD-ROM².

Spawn the expansion, then set the console on top of it — or push the unit into the console’s cartridge slot, depending on which one it is. The stack snaps together into one machine, and each half takes its own media: a disc into the Sega CD’s tray, a disk into the 64DD, a Game Boy cartridge into the roof of a Super Game Boy, two cartridges into a Sufami Turbo.

The core follows the hardware. An expansion usually needs a different emulator from the console’s own default — a Mega Drive with a 32X on it is a different machine. You do not have to know which: build the stack and RetroXR switches to the core that supports the combination, downloading it if you do not have it yet.

Full detail on the new expansion hardware page, including the four units that need a firmware file before the menu will offer them.

📡 Satellaview+ — a broadcast that is still running

The Satellaview’s real broadcasts ended in 2000. Satellaview+ is a community project that puts a scheduled one back on the air, and v0.5.0 can receive it: point the sat folder at the client’s roms/satellaview folder, spawn an 8M Memory Pack, and save the transmissions you catch to it. The new Satellaview page walks through the whole stack.

🎧 A record player

The third audio deck, and the first one with no transport row to press. Drop an LP on the platter and swing the tonearm over by hand — where you set the needle down is where in the album you start. The 33/45 switch is real, and playing a 33⅓ record at 45 sounds exactly as wrong as it should. Put a finger on the spinning record and the pitch follows the platter: drag it slow and the note bends down, let go and it glides back up.

See CD player, tape deck and turntable.

👁️ Foveation works

Foveated rendering is finally on for Quest — pixels spent where you are looking, saved at the edge of the lens. It needed the fragment shaders rewritten to survive variable-rate shading on a mobile GPU, which is why it took this long.

Minor new features

The serial link is event-based, not polled. Cabling cores together now grabs the mutex three to four times less often, which is felt as a smoother run with up to four cores on one wire. See link cables.
The trash can is a storage box. Things dropped into it are animated away rather than simply vanishing.
The TV screen feels better to interact with.
The table is spawnable, from the Objects tab — and it is no longer part of the arcade room by default, so the room starts as an empty space you furnish.
A loading screen now covers a room change, instead of the app appearing to freeze.

Vendored cores

Dolphin, mGBA, PCSX-ReARMed and gambatte all updated for the event-based serial link.
snes9x — 8M ROM flash pack saving for BS-X, a new libretro API for the Satellaview access LED, and a fix for FLASH memory being initialised to the wrong values.
mupen64plus-next — single disk drive games now work from libretro, which is what makes the 64DD usable.

Bug fixes

A GBA cabled to a GameCube no longer has to be reseated if the GameCube was switched off when the cable went in.

In progress — leave these alone

These are in the build because it was easier to leave them in than take them out. They are half-finished and not meant to be used yet:

Power outlets and power cables.
Netplay room codes with a punch-through server.
Netplay file sharing between players (ROMs excluded).
.pck file support for models.

Known issues

Crashes can still happen when changing scenes. Save your layout before you switch.
On Quest, changing a setting in GRAPHICS turns foveation off until you restart the app.