Many System 3.x games feature music as audio tracks on the CD-ROM. xsystem35 can play music from audio files, eliminating the need to insert CDs. Supported audio file formats are MP3 and Ogg. To use ripped audio files, create a file named playlist.txt in the game directory and list the paths to your tracks, one per line. For example:

# The first line is not used
BGM/track02.mp3
BGM/track03.mp3
...

The first line is not used because the first track on a game CD is typically a data track.

Some games have integrated music as MIDI. In such cases, the music won't play using the virtual CD feature. If you encounter a Cannot load MIDI error message, you might need to set the SDL_SOUNDFONTS environment variable to point to an .sf2 file. For example:

SDL_SOUNDFONTS=/usr/share/soundfonts/GeneralUser.sf2 xsystem35

Unicode Translation Support

While the original System 3.x only supported Shift_JIS (a Japanese character encoding), xsystem35 supports Unicode and can run games translated into languages other than Japanese and English.

For instructions on how to build a game with Unicode support, see the xsys35c documentation.

Debugging

xsystem35 features a built-in debugger that allows you to step through the game and examine or modify game variables. There are two ways to use the debugger:

Through Visual Studio Code (recommended): The vscode-system3x extension provides a graphical debugging interface for System 3.x.
Using the CLI Debugger: Running xsystem35 with the -debug option will launch the debugger with a console interface. Type help to see a list of available commands.

Streamer Mode

xsystem35 introduces a "Streamer Mode" to make playing games with NSFW content safer for streaming or public viewing. When enabled with the -censor <file> option, images specified in the provided file will be automatically mosaiced.

The misc/censor/ directory contains example censor list files for some games.

Installation

Prebuilt packages for Windows and Android can be downloaded from the Releases page.

Note for Windows:

The 64-bit version supports Windows 10 or later. For older versions of Windows, please use the 32-bit version.
Debugging is supported only in the 64-bit version.

For other platforms, refer to the Building section.

Running

Windows

Copy xsystem35.exe to the game folder and run it.

Android

See android/README.md.

Other Platforms

Run xsystem35 from within the game directory.

$ cd /path/to/game_directory
$ xsystem35

See xsystem35 command manual for detailed usage.

Building

SDL2 is used by default on desktop platforms and Emscripten. Pass -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=3 to CMake to select SDL3. Use a separate build directory for each SDL version.

The supported configurations are:

Platform	SDL2	SDL3
Linux and macOS	Yes	Yes
Windows 64-bit	Yes	Yes
Windows 32-bit	Yes	No
Emscripten	Yes	Yes
Android	No	Yes

SDL2 builds require SDL 2.18 or later and SDL2_mixer. SDL3 builds require SDL 3.4 or later and SDL3_mixer 3.2 or later. The remaining common dependencies are FreeType, zlib, and optionally libwebp, PortMidi, and cJSON.

Linux (Debian / Ubuntu)

$ sudo apt install build-essential cmake libsdl2-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev \
    libfreetype-dev libwebp-dev libportmidi-dev libcjson-dev asciidoctor
$ cmake -S . -B out/sdl2 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
    -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=2
$ cmake --build out/sdl2
$ sudo cmake --install out/sdl2

For SDL3 on a distribution that provides SDL 3.4 or later (for example, Ubuntu 26.04), install libsdl3-dev instead of the SDL2 packages and configure out/sdl3 with -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=3. If SDL3_mixer 3.2 or later is installed, CMake uses it; otherwise, CMake downloads and builds SDL3_mixer 3.2.4 during configuration.

MacOS

Homebrew is required.

$ brew install cmake pkg-config sdl2 sdl2_mixer freetype webp portmidi \
    cjson asciidoctor
$ cmake -S . -B out/sdl2 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
    -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=2
$ cmake --build out/sdl2
$ sudo cmake --install out/sdl2

For SDL3, install sdl3 sdl3_mixer instead of sdl2 sdl2_mixer and configure out/sdl3 with -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=3.

Windows

MSYS2 is required.

$ pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gcc \
    mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-SDL2 \
    mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-SDL2_mixer mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-freetype \
    mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-libwebp mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-portmidi \
    mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-cjson
$ cmake -S . -B out/sdl2 -G"MSYS Makefiles" \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=2
$ cmake --build out/sdl2

For a 64-bit SDL3 build, install mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-sdl3 and mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-sdl3-mixer instead of the SDL2 packages, then configure out/sdl3 with -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=3. The MSYS2 mingw32 repository does not provide SDL3, so 32-bit Windows builds remain on SDL2.

Emscripten

$ emcmake cmake -S . -B out/wasm-sdl2 -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=MinSizeRel \
    -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=2
$ cmake --build out/wasm-sdl2

For SDL3, use a different build directory and -DXSYSTEM35_SDL_VERSION=3. Both versions use Emscripten's bundled SDL port; SDL_mixer is not required.

To use the generated binary, check out Kichikuou on Web and copy out/wasm-sdl2/src/xsystem35.* into its docs directory.

Android

See android/README.md.

Android uses SDL3 exclusively. The Gradle build downloads fixed official SDL3 3.4.16 and SDL3_mixer 3.2.4 AARs and exposes them to CMake through Prefab.