Song Summoner Revival v0.2.3

The biggest update since the first release: play the whole game with a
controller, a new Setup menu on both Windows and Android, your own
music library with a rebuilt iPod picker, and saves that survive an
uninstall on Android.

You still need your own copy of the game. The IPA is not included in
the download, the APK or the Windows build. You pick your copy the first
time you start.

Downloads

Platform	File
Android (arm64)	song-summoner-0.2.3.apk
Windows (64-bit)	The Windows zip: unzip it anywhere and run S.S.Encore.exe

Updating on Android: install over the old version. If you played the first
release, pick your old SongSummoner folder as the save folder and your
saves come along.

Updating on Windows: unzip over your old folder and your saves and options
stay put. The game is now called S.S.Encore.exe, so delete the old
touchHLE.exe, and point any shortcuts or antivirus exceptions at the new
name.

What's new

Controller support, everywhere

• Menus: every button menu, dialog, list, the title drum, the Options
  and Help screens, the card list and the shop. The D-pad moves by where
  buttons are on screen.
• Dialogs never wrap: left is always No, right is always Yes.
  Up and down still wrap in a column.
• Battle: a free tile cursor, move and attack select with the game's own
  previews, the command ring, deploying troopers, L1/R1 to step through
  your units, L2/R2 to zoom the map, Start for the battle menu.
• World map: move along the roads, cycle locations, and choose from the
  location and town menus.
• Cutscenes: Start skips.
• Shop password: the game's on-screen keyboard works with the D-pad.
  You can also type it on a real keyboard (Windows, or a USB or Bluetooth
  keyboard on Android) or your phone's own keyboard. Pick which in Setup >
  Game > Shop password.
• Button icons match your pad: Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo.
• Pick which face button confirms: bottom (default) or right.

An easier-to-see cursor

Setup > Game > Cursor lets you choose how the controller's cursor looks:

• Look: Like the game, Outlined or Bold.
• Colour: Gold, White, Yellow or Sky blue.

Every colour sits on a dark edge, so the cursor stands out on any
background without needing to tell colours apart. It's friendlier for
colour-blind players and easier to read on small screens.

The Setup menu

One menu for both platforms, drawn over the paused game. It opens by itself
on the first launch; after that press F2, hold Select + Start on a
controller, or tap the gear on Android.

• Game: change the game file, button icons, FPS counter, fullscreen
  (Windows), the fading gear (Android), cursor look and shop password.
• Music: add and remove music folders, rescan, list scroll speed.
• Controller: move any action to another button, stick dead zone.
• Keyboard: two keys per action, all remappable. Now on Android too.
• Data & help: open the data folder, make a bug report, back up and
  restore saves, and a button tester.
• Credits: everyone this is built on, and a tip jar (below).

Touch works throughout: one tap chooses, and you can drag to scroll long
tabs like Credits.

Your music, your troopers

• Point the game at folders of your own mp3, m4a, aac, wav or caf files.
  Tags and embedded cover art are read; each subfolder becomes a playlist.
• The iPod picker is rebuilt in the style of the original, with the game's
  own art: Song, Artist, Album and Playlist tabs, an A–Z strip, and fighter
  portraits. It works by touch or controller.
• Your trooper's song plays from your file in the palace, in battle and on
  the results screen, and each play counts towards listening points.

Android: saves that survive

• The app no longer asks for any storage permission.
• On the first launch you pick your game file, then a save folder (for
  example Documents/SongSummoner). Saves, settings, backups and bug
  reports are copied there, so they survive an uninstall.

Other improvements and fixes

• The item list in Edit Troopers scrolls smoothly with the D-pad on long
  lists: it stops on a whole item every time, keeps up when you hold a
  direction, and no longer pulls back to the highlight when you scroll it
  by touch.
• On Windows the game is now S.S.Encore.exe and opens maximized, scaled
  to fit. Restore the window for the old size, or press F11 for fullscreen.
• Windows builds are assembled into a ready-to-run folder, and rebuilding
  never touches your saves or options.
• The game no longer has to be baked into the APK or the Windows build.

Known issues

• In battle, the attack cursor sometimes jumps up a tile on its own.
• Windows antivirus tools (Avast, AVG, Bitdefender, sometimes Defender) may
  flag S.S.Encore.exe. It's a false positive from the emulator's JIT; see the
  README.

Found something else? Setup > Data & help > Make a bug report creates a
file you can attach to an issue. It never contains the game or your saves.

Support the developer

Song Summoner Revival is free, and always will be. It's made by one person
in their spare time. If it brings you some joy and you'd like to support my
work as a solo developer, a tip is always appreciated but never required.
Thank you for playing!

Credits and legal

Built on touchHLE. Controller
button icons by Zacksly (CC BY 3.0). Full
credits are in CREDITS.txt, included with every download.

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes Encore © 2009 SQUARE ENIX CO., LTD. All
rights reserved. This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not
made, approved or endorsed by Square Enix. It contains no part of the game.

Song Summoner v0.1 — Wrapper (Windows + Android)

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes Encore on touchHLE

Hopefully you ARCHIVED your legal backup so you can load the game data. We can't ship it. We won't ship it. But somewhere out there, in a certain very large library on the internet, a perfectly lawful personal backup may have wandered onto a shelf where curious people sometimes look.🤷·

This release ships just the wrapper — touchHLE with Song Summoner-specific fixes baked in (custom IPDMediaPickerController support so the iPod song-picker actually opens, MPMediaQuery filter-predicate plumbing so each song deterministically maps to a unique Tune Trooper, controller-driven virtual cursor with custom sprites, mouse-style autohide, F11 fullscreen, landscape-left default, and a few dozen UIKit / MediaPlayer stub fills). The IPA is BYO.

What's in the box

Download	Platform	Package ID
SongSummoner-Windows-x86_64.zip	Windows 10/11 (x64)	—
SongSummoner-Android-arm64.apk	Android 5+ ARM64	org.touchhle.android.songsummoner

Setup

Windows

1. Unzip anywhere.
2. Drop your ahem-acquired Song Summoner The Unsung Heroes Encore.ipa next to run.bat (or into an apps\ subfolder).
3. Double-click run.bat.
4. On first launch you'll be prompted to point touchHLE at your music folder — pick anywhere with .mp3/.m4a/.flac files. The path is saved to touchHLE_music_library.txt; delete that file to re-prompt later.
5. Press F11 at any time to toggle borderless fullscreen.

Android

1. adb install SongSummoner-Android-arm64.apk (or sideload it through your file manager).
2. Open the app once. It'll detect missing "All files access" and forward you straight to the system settings page — toggle it on for Song Summoner, hit back.
3. Drop the IPA in /sdcard/SongSummoner/. From a PC:

   adb push "Song Summoner The Unsung Heroes Encore.ipa" /sdcard/SongSummoner/

4. Tap Song Summoner again — it now boots straight into the game. A folder picker will pop up on first launch so you can grant access to your music library (typically /sdcard/Music/).

Where your saves live

Build	Path
Windows	touchHLE_sandbox\com.square-enix.SongSummonerEncore\Documents\
Android	/sdcard/SongSummoner/touchHLE_sandbox/com.square-enix.SongSummonerEncore/Documents/

Flat files, no DRM, no cloud. Copy somewhere safe after every milestone — corruption is rare but real. The settings .plist lives next door in Library/Preferences/ if you want to back that up too.

Controls (game controller recommended)

Input	Action
F11 (Windows)	Toggle borderless fullscreen
Left stick	On-screen cursor (mouse-style: holds position when released, auto-hides after 3 seconds idle)
L3 (click L-stick)	Tap at the cursor position
Right stick / D-pad	Drag region (battle camera, list scroll)
A	Confirm / advance dialog / wheel commit
B	Back / wheel-cancel
X	Skip cutscene
Y	Next ally arrow
LB	Previous ally arrow
Start	Turn order / system pill

All mappings live in touchHLE_options.txt — edit that file to remap, no rebuild needed.

Custom cursor sprites

The cursor renders three PNGs from res/:

File	Drawn when
res\Cursor Pointer.png	L3 not held (idle)
res\Cursor Select.png	L3 held, cursor still (tap)
res\Cursor Move.png	L3 held, cursor moving (drag)

The loader also accepts the alias names cursor_hand.png / cursor_tap.png / cursor_drag.png. Any missing sprite falls back to a small black dot for that state. Pixel-art (16×16 to 32×32) works best — drawn with nearest-neighbour sampling so it stays crisp. On Android the sprites are baked into the APK at build time.

Known weirdness

• Tune Trooper generation is gated behind opt-in. The picker is fully working — songs from your library show up, and each song deterministically yields a Tune Trooper with stats and a unique name. To expose songs to the game, set TOUCHHLE_MUSIC_LIBRARY_LIMIT=N for some N>0 before launching. A non-zero value currently triggers a "Calculating Play Points" hang on certain levels (root cause: a guest-thread @synchronized spin-loop that touchHLE's no-op +exit can't unwind); with the env var unset the game takes its "Ain't no tunes" branch and runs cleanly through every menu and battle.
• The game is intrinsically landscape — the default options pin --landscape-left, so touch coordinates don't end up rotated 90° wrong.
• Album-art placeholder is generic (real cover-art extraction from .m4a tags isn't implemented yet).
• The wrapper passes --disable-analog-stick-tilt-controls automatically — Song Summoner doesn't use the accelerometer, and leaving tilt simulation on would fight the left stick over the same physical input now that it's wired to the virtual cursor.

About this project

This is purely a technical exercise — an attempt to see whether older iOS software (specifically a 2009-era ARMv6/iOS-3 title that is no longer sold or supported on any current Apple platform) can be made to run on modern Windows and Android hardware via touchHLE. Everything published here is the wrapper code and build glue around that emulator; no game assets, code, or data ship with this release.

Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes, Song Summoner: The Unsung Heroes Encore, and all associated characters, artwork, music, story, trademarks, and source code are the intellectual property of Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Square Enix in any way. No infringement is intended; all rights remain with their respective owners.

If you enjoyed Song Summoner, please support Square Enix by buying their currently-available titles.