SummerStation64 v0.3c

[Kerillian0]

SummerStation64 v0.3c

☀️ A themeable game menu for the SummerCart64, built on a real N64 and a CRT. ☀️

v0.3c brings fixes and small wishes from your reports before v0.4:
cleaner box art (the thin black frame many scans carry is trimmed away),
long game names that slide so you can read them whole, adding a folder
to the Games tab that works the way you'd expect (the highlighted folder,
and the folders inside it), and South Park: Chef's Love Shack is no longer
taken for a hack. It also includes v0.3b's fix for Settings lists.

Everything v0.3a brought is below: cheats you can switch on and off from
Game info (with codes for 1,300+ games in the Companion), rename files on
the console, a Hacks tab and any collection as a tab, 50 favorites
with a favorite button on every cover, simpler menus, START straight to
Settings, a screenshot button that suits the 8BitDo mod kit, easier 64DD
pairing, and step-by-step guides. Thank you to everyone who tried v0.3 and
wrote in!

New here? Everything v0.3 brought (3D boxes and cartridges, collections, the
letter dial, the Retro and Homebrew tabs, party mode, clips) is in the
v0.3 release notes.

Tip

Quick start: download sc64menu.n64 from the Assets below, copy it
to the top folder of your SD card, switch on. Covers and game details are
built in.

Note

Coming from v0.3, v0.3a or v0.3b? Copy the new sc64menu.n64 over the old one; your
settings, favorites, collections and save backups stay. START now opens
Settings at once. What the old START menu held is in Settings: Information
(menu, flashcart and N64 information) and System (Controller Pak Manager,
Clock).

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🔧 New and fixed in v0.3c

• No more black frames round the covers. About half the covers in the
  metadata pack carry a thin near-black border from the scan, which showed
  as dark lines down the edges of the cover and the 3D box. The menu now
  trims it, only lines that are near-black all the way across and never
  more than a few pixels, so covers that are black by design keep their
  look. Built-in covers come trimmed; covers from your SD card are trimmed
  as they load, using no extra memory. Settings > Display > Trim Black
  Edges switches it off for covers from the card.
• Long names slide. On the rows of covers, a name too long for the panel
  under them waits two seconds, slides to its end, and slides back.
  Settings > Display > Scroll Long Names; off cuts it short with "...".
• Adding folders to the Games tab. Highlight a folder on the Folders tab
  and press Z: the menu now offers Add "that folder" to Games (it used to
  add the folder you were standing in). The games in the folders inside
  it show too, one level down, so N64 Games/RPG/ comes along with
  N64 Games. The Z menu only offers what applies (no Add for a folder
  already there, no Remove for one that isn't), and a folder marked as
  holding hacks covers its subfolders.
• South Park: Chef's Love Shack no longer gets the Hack badge: the word
  "hack" now has to start a word in the file name.
• Settings lists (any setting with more than four values, such as Theme)
  show every value from the top and scroll with the cursor (v0.3b).
• "Watchdog timeout" at power-on is explained under Installing below.
• The credits screen's L|Z pop-up says where to donate (see Free, always).

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📥 Installing

	⭐ Art Edition (recommended)	Standard
File in the Assets	sc64menu.n64	SummerStation64-v0.3c-Standard.zip
Size	about 35 MB	about 2.5 MB
Box covers and cartridges	built in, appear faster	from the metadata pack on your SD card
Game details (descriptions, dates, developers, genres, players)	built in	built in

1. Update your SummerCart64's firmware if it is old, and back up your
   sc64menu.n64.
2. Art Edition: copy sc64menu.n64 from the Assets to the top folder of
   your SD card. Standard: unzip SummerStation64-v0.3c-Standard.zip and
   copy the sc64menu.n64 inside; for covers, put the
   metadata pack
   in sd:/menu/metadata/.
3. Switch the N64 on.

Warning

"Watchdog timeout" at power-on? The SummerCart64 gives the menu file 5
seconds to load. On a card that has been used for a while, the Art Edition
(about 33 MB) can be scattered across it and take longer. Copy your files
off, reformat the card (FAT32 or exFAT, for example with the SD
Association's SD Card Formatter), and copy sc64menu.n64 back first,
then everything else. If it still happens, use the Standard edition:
it loads as fast as the stock menu.

New to SummerStation64? The Companion's
Guide
walks through setting up a card, including adding your game folders.

🕹️ Retro games: where their pictures go

NES, SNES and Game Boy games need the menu's emulators in menu/emulators/
(see N64FlashcartMenu's documentation). Their pictures are read from the SD
card, one folder per game, named after the game's file without its
extension:

menu/metadata/nes/Super Mario Bros. (World)/boxart_front.png
                                            boxart_back.png
                                            boxart_spine.png
                                            gamepak_front.png   (see-through background)
                                            gamepak_back.png
                                            metadata.ini, description.txt

snes, gb and gbc work the same way. The Companion's Missing Metadata
tab puts everything in the right place for you.

🎞️ Making a GIF

1. On the console: Settings > System, choose Clip Length, Clip Size
   and Clip Frame Rate, then press A on Record Clip and leave
   Settings.
2. After three ticks it records; a sound says when it is done. Half size at
   15 frames a second records a 10-second clip in about a minute and a half;
   full size at 30 takes about ten minutes.
3. Put the card in your computer, open the
   Companion's Clips tab,
   choose the card and the clip, and press Make GIF.

🔐 Checksums

SHA-1 of each sc64menu.n64, to check your download:

b85622d7561fc106016ba433211e6361021870bb  sc64menu.n64 (Art Edition)
3fdb1c4b17cbbb26fc1fea940be8901fc05dcb15  sc64menu.n64 in SummerStation64-v0.3c-Standard.zip

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⚠️ Known limitations

• Going back to an older menu (v0.3 or the stock N64FlashcartMenu) keeps
  only your first 8 favorites, and drops the rest the next time it saves.
• Emulator games (NES, SNES, Game Boy) can't be favorited: the Favorites
  list has no place for them yet.
• Cheats: codes that need a button held (starting D0 to D3) may not work
  yet, and the menu reads up to 64 code lines per game. Some games, mostly new
  homebrew, can't take cheats at all.
• Collection tabs point to a collection by its place: reordering or deleting
  your own collections in the Companion can change which one a tab shows
  (deleting on the console keeps them right).
• Renaming a hack set up in the Companion's Hacks tab without Card Prep
  having been run breaks its link (it is matched by file name then); save the
  Hacks tab again.
• Tested on: every build on an NTSC N64 on a CRT, with an Expansion Pak
  and with a Jumper Pak (4MB). Players report it working on the Analogue 3D,
  the ModRetro M64 and PAL consoles, thank you!
• Party mode has been tested with a stand-in for extra controllers, not
  with four real ones yet. Reports welcome.
• Recording a clip is slow (each frame is saved as it is drawn); the clip
  itself is smooth.
• With Game Versions on Grouped, Pokémon Stadium and the Snap Station
  kiosk version share one cover (they share a game code).
• Saves of 64DD disks are not backed up. Other flashcarts are not supported.

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🤖 AI disclosure

SummerStation64 is made with Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, used
through Claude Code inside Visual Studio Code.

• Model: Claude Opus 5.5, as recorded on the commits.
• How much, in v0.3c: 7 of the 9 commits since v0.3b are co-authored
  by Claude (October 26 to 28, 2026; the other two are the owner's README
  pictures):
  about 320 changed lines of menu code (1 new source file), the box art
  script's trim, and these notes. In v0.3b: one fix of 3 lines. In v0.3a: all 16 commits since v0.3 are co-authored by Claude
  (October 25 and 26, 2026): about 1,900 changed lines of menu code (4 new
  source files), the Companion's Cheats tab, fixes and Guide sections, the
  tests, and these notes.
• What the owner (Kerillian) did: gathered the players' requests,
  decided which to build and how each should behave (the cheats list on Game
  info and the paged lists were the owner's ideas), edited the popular hacks
  list, and tested every build on a real N64 and CRT. Nothing was
  committed until it passed on the console.
• Not made by AI: the music and interface sounds, the fonts, the box art
  and game details (a community pack), the game data (libretro), and
  N64FlashcartMenu and libdragon, which this is built on.

If something seems wrong, please open an issue.

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💛 Free, always

SummerStation64 is free and always will be, from v0.1 to v1.0 and beyond. I
will never charge for it.

If you'd like to give money, please support the people who made it
possible:

• Polprzewodnikowy, creator of the SummerCart64:
  ko-fi.com/polprzewodnikowy
• networkfusion, maintainer of N64FlashcartMenu:
  ko-fi.com/networkfusion

Buying your SummerCart64 from an official seller supports Polprzewodnikowy
too.

If you'd rather give time, help with the box art and game details every
player sees. The
N64 flashcart menu metadata
project welcomes new art, descriptions and fixes; its README shows how to
start.

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🙏 Credits and licence

• Built on N64FlashcartMenu
  by Polprzewodnikowy and contributors, and on
  libdragon.
• Ideas from the N64ever
  fork.
• Genres, player counts, series, and the lists used by Card Prep and the
  Missing Metadata tab:
  libretro-database
  (CC-BY-SA 4.0).
• Music by Eric Matyas, www.soundimage.org ("Cyber-dream-loop").
  Interface sounds by Lokif (CC0). Title lettering drawn with the Anton and
  Mr Dafoe fonts (SIL Open Font License).

Released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3, like
N64FlashcartMenu; the source is in this repository.

Note

About the built-in covers and game details: the Art Edition's covers
and cartridges, and the game descriptions built into both editions, are
not part of the source code and not covered by its licence. They belong to
the games' publishers and writers, and are included (in reduced size) for
use with the menu on your own console. They come from the community
n64-flashcart-menu-metadata
pack (scans credited there to ABeezy, LaunchBox community). If you hold
the rights to any of them and want them removed, open an issue and the
release files will be replaced without them.

_{SummerStation64 is an unofficial fan project, not made or approved by
Nintendo. Nintendo 64 and the N64 logo are trademarks of Nintendo.}

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This discussion was created from the release SummerStation64 v0.3c.