RustyNES v3.4.2 — "Countersign" (the RetroArch core loads on Apple Silicon Macs again)

RustyNES v3.4.2 — "Countersign"

A one-fix patch release on v3.4.1 "Beacon": the RustyNES core in RetroArch loads on Apple Silicon Macs again. Nothing in the emulation core, the desktop, web and mobile apps or the MiSTer core changes. Movies, netplay sessions and save states from v3.4.1 are compatible (epoch 5, protocol 9).

Fixed

• The RetroArch core on Apple Silicon Macs. Loading RustyNES from RetroArch's Online Updater froze RetroArch and dropped it back to the shell, for at least the last few releases; the RustyNES desktop app was not affected. libretro's build template strips the core after linking, which on arm64 leaves the linker's code signature no longer matching the file, and macOS kills any process that loads arm64 code with a broken signature. In the buildbot's core of 2026-10-20, 101 of its 538 signed pages did not match; natively built C cores on the same server checked clean. The arm64 build is no longer stripped, so its signature ships intact, and a test keeps that setting from being dropped. Intel Macs were not affected (an x86_64 core carries no signature).

Security

• TLS certificate checks (RUSTSEC-2026-0382, RUSTSEC-2026-0381, published after v3.4.1): rustls-webpki 0.103.16 and webpki-roots 1.0.10 stop trusting distrusted emSign intermediates in the netplay signaling and RetroAchievements clients. webpki-roots 0.26.11 remains as a dependency of tungstenite 0.30.0, but it only re-exports 1.0.10's roots; a new test fails if that ever falls below 1.0.10.
• basic-toml (RUSTSEC-2026-0374) is unmaintained, not vulnerable, and used only at compile time inside UniFFI's template macro; it is recorded as an accepted exception.

Getting the fixed core

RetroArch downloads cores from libretro's nightly build of RustyNES's main branch, not from this release page. The fixed core is on the buildbot within about a day of this release. A core you already downloaded stays installed, so re-download RustyNES in RetroArch's Online Updater (Core Downloader) to replace it.

The MiSTer core

• No new bitstreams. This release attaches v3.4.1's two bitstreams byte for byte under v3.4.2 names, so the MiSTer menu still shows build date 261019: RustyNES_MiSTer-v3.4.2.rbf (off-die, the headline, md5 474fa68f3f7888aaa6214e74aace2aa8) and RustyNES_MiSTer-v3.4.2-lite.rbf (on-die, md5 ca92523115ee9d864ce20c13a66a7eb7).
• Release candidate, not hardware-verified. No hardware has run either bitstream.

Verification

• Tested on a Mac by the maintainer (MacBook Pro, M5 Max, macOS 27.0.1, 2026-10-20): the buildbot's own arm64 core of 2026-10-20, with only its code signature repaired (ad-hoc, 0 of 538 pages mismatched), loads in RetroArch, where the unrepaired file had killed it. Same code, signature fixed: that isolates the signature as the cause.
• Built by libretro's own buildbot with the fix (pipeline 125851, this release's branch at e70347a6): the arm64 core, no longer stripped, carries the linker's own signature, and it verifies with 0 of 538 pages mismatched, the signed range reaching the signature, all 50 retro_* exports present. The maintainer loaded this buildbot-built core in RetroArch on the same Mac, and it works. The x86_64 core is built as before.
• libretro_buildbot_audit pins the setting in the arm64 job's own variables; deleting it fails the test.
• The release audits (anchors, state prose, notes rendering, the libretro .info) pass on the bumped tree.

Install

• Download the pre-built binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows below.
• The MiSTer bitstreams are attached below as a release candidate, not hardware-verified: RustyNES_MiSTer-v3.4.2.rbf (off-die, needs SDRAM) and RustyNES_MiSTer-v3.4.2-lite.rbf (on-die).
• The WebAssembly build is live at doublegate.github.io/RustyNES.
• The RetroArch core is in RetroArch's Online Updater on the platforms the libretro buildbot publishes to.
• Licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later.