RetroBat 8.4.0 Beta Is Out: Model 1, Model 2 and Hikaru Emulators, Plus TeknoParrot Fixes

Punks, the RetroBat team has just dropped the RetroBat 8.4.0 beta, and if you run an arcade cabinet off a Windows PC this is a juicy one. It is a test build ahead of the official 8.4.0 release, and the team is asking people to try it thoroughly and report anything that breaks.

The headline for arcade fans: a new Sega Model 1 system, more choice for Model 2 and Model 3, a new emulator for Sega Hikaru and Gaelco boards, and a handful of fixes that TeknoParrot users will be very glad to see.

What’s new for arcade cabinets

• Sega Model 1 is now its own system, running on sm2emu, Supermodel or MAME. Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter fans, this one is for you.
• Model 2 gets sm2emu (standalone and as a libretro core) and Supermodel as extra emulators, plus custom control mapping through a yml file.
• Model 3 gets a Vulkan build of its emulator.
• Hikaru and Gaelco boards get the Odin emulator.
• Standalone FBNeo is added for CAVE, CPS1, CPS2, CPS3 and Neo Geo, and it can now use configurable hotkeys.
• ArcadeDuck moves to 0.6.5-dev with support for ZN-2 games, and the old “zinc” system has been renamed “psxarcade”.
• Sega ST-V can now run on the Mednafen Saturn core.
• Test and service buttons have been lined up across arcade emulators as far as possible, and per-game mapping for MAME is finished.

TeknoParrot, light guns and pinball

TeknoParrot users get three welcome changes. RetroBat no longer forces fullscreen and instead keeps the window mode from your TeknoParrot profile, a screen placement bug when exiting games (which was upsetting TeknoParrot) has been fixed, and there is a new option to show the TeknoParrot console.

Light gun owners are looked after too. RetroBat now ignores devices it knows are not guns, such as built-in touchpads and 8BitDo receivers, when it hunts for your gun, the gun options in Snes9x and Mednafen are fixed, and DemulShooter is bumped to 17.10 in the download store. Visual Pinball gets options to rotate the desktop when a table runs and to choose which screens show the playfield, backglass and DMD. Cab builders will love that.

One more for stick users: a new option moves arcade sticks after gamepads for each emulator, so your player order stops jumping about.

Plenty of emulator updates

The changelog is long. Highlights include Azahar-plus added for 3DS, Xemu bumped to 0.137, Vita3K updated to its 6 November build, ScummVM 2026.4.1, a November build of FBNeo, Ares moved to a November nightly (the team says not to use stable 148), and new libretro cores for Atari Lynx, FM Towns and Game Boy. DuckStation gains a sprite texture filtering option, Azahar gains async shader compilation, and RetroArch gets a netplay “request device” feature.

As before, the default install only comes with RetroArch. Other emulators download automatically the first time you launch a game that needs them, except Switch, TeknoParrot and paid emulators.

Where to get it

The beta installer is on the RetroBat 8.4.0 beta release page on GitHub, and the stable version is on the official RetroBat site. Bugs go to the GitHub issues page or the official RetroBat Discord. It is a beta, so back up your setup before you try it on the cab everyone uses.

Our take

This is a proper arcade-flavoured update. Model 1 as a full system, Hikaru support and the TeknoParrot window fix are exactly the kind of things that make a RetroBat cabinet nicer to live with. If you are still deciding which frontend to build on, our RetroBat vs Batocera comparison lays out the choice.

Which Model 1 game are you loading first: Virtua Racing or Wing War?