When launching icarus, directly or by picking “Import ROM Files …” from higan’s Library menu, the main icarus window appears. This is a filesystem browser, with customisations:

  • The filesystem browser only lists files with extensions typically used for ROM dumps from consoles higan emulates, plus .zip files since ROM dumps are often compressed.
  • Each matching file has a check-box next to it.
  • You can tick the check-box next to every file at once by pressing “Select All” in the bottom-left.
  • You can un-tick all the check-boxes by pressing “Unselect All” in the bottom-left.

Pressing “Settings …” in the bottom-right opens the icarus Settings dialog.

Pressing “Import …” in the bottom-right will close the filesystem browser then try to import all the files whose check-boxes are ticked into the Game Library. icarus displays a progress dialog during the import process.

Note: Some games require extra steps to import correctly; see the Game Library for details.

The icarus Settings dialog

The icarus Settings dialog contains the following settings:

  • Library Location determines where icarus puts the games it imports. See Moving the Game Library for details.
  • Create Manifests causes icarus to write out a manifest file describing each imported game to that game’s game folder. This means that higan doesn’t have to regenerate the manifest each time an imported game is loaded, but it means that a future version of higan with an incompatible manifest format may be unable to play these games. Note that higan also has an “Ignore Manifests” option in the Advanced tab of its Configuration dialog.
  • Use Database causes icarus to use manifest information from its database of known-good manifests, if it’s importing a game it recognises. For unrecognised games, and for all games if this box is unticked, icarus gueses the manifest data. This option is still relevant when “Create Manifests” is unticked: higan uses icarus to generate a manifest when a game is loaded, not just at import-time.