pMARS - Portable Redcode Simulator

Core War
MARS
pMARS

pMARS is a portable MARS written in C by Albert Ma, Nándor Sieben, Stefan Strack, and Mintardjo Wangsaw. The latest version supports the extended CWS'94 Redcode standard, p-space, read/write limits, and is the official Redcode simulator of rec.games.corewar. The first version of pMARS was released on 25th August 1993. Download the source code or Windows binary for the latest version below to get started.

Current Development Snapshot

pMARS is actively maintained, and contributions are welcome. Please submit patches for review by email to John Metcalf or via the #pmars-dev Discord channel. We endeavour to review and apply patches to the dev snapshot within a couple of days. See the change log for a list of modifications since the last release.

pMARS v0.9.6-dev (20 Jun 2026) - pmars-0.9.6-dev.zip, Windows binary, change log

Known Issues / Bugs

Windows binaries compiled with the SDL display write to text files stdout.txt and stderr.txt instead of the console

Official pMARS Releases

pMARS v0.9.5 (03 January 2026) - pmars-0.9.5.zip, Windows binary
pMARS v0.9.4 (04 July 2022) - pmars-0.9.4.zip, Windows binary
pMARS v0.9.2 (25 December 2000) - pmars-0.9.2.zip, Windows binary
pMARS v0.9.1 (23 October 2000) - pmars-0.9.1.tar.gz
pMARS v0.9.0 (31 August 2000) - pmars-0.9.0.tar.gz
pMARS v0.8.6 (10 April 2000) - pmars-0.8.6.zip, Windows binary
pMARS v0.8.5 (20 February 1996) - pmars-0.8.5.zip, Windows binary
pMARS v0.8.0 (05 August 1995) - pmars-0.8.0.zip, Windows binary

pMARS-SDL

pMARS-SDL is a port of pMARS by Joonas Pihlaja, which uses the Simple DirectMedia Library to display the core. For more details, see the pMARS-SDL homepage. Pavel Šavara updated pMARS-SDL to create pMARS 0.9.3-a. SDL support has been merged into pMARS as of v0.9.6.

pMARS 0.9.3-a (07 December 2006) - Windows binary, Linux binary, BSD binary
pMARS-SDL v0.9.2-5 (26 April 2003) - pmars-0.9.2-5.tar.gz, Windows binary

Mac pMARS Binaries

pMARS v0.9.4 / -SDL 0.9.2-5 - pmars-0.9.4-macos.zip for M-Series/macOS
pMARS v0.9.2 - pmars-0.9.2-osx.zip for Intel/Mac OS X (requires X11/XQuartz)
pMARS v0.9.2 - pmars.zip, pmarsv.zip for PowerPC/Mac OS X
pMARS v0.8.6 - pmars.zip, pmarsv.zip for PowerPC/Mac OS X
pMARS v0.8.6 - pmars.dmg for PowerPC/Mac OS X (requires XDarwin)
MacpMARS v0.8.0 and v0.6.2 for Classic 68K/Mac OS

pMARS Manuals

pMARS Manual for pMARS v0.9.5 (TXT)
Redcode Reference is a quick reference for the extended ICWS'94 draft standard
ICWS'94 Primer covers the new ICWS'94 features for players already familiar with ICWS'88
CDB Primer is an introduction to the CDB debugger

Support Files

pMARS .opt settings for the KOTH.org and SAL hills

Special Purpose

pQmars 2.0.0, 1.0.0-4, created by Alexander (Sasha) Wait for the Quantum Coreworld
Football pMARS source code and Windows binary, created by trac for round 21 of the Redcoders Frenzy tournament
pMARS 0.9.2 DAT 1,1, initialise core with DAT 1,1, by Sascha Zapf for round 10 of the Redcoders Frenzy tournament

pMARS Patches

pMARS v0.9.5 macro patches by Bertram Felgenhauer, fixes issues with for and multi-line equ
pMARS v0.9.4 patches by Andrius Merkys, fixes printf warnings and sighandler FTBFS (included in 0.9.5)
pMARS v0.9.4 overflow patch by Joseph Espy, fixes several overflow / bounds errors (included in 0.9.5)
pMARS v0.9.2 patch set by Joonas Pihlaja, adds read/write limits and a number of bug fixes (included in pMARS 0.9.4)
pMARS v0.9.2 sound patch by Hermann Samso
pMARS v0.8.6 sound patch by Hermann Samso
pMARS v0.8.6 permutation patch by Ilmari Karonen (included in pMARS 0.9.0)
pMARS v0.8.5 primordial soup patch by Ian Oversby for the Oversby Autumn 1998 Corewar Tournament

Core War: pMARS