Extract text from emulator save states (ST0)
To convert ST0 save states to another format, you need VisualBoyAdvance or other Game software.
To convert other file formats to the "Emulator Save State File" file type, you need software like VisualBoyAdvance or a similar tool.
The .ST0 file extension is primarily associated with Emulator Save States. It is used by retro gaming emulators like VisualBoyAdvance for Game Boy Advance games and VirtuaNES for Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games. These files capture a complete snapshot of the emulated console's RAM, CPU registers, and video memory at an exact frame, allowing players to freeze and resume gameplay instantly. A secondary use for .ST0 files is as a simulation status output file generated by Synopsys HSPICE, a commercial electronic circuit simulator.
Because emulator save states are literal memory dumps, they are deeply proprietary and heavily tied to the specific software version that created them. A .ST0 file created in an older build of VisualBoyAdvance might not even open in a newer build, and it certainly will not open in a competing emulator like mGBA. This makes sharing or archiving game progress extremely difficult. Furthermore, a save state is fundamentally different from standard in-game battery saves (SAV files). Standard online converters fail to process .ST0 files because converting a RAM snapshot requires executing emulated hardware code.
Despite these rigid limitations, VisualBoyAdvance actually stores .ST0 files using standard GZIP compression. If you need to access the raw hexadecimal memory dump, you can rename the file to gz and extract it using archive tools. For actual cross-platform game saves, you must load the .ST0 in the original emulator and perform a standard in-game save to generate a universal SAV file.
Because this file format is difficult to open or convert online, traditional conversion tools will fail. However, convert.guru can still identify the file format, inspect the file, and show text or internal content. If our analysis detects the underlying GZIP format used by VBA, viewing or extraction may still be possible. Just drag and drop your file to identify the format, view it, and convert it when possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your ST0 file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted STO, GBA, CLT and ST1 files.
If you want to convert ST0 file to , you can use VisualBoyAdvance or similar software from the "Emulator Save State Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert files to ST0, try VisualBoyAdvance or another comparable tool in the "Emulator Save State Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our ST0 converter.