RAM - Random Access Memories - Emulators on Linux

RSS Bot · March 26, 2006

Originally when I posted that I was looking for emulators to run on Linux. I thought no problem, Linux is open source and I then thought that there should not be a problem in finding them. I was surprised to find the answer was both yes and no Yes, if you don't know exactly where to look. No, if you check the link at the bottam. But that is not your only problem. The biggest problem I found in my search was that even if you went to your favorite emulator page such as MEKA A SMS/colecovision emulator, that runs perfectly well on Windows but as it seems linux is another matter.

The following was taken directly from a text file that was actually within the documents for the Linux version of Meka.

Here is a GNU/Linux build to begin.

I've build it on a recently installed RedHat system, and it was

successfully tested on a recent Debian as well.

Please however keep in mind, that:

- It is crappy.

- It may or not works on your system.

- Now that sources are available, you can help

See development forum:

http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewforum.php?f=7

I am not willing to spend much time maintaining UNIX releases yet. Those releases are for people who nicely asked for MEKA being available on communist operating systems and I have hope that it can be useful. Yet, I just don't have much time to work on supporting it. I'm not against you users, but please understand that I'm currently in a very

busy situation and targetting UN*X for my emulator is not a priority. I am welcoming anyone to help, though.

So you can see why I desided to post this. Along with what you can expect. This is not an actual review of Linux emulators. I hope to do that in the near future. But some once you check out the site of what you hope will

at least run for you. That you might discover it need plugins.

SNES emulators

When I posted this question on the Atari Age boards, one of the ones I was

linked to was:

http://www.snes9x.com/

Oh sure I found there SNES emulators that would run off of Windows and Macs but no for anything in Linux in fact all I found there was Linux x86 binaries. I call myself an average man with a knowledge of gaming and computers. But

I don't even know how to use Linux binaries, let alone to get rom files to run on them. So I went looking, and I found

Later, I was reccomend to head over here to find the Linux version, and you know what it was the same binaires page I found on my own.

But then I Googled SNES emulators and found another that would run on everything...including Linux. http://www.zsnes.com/

It seems realible, at least that is what I hope.

Speaking of realible emulators, what could be more stable than

Stella 2600, their offical site does have a LInux version

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

The same could be said for Genesis, with the Gens emulator. As far as I know the only emulator that will work with Genesis, Mega Drive, 32X, and Sega CD roms. Also according to their site the Windows version actually also runs on Linux.

http://gens.consolemul.com/

Next to the Infamous MESS emulator, (I say infamous simply because this emulator runs or not. To this date no one has given me a reason why this emulator will work on some computers but not others.

This was the only multi system emulator I ever heard about. Until on Sega8-bit boards I heard about another that can emulatate Atari Lynx,GameBoy GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance, NES, PC Engine(TurboGrafx 16), and SuperGrafx

There is both a Mac and Windows versions availible

http://mednafen.com/

But this one has a problem, you need to install Linux plugins. The site has a link. I am not sure where they go or let alone how to install them. But like the others I'll let you know.

This was the first an actual linux emulator site I came across. The problem

is some of their links are duds. One site I linked to hadn't been updated

in 3 years.

http://linuxemu.retrofaction.com/links.php...r+%26+Videogame

I have in the past often reccomend to people to head on over to zophar.net

which is without a doubt the best emulator site I ever came across. They have

both downloads and direct links to the sites of more emulators than you would

think that are out there. I was surprised myself when I discovered a Linux

section to their site. One that mentioned a PS2 emulator.

http://www.zophar.net/unix/unix.phtml

So you can see why I finally ended this the way I did...short. But as soon

as I said getting everything I have to do I will post my experiances