Arcade game emulators for Linux

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  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    Well... I tried Lakka, which sounded promising. But after the boot screen appears, the screen goes black.

    http://www.lakka.tv/

    I might come back to it -- maybe I can manually install a video driver or change something. I'm still sceptical that my PC will be fast enough, anyway.

    So the next plan is to download MAME 0.37b5 from the year 2000. I'm pretty hopeful that will work well. But old versions of MAME aren't available from any Arch repositories, so I'll have to build a package and compile from source. Fingers crossed...
  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    Just in case it helps anyone else, I finally tried RetroArch, which is what the OS Lakka uses.

    http://www.retroarch.com/
    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/RetroArch

    You can add various "cores" (which are emulators -- like the MAME 0.37b5 one, or... any other from a huge list), and then use RetroArch as a GUI to play them.

    The GUI is a bit ugly and confusing, but it works!

    So, I might have to have another look at Lakka to see if I can get it working. :-)
  • that
    that Posts: 1,532 Forumite
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    eshul, many many years ago ran mame on our work PCs (after hours). They were Pentium 2 233/266Mhz, think 64MB? on windows nt4. They worked really well too. Many of those arcade games had 1 or 2 MHz cpu, and no maths co-processor
  • System
    System Posts: 178,100 Community Admin
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    that wrote: »
    eshul, many many years ago ran mame on our work PCs (after hours). They were Pentium 2 233/266Mhz, think 64MB? on windows nt4. They worked really well too. Many of those arcade games had 1 or 2 MHz cpu, and no maths co-processor

    I worked as a bench engineer at a company that made video games in the 80s. CPUs were either 6502 or Z80s, even on games with moving cabinets like Afterburner.
  • forgotmyname
    forgotmyname Posts: 32,567 Forumite
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    edited 28 July 2018 at 10:34PM
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    I use RetroPie on the Raspberry Pi.

    Openelec or OSM
    Censorship Reigns Supreme in Troll City...

  • esuhl
    esuhl Posts: 9,409 Forumite
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    that wrote: »
    eshul, many many years ago ran mame on our work PCs (after hours). They were Pentium 2 233/266Mhz, think 64MB? on windows nt4. They worked really well too. Many of those arcade games had 1 or 2 MHz cpu, and no maths co-processor

    I can totally believe it. It's not like I'm trying to emulate games that require high-spec hardware!

    That's why I'm using Linux -- there's great driver support for old machines, and you can start a single program in X without needing to run a full GUI Desktop Environment. And updates are so much easier -- one command updates everything, and there's no system-wide registry to get corrupted.

    But it's incredible that modern emulators should struggle to reproduce systems that had 0.1% of the CPU power and RAM that even my ancient PC has!

    I installed libretro-blastem - the Sega Megadrive core in RetroArch, but the games ran about 30% slower than they should. (Judging by the timer in Sonic the Hedgehog 2!)

    I then discovered gens, which runs Sonic2 at full speed!

    https://www.archlinux.org/packages/multilib/x86_64/gens/
    Tarambor wrote: »
    I worked as a bench engineer at a company that made video games in the 80s. CPUs were either 6502 or Z80s, even on games with moving cabinets like Afterburner.

    I remember watching in envy as my rich friend played Afterburner in one of those cabinets that could turn you upside down! But seriously... £1 a game?! Wow! I could buy five chocolate bars with that! :rotfl:

    And I absolutely loved by Amstrad CPC 6128 -- along with its Z80 processor. The best thing Amstrad ever made! :D
  • kennethhall250
    kennethhall250 Posts: 7 Forumite
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    I also use MAME, and it works fine.
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