The first game I tried is not an emulator but the remake of the 90's game Command & Conquer Red Alert, it's called openra.

I downloaded the AppImage, chmoded the file to 755 and it works.

At the first run, it downloads automatically the game data.

I created a few maps for openra, they are available for download at France, Crimea, Taiwan, Middle East, Baltic Sea, Turkey, Korea, Caribbean, D Tech, D Tech Water, US and Canada.

Only the person creating the network game needs to copy the map file to:

~/.config/openra/maps/ra/release-20230225/

The other players can download the map from the game interface.

Amiga

Then I installed an amiga emulator: fs-uae and fs-uae-launcher I played a few games on fs-uae, it works great.

Debian Bookworm

fs-uae-launcher is not available anymore. I create the configuration for fs-uae directly in ~/Documents/FS-UAE/Configurations/Default.fs-uae:

[config]
amiga_model = A500
floppy_drive_0 =  /home/user/Downloads/emulators/amiga/Double Dragon (1989)(Virgin).zip

And then I start fs-uae and it loads the disk in the configuration:

> fs-uae

Atari

The next emulator is an atari emulator, I chose hatari. hatari wants the TOS file to be stored in /usr/share/hatari/tos.img, so I downloaded TOS v1.00 (1986)(Atari Corp)(ST).zip and unzipped it the required directory. I played a few games, it works fine.

NES

I installed fceux (Debian Bookworm):

apt-get install fceux

To run a game:

fceux ROM.zip

Keys are: arrows, enter, fdsa for buttons

In MAME (0.251), some NES games are working but not all of them.

Super NES

I installed higan, to run a game, enter: higan ROM.zip

Debian Bookworm

higan is not available.

I installed mednaffe and there are problem with sound.

So I compile snes9x, maybe the list of apt packages is not complete because some packages are already installed on my system:

sudo apt-get install ninja-build libsdl2-dev libgtkmm-3.0-dev portaudio19-dev libminizip-dev gettext$
git clone https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x$
cd snes9x/$
git submodule update --init --recursive$
cd gtk/$
cmake -G Ninja -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -S . -B build$
ninja

To run a game:

./snes9x-gtk ROM.zip

At first start, the keys for the joystick have to be set in the configuration.

PC emulator

I installed dosbox, to run a game, cd to the game directory and then enter this:

dosbox
mount c .
c:
run game exe

I recently discovered the 86box PC emulator which emulate the hardware accurately. In 86Box, I created a Pentium pro PC and I:

booted MSDOS 6.2 from floppy disk
installed Windows 95
ran Command & Conquer Red Alert (also the Counterstrike extension)
booted the debian install CD-ROM and installed the latest debian stable (Debian 11.5 Bullseye, it takes longer than a day to install)
installed Whereisit 2.16 (from 2000) to be able to open my .ctf catalog files.

The hardware configuration is:

- Machine type: Socket 8
- Machine: [i440FX] Gigabyte GA-686NX
- CPU type: Intel Pentium Pro
- Speed: 200Mhz
- Memory: 512MB
- Video: [PCI] Tseng Las ET4000/w32p Rev. D (Diamond Stealth32)
- Mouse: Logitech Serial Mouse
- Sound Card: [ISA16] Sound Blaster AWE32 Pnp
- Network adapter: SLiRP [ISA16] Novell NE2000, [PCI] Realtek RTL8029AS, both not detected in linux and don't work in windows
- 2 Serial ports, 1 parallel port
- HD Controler: Internal controller
- FD Controler: Internal controller
- Hard disks: IDE 0:0 1.5GB (Windows), IDE 0:1 5GB (Debian)
- 3.5 inch floppy 1.44MB
- 5.25 inch floppy 1.2MB
- CD-ROM drive ATAPI IDE 1:0 8x

I installed Windows like this:

boot MSDOS 6.2 from floppy (A:)
use fdisk to create a partition in C: drive
format C:
run SETUP.EXE on Windows 95 CD-ROM, the CD-ROM drive has letter R: (enter 'R:' at the prompt and then 'setup')

I copied my files to the VM by creating a CD-ROM and loading it in the CD-ROM drive:

apt-get install genisoimage
genisoimage -o cd.iso pathWithFilesToCopy

In DOS, I can run:

Borland Turbo C++ (1990)
Borland Turbo Pascal (1990)
Borland Turbo Debug (1990)
Borland Turbo Assembler (1990)
My programs written in assembly. The graphical programs use CGA, MCGA and VGA 16 colors modes.

The command line in DOS is basic, here are some commands:

# enter letter to change drive
# A: is floppy disk
# C: is harddisk
# R: is CD-ROM
# Change to C: drive, enter:
C:
# Change directory:
cd dirname
# DOS uses \ as path separator, cd path is:
cd dirname\dirname2
# To run a program, enter the program name with or without extension:
program
# DOS ignores lower and upper case for directory and file names
# To list a directory, enter:
dir
# Filter by extension:
dir *.exe
# When there are many files, list the files page by page like this:
dir /p

Amstrad CPC 6128

The Amstrad emulator is not in APT, I insalled caprice32 like this:

sudo apt-get install libsdl1.2-dev

mkdir -p ~/Downloads/amstrad/
cd ~/Downloads/amstrad/
git clone https://github.com/ColinPitrat/caprice32.git
cd caprice32/
make APP_PATH="$PWD"

And to run a game (Sabre Wulf in this example):

cd ~/Downloads/amstrad/caprice32
./cap32 ../Sabre\ Wulf\ \(1984\)\(Ultimate\ Play\ The\ Game\)\[t\].zip
cat
run"sabre

In MAME (0.251), the CPC 6128 works well, all the programs I tried are working.

Sinclair ZX spectrum 48K

I installed fbzx, I add to install the spectrum-roms pacakge manually in Debian Bullseye and not all games I tried worked.

Moon Alert works fine:

fbzx Moon\ Alert\ \(1984\)\(Ocean\ Software\)\[Speech\].z80

For games on tape, start like this:

fbzx Battlecars\ \(1984\)\(Games\ Workshop\).tap
Press j, Control p, Enter to display
LOAD ""
Press F6 to play the tape

Commodore C64

I installed the vice emulator:

apt-get install vice

# the vice package installs:
# dpkg -L lists files installed by the package
dpkg -L vice|less
/usr/bin/c1541
/usr/bin/cartconv
/usr/bin/petcat
/usr/bin/vsid
/usr/bin/x128
/usr/bin/x64
/usr/bin/x64dtv
/usr/bin/x64sc
/usr/bin/xcbm2
/usr/bin/xcbm5x0
/usr/bin/xpet
/usr/bin/xplus4
/usr/bin/xscpu64
/usr/bin/xvic

Copy roms to ~/.local/share/vice/C64/:

~/.local/share/vice/C64/kernal-901227-03.bin
~/.local/share/vice/C64/chargen-901225-01.bin
~/.local/share/vice/C64/basic-901226-01.bin

Run a game with the command:

x64 "Zaxxon.crt:run me"

Sony Playstation 1

I installed pcsxr.

apt-get install pcsxr

I got an error when trying to start a game:

RGB & YUV not found. Quitting.

I found a fix on Ryan Halliday's blog

Under Configuration > Plugins & BIOS change the Graphics dropdown from XVideo Driver to OpenGL Driver

Sony Playstation 2

I use pcsx2. Download the latest nightly appimage from https://pcsx2.net/ and then download the bios files. Then I copy the bios to the default config directory:

~/.config/PCSX2/bios

Then run:

chmod 755 pcsx2-v1.7.5592-linux-appimage-x64-Qt.AppImage
./pcsx2-v1.7.5592-linux-appimage-x64-Qt.AppImage

MAME Arcade

I installed mame and copied the ROMs to ~/mame/roms/.

To run a game, enter mame in a terminal and choose a game in the list.

To compile the latest version of mame, execute these steps:

git clone https://github.com/mamedev/mame
apt-get install libsdl2-ttf-dev qtbase5-dev libfontconfig-dev

##################
# Add in makefile:
##################
QT_HOME = /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/
make

Machines I successfully run in MAME (0.251):

atari 2600 ok$
nes ok (not all games)$
macintosh 128 airborne and sys 1.1 ok$
megadrive ok$
gameboy ok$
atari jaguar mostly ok$
amstrad cpc 6128 ok

There are some machines I tried to emulate in MAME (0.251) and they were not working:

amiga workbench no$
amiga games no - hw problems$
apple lisa no$
acorn atom no$
c64/c128 no missing rom mercury31s.u4 not on the internet$
coco no$
mo5 no$
msx1 msx2 no$
atari 800 no$
apple 2 gs no
bbc no$
commodore pet no, pet 2001 boots but I don't know how to start a program$
snes no$
zx spectrum no
atari st no$
to7 no$
vectrex no
x68000 no$
acorn archimedes 310 works a bit - games don't work

Running Xeno Crisis Neo Geo version in Mame

apt command for installing the emulators in this page

apt-get install fs-uae fs-uae-launcher hatari higan dosbox libsdl1.2-dev fbzx mame pcsxr

hashtags: #emulators