As threatened, here is the barebones NEStopia 1.3.2 Linux preview #1.

It allows you to play NES games on Linux with the keyboard or a joypad. Full sound, battery and EEPROM saving, and over 100 mappers are supported. Multiplayer is possible using 2 gamepads. You can play fullscreen or in a window, and you can choose the famous NTSC filter for the most accurate possible reproduction of an NES connected to a TV.

To compile you need SDL 1.2.9 or later, a 2.6-based Linux distribution, ALSA development headers, and GCC 3.4 or later. Note that this is an overlay: you must first obtain the NEStopia 1.3.2 core source from SourceForge and then unzip this on top of it. Other versions of the core source will not work.

Please note that this is just to allow you to try out the core while the Linux port solidifies. The “real deal” will have a full GUI with as many of the options from the Windows/Mac versions as possibe.

SDLMAME 0.107u1 accidentally was packaged up with the mouse capture feature commented out. A hotfix is right here. Unlike other patches, no “make clean” is required for this one.

I signed up several months ago to port NEStopia to Linux. I’ve been excessively slack about that, but let’s get going again. I’ll be releasing a very limited but fully playable “example” version in the next few days. This will not contain the final GUI, or any GUI at all. It’ll be a command line app that plays .NES files, your choice of windowed or full-screen, and your choice of raw video output or NTSC processed. Only games using the standard NES controller will work, there’s only 1 player, and there’s no key remapping. Battery and EEPROM saves will work, and there will be rudimentary gamepad support. And the emulation core will be the very latest (1.3.2 at this time).

Even with all those limitations, I believe there’s a fair amount of fun to be had with it, especially given NEStopia’s astounding accuracy and compatibility, and I’ll try to get more features going ASAP. Here’s a taste:

Yes, it WAS already time for SDLMAME 0.107u1 [now obsolete! see the main page of this site for the latest].

This contains:

• Everything from mainline 0.107u1
• It’s now once again possible to build on Linux (only!) with the new debugger. The new debugger is neither complete nor suitable for actual use, contact me if you’d like to help finish it

As always, help and discussion are on tap at the official SDLMAME board.

UPDATE: You can get a canned Win32 SDL binary from EmuBase. I believe they don’t come with SDL.dll, so go to this page and get the “Runtime Library” for Win32. You should use version 1.2.11 or later – earlier ones have audio breakup problems on XP.