If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you grew up with classic video game consoles like the NES and Sega Genesis. For years Windows users have been enjoying high quality game emulation software, but many of the Linux options have been buggy or incomplete. It’s time to take a look at where things stand when it comes to playing console games in Linux. Here at MakeTechEasier, we’ve touched on console game emulation here and there, but never done a guide covering multiple systems. Today, we’ll show you how to run games for NES, SNES, Genesis, original Playstation, and Dreamcast.

Before we begin, it’s important to note one thing right up front – many console manufacturers do not look kindly on emulation, and some emulators require proprietary software (like the game system BIOS) in order to run. Because of the legal grey area occupied by some of this software, there may be some files or programs for which MTE cannot provide links, such as the actual game files (commonly called ROMS).

Image by Chris.JP

Previously, I have talked about the way to play playstation game in Ubuntu. For those who are a fanboy of Super Nintendo (SNES), I didn’t forget about you too. Here is how you can play SNES game in Ubuntu Hardy.

There are several popular SNES emulators for Linux, namely: ZSNES, SNES9X, BSNES, SNEmul. We will be using ZSNES because it is the best among the rest and works great in Ubuntu.