Remember the good ol’ days when you would stay up all night trying to get to that next level.. when nothing else mattered but that extra life or one more point to beat that high score? Those were the days… but those days don’t have to leave you know. There is hope, and that hope is found in an SNES emulator by the name of ZSNES. If you do not have Ubuntu, you can still use ZSNES but you will have to build it from source which you should all know because it will come into play many times while using linux/unix.
The installation process of ZSNES is actually quite simple. Almost no work is required and it can all be done graphically through Synaptic if one wishes to do so but here we will simple use the terminal to save time. First off, let us update synaptic.
sudo apt-get update
Now it is time to install ZSNES which is found in the Ubuntu Repositories, if you do not have Ubuntu or would like to build from source, you can get the source code here.
sudo apt-get install zsnes
Now look in your menu and you should see under games, ZSNES. That is all there is to it! Now you have the emulator installed, it is basically just like the console. I have found that I have experienced some glitches with sound though and I would recommend going into ZSNES then Config >> Sound then setting the sampling rate to 8000HZ only if you experience sound lag. Also, you may have to install these files and I have read that you could try this command:
sudo aptitude install libsdl1.2debian-alsa
Do not forget to install your USB-based gamepad to get the most out of your gaming!
Now you can play all of your favorite games or public domain games. Keep in mind the legality of this varies from country to country and this tutorial is a demonstration and for educational use only. This program is distributed in the hope that it will useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. The ZSNES Team is not connected or affiliated with any mentioned company in any way. Companies and all products pertaining to that company are trademarks of that company. Please contact that company for trademark and copyright information. Along with that note, Linux Gaming Today is not connected or affiliated with any mentioned company in anyway and we hold no responsibility for any damage of any form and/or illegal activities conducted through use of this tutorial. This HOWTO comes with no explicit or implicit warranty whatsoever. Use at your own risk!
January 27, 2008 at 9:09 am
Nice guide! I didnt realise Zsnes was in the repositories
January 29, 2008 at 1:01 pm
this is awesome. I wish everything was this easy to install on linux because I am a linux NOOB. works great!
April 23, 2008 at 7:26 am
My ZSnes just closes once i open it.
May 30, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Huh. This is going to save me some time. I was installing everthing manually. (nasm, libsdl ,- mind you, ldsdl needs like, 8 other .deb files. , gmake, etc) Thank you.
June 28, 2008 at 9:17 am
Hi,
Works great except for – no sound
I’ve tried the killall esd and it says that nothing has been killed…
Any help on getting sound with this would be very appreciated
thank you!
June 29, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Mine just closes once I open it. I followed all the steps. What am I doing wrong?
July 17, 2008 at 8:14 pm
This walkthrough worked out very well. Im glad it works so easy. I think Im starting to understand why Im doing these things like this the more I read about linux. Im one of the newly converted from the windows world. Thank god there is finally an alternative that can do all the things I need to do. Lovin Ubuntu so far.
July 17, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Hmmm everything seemed to work ok but I also, have no sound as well. Everything else seems to work just fine except for the fact that I have no sound in the emulator. Really wish I knew why this might be happening but I dont know enough about how Linux works to analyze the problem.
August 13, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Well, goes like this for me
sudo apt-get install zsnes desktop
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Package zsnes is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package zsnes has no installation candidate
August 31, 2008 at 3:34 pm
I followed the steps, but I get the error:
E: Package zsnes has no installation candidate
Thank you.
September 3, 2008 at 11:52 am
Never mind, I found out the problem. Thank you for posting this information.
September 15, 2008 at 11:29 am
I get:
sudo apt-get install zsnes
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
E: Couldn’t find package zsnes
I know nothing about Linux, I just started using Ubuntu. What have I done wrong?