Console emulators have always been a great use-case for Flatpak since they are a pain to build, sometimes proprietary, and not allowed in some distributions. As such I, with some help, have been packaging a few of the more popular and maintained emulators lately and thought I would mention them and keep a semi-maintained table for future reference.

All applications in my repository are considered experimental, are likely built directly from git, and may or may not work or be supported.

Console Project Application ID Repository
Nintendo Nestopia-UE ca._0ldsk00l.Nestopia flathub
Super Nintendo Snes9x com.snes9x.Snes9x flathub
Game Boy Advance mGBA io.mgba.mGBA flathub
GameCube/Wii Dolphin org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu flathub
3DS Citra org.citra_emu.Citra tingping
Wii-U Cemu info.cemu.Cemu tingping
PlayStation 2 PCSX2 net.pcsx2.PCSX2 flathub
PlayStation Portable PPSSPP org.ppsspp.PPSSPP flathub
PlayStation 3 RPCS3 net.rpcs3.RPCS3 tingping
Muti-Console* RetroArch org.libretro.RetroArch flathub

* RetroArch supports over a dozen consoles but some highlights not handled elsewhere: DS, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy, Game Boy Color

This list would be longer but as mentioned emulators are often quite a pain to build or distribute. Some failures have been:

  • epsxe for the PS1 which is a proprietary core and doesn’t work with some third-party awful plugins (some foss, all bad) on top.
  • PCSX-Reloaded which works but is a dead project.
  • Mupen64Plus which has no UI, third-party ones exist which I might investigate.
  • Play! for the PS2 which is still early in development.
  • Higan required some patches but works fine I was just petty and too annoyed by its UI to package it.
  • DeSmuME for the DS had some C++ build errors I didn’t feel like getting into as melonDS seems like a more promising future there anyway.

So that is all so far; Let me know if there are some emulators you’d like packaged.