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ES-DE Frontend (development version) - User guide

This version of the user guide is only relevant for the current ES-DE development version, if you are using the latest stable release, refer to USERGUIDE.md instead.

It's generally recommended to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document prior to diving into the information in this guide.

Table of contents:

[[TOC]]

Quick start guide

If you just want to get started as quickly as possible, simply follow these steps:

Install ES-DE
Start the application and press the Create directories button to generate the ROM directory structure
Put your game ROMs in the directories created by the previous step, or see here for additional details
Install RetroArch
Start RetroArch and install the required emulator cores
Start ES-DE, scrape game media for your collection and play some games!

You can always close the application immediately using the keyboard, by default the quit shortcut is Alt + F4 on Windows and Linux and Command + Q on macOS. This shortcut can also be changed using the Keyboard quit shortcut menu option.

For additional details, read on below.

There are also installation videos available at the ES-DE YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCosLuC9yIMQPKFBJXgDpvVQ

Installation and first startup

To install ES-DE, just download the package or installer from https://es-de.org and follow the brief instructions below.

As for display resolutions, the minimum pixel value is 224 and the maximum is 7680. This means that you can run ES-DE at for instance 320x224 all the way up to 7680x4320 (8K UHD). Vertical screen orientation is also supported, as well as ultra-wide resolutions like 3840x1440.

The installation procedure is just covered briefly here and may differ a bit for your specific operating system, so in case of problems refer to your system documentation.

Running the Linux AppImage

The AppImage release should be usable on most modern x86 64-bit Linux distributions. After download you may have to set the file as executable, such as this:

chmod +x ES-DE_x64.AppImage

Or if you're using the Steam Deck AppImage:

chmod +x ES-DE_x64_SteamDeck.AppImage

To run AppImage files you need libfuse2 installed, but some newer distributions like Ubuntu 22.04 LTS no longer ship with this library preinstalled. You can however easily install it like this:

sudo apt install libfuse2

Of course, if you're not using a Debian-based distribution, you may need to use another package manager than apt to install the library.

Installing on macOS and Windows

There's not really much to say about these operating systems, just install ES-DE as you would any other application. On macOS it's via the .dmg drag-and-drop installer, and on Windows via the normal application installer or by unpacking the portable zip file somewhere on your filesystem.

On first application startup

Upon first startup, ES-DE will create its ~/ES-DE application data directory.

On Linux this means /home/<username>/ES-DE, on macOS /Users/<username>/ES-DE and on Windows C:\Users\<username>\ES-DE or ES-DE\ES-DE depending on whether the installer release or the portable release is used.

Also on first startup the configuration file es_settings.xml will be generated in the ES-DE/settings directory, containing all the application settings at their default values. Following this, a file named es_systems.xml will be loaded from the resources directory (which is part of the ES-DE installation). This file contains the game system definitions including which emulator to use per platform. For many systems there are also alternative emulators defined which can be applied system-wide or per game. How that works is explained later in this guide. A customized systems configuration file can also be used, as described in the next section below.

In addition to es_systems.xml there's an es_find_rules.xml file that gets loaded as well and which contains rules on how to locate the emulators, i.e. how to find out where they've been installed.

There's also a log file created in the ES-DE/logs directory named es_log.txt, refer to this in case of any issues as it should hopefully provide information on what went wrong. Enabling Debug mode in the Other settings menu or starting ES-DE with the --debug flag outputs even more detailed information to this log file.

After ES-DE finds at least one game file, it will populate that game system and the application will start. If there are no game files, a dialog will be shown explaining that you need to install your game files into your ROM directory. You will also be given a choice to change that ROM directory path if you don't want to use the default one. As well you have the option to generate the complete game systems directory structure based on information in es_systems.xml.

When generating the directory structure, a file named systeminfo.txt will be created in each game system folder which will provide you with some information about the system. Here's an example for the dos system as seen on Linux:

System name:
dos

Full system name:
DOS (PC)

Supported file extensions:
.bat .BAT .com .COM .conf .CONF .cue .CUE .dosz .DOSZ .exe .EXE .iso .ISO .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP

Launch command:
%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/dosbox_pure_libretro.so %ROM%

Alternative launch commands:
%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/dosbox_core_libretro.so %ROM%
%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/dosbox_svn_libretro.so %ROM%
%STARTDIR%=%GAMEDIR% %EMULATOR_DOSBOX-X% %ROM%
%STARTDIR%=%GAMEDIR% %EMULATOR_DOSBOX-STAGING% %ROM%

Platform (for scraping):
dos

Theme folder:
dos

This file is not needed to run ES-DE, it's only a convenience to easily see which emulators and file extensions are supported per system.

In addition to this, a file named systems.txt will be created in the root of the ROM directory which shows the mapping between the directory names and the full system names.

For example:

dos: DOS (PC)
dragon32: Dragon Data Dragon 32
dreamcast: Sega Dreamcast
easyrpg: EasyRPG Game Engine
epic: Epic Games Store
famicom: Nintendo Family Computer

If a custom es_systems.xml file is present in ~/ES-DE/custom_systems/ any entries from this file will have their names trailed by the text (custom system). So if the dos system in the example above would be present in the custom systems configuration file, the system would be shown as dos (custom system) instead of simply dos. This is only applicable for the systems.txt and systeminfo.txt files, the trailing text is not applied or used anywhere else in the application.

This is the dialog shown if no game files were found. It lets you configure the ROM directory if you don't want to use the default one, and you can also generate the game systems directory structure. Note that the directory is the physical path, and that your operating system may present this as a localized path if you are using a language other than English.

Upgrading to a newer release

Note: Before upgrading ES-DE, make sure that you have not made any system customizations anywhere in the installation directory structure as these files will be overwritten during the upgrade process. All customizations should go into ~/ES-DE/custom_systems/ as described elsewhere in this guide. None of the upgrade methods mentioned below will ever touch any files inside your ES-DE directory tree.

There is a built-in application updater that can automatically update the Linux AppImage releases, and as of ES-DE 2.2.0 there is also support for downloading the Windows and macOS packages. Just be aware that these will still need to be manually installed. Using the application updater is straightforward, just follow the on-screen instructions. For the AppImage releases the old file is retained by renaming it, adding its version to the filename followed by the .OLD extension, for example ES-DE_x64_SteamDeck.AppImage_3.0.0.OLD

Note that the updater will keep whatever filename you had for your running AppImage file, which could potentially be confusing if you for example added version information to the filename. It's always recommend to keep the default AppImage filenames, i.e. ES-DE_x64.AppImage and ES-DE_x64_SteamDeck.AppImage

On Windows and macOS you can specify to which directory you want to save the downloaded file. The default is C:\Users\myusername\Downloads on Windows and /Users/myusername/Downloads on macOS.

On Android all updates are made via the app store. Unless you have modifed the option Check for application updates you'll see a popup on application startup whenever there's a new release in the app store.

Regardless of package format and operating system it's a good idea to update the ROM directory tree after upgrading to a new version. It's possible that the new ES-DE release adds support for more systems and emulators compared to the version you previously had installed. The easiest way to do this is via the Create/update system directories entry in the Utilities menu. Alternatively the --create-system-dirs command line option can be used. Both methods work identically and will create any missing system directories and also update the systems.txt and systeminfo.txt files. This is a safe operation as it will not overwrite or delete your game files.

Likewise it's a good idea to update your themes using the theme downloader after upgrading ES-DE as support for any new systems is likely to have been added.

This is what the application updater looks like when the update process has been completed for the Linux AppImage release.

Linux AppImage

Use the built-in application updater as described above.

Linux AUR

AUR upgrades should be automatically handled via your package manager and it should be a completely automatic process. When a new release is available you should be notified of this.

macOS

Open Applications in Finder and right click on ES-DE and choose Move to Trash. Then simply install the new release using the .dmg drag-and-drop installer.

Windows installer

Just run the installer for the new release. A question will be asked whether you would like to uninstall the old version first. Say yes to this question and then proceed with running through the installer.

Windows portable

Refer to the README.txt file inside the ES-DE ZIP archive as it contains instructions on how to safely perform the upgrade. Just make sure to not unpack this archive on top of the old installation as that may lead to all sorts of problems.

Placing games into non-standard directories

As explained above, the basic logic for how ES-DE works is that it expects game files to be placed into a standardized directory structure under the ROMs directory. The location of this directory is configurable so it could for instance be placed on an external storage device or on a file share served by a NAS. The way it's implemented is via the %ROMPATH% variable in the es_systems.xml file which will always point to this ROM directory. For example this is an entry for the Super Nintendo system:

<path>%ROMPATH%/snes</path>

In theory it's possible to make a custom system entry and hardcode the path to a specific directory instead of using the %ROMPATH% variable, but this is not really supported and it also makes custom collections non-portable as the path to every game will be an absolute path rather than a path relative to the %ROMPATH% variable. So if you move your games to a different directory, you would manually need to modify all your custom collections configuration files as well as your custom es_systems.xml file.

If you really insist on not placing your games into the ES-DE standard directory structure, a much better solution is to symlink the game directories into the standard directory. In this way you don't need to make a custom es_systems.xml file and any additional emulators and other configuration added to future ES-DE releases will just work after upgrading.

This is an example of symlinking the Super Nintendo game directory on Linux and macOS:

cd ~/ROMs
ln -s ~/my_games/super_nintendo/ snes

And on Windows (you need to run this as Administrator):

cd C:\Users\Myusername\ROMs
mklink /D snes "C:\My Games\Super Nintendo\"

Disabling game systems

The way ES-DE works is that it will always try to load any system for which there are game files available, so to disable a system it needs to be hidden from ES-DE. This is easily accomplished by renaming the system directory to something that is not recognized, for example changing ~/ROMs/c64 to ~/ROMs/c64_DISABLED. Another approach is to create a subdirectory named DISABLED (or whatever name you prefer that is not matching a supported system) in the ROMs directory and move the system folder there, such as ~/ROMs/DISABLED/c64. This makes it easy to disable and re-enable systems in ES-DE. Note that the gamelist.xml file and any game media files are retained while the system is disabled so this is an entirely safe thing to do.

For very specific situations such as when the ROM directory tree is shared with another frontend, you may want to exclude some systems from loading even though their directories exist. In this case simply create an empty file named noload.txt in the root of the directory and the system will not get populated when ES-DE is started. For example:

~/ROMs/nes/noload.txt

Note that if the setting Only show games from gamelist.xml files has been enabled then the noload.txt logic is completely bypassed as this option will make ES-DE load anything present in the gamelist.xml files, regardless of whether the files and directories actually exist.

Skip loading of individual subdirectories

Sometimes you need to place things inside the ROMs directory tree that will not be visible inside ES-DE, such as texture packs and similar. But as ES-DE always scans all files to determine which ones are valid game files this can add significantly to the application startup time. However loading of such subdirectories can be skipped by placing a noload.txt file in the root of the directory, in the same manner as documented in the previous section above regarding disabling of game systems. For example:

~/ROMs/psx/textures/noload.txt

Just note that you can't clean out stale entries from the gamelist.xml files for any directories that have been hidden in this way. So to get rid of any gamelist.xml entries for such files temporarily remove the noload.txt file, restart or reload ES-DE, run the Orphaned data cleanup utility, then create a new noload.txt file and finally reload or restart ES-DE again.

Placing games and other resources on network shares

Although ES-DE does support placing game ROMs, the ES-DE application data directory and the downloaded_media directory on network shares, this can lead to serious performance problems in some instances. Especially problematic is the Microsoft SMB protocol as it offers abysmal performance for some disk operations on which ES-DE relies heavily. For small game libraries this can still be acceptable, but for libraries with hundreds or thousands of games the application startup time and overall usage will be very painful or even unusable. Similar issues could occur when using file hosting services like Google Drive.

A general recommendation is to place all game files and other data on drives connected directly to the machine where ES-DE is running. Even using low speed technology like USB thumb drives, SD cards etc. is generally fine and leads to acceptable performance in most instances.

If you insist on placing games and other resources on network drives such as a NAS, the NFS protocol has to be used instead of SMB as testing has shown between 10 and 30 times better performance with this protocol. Starting ES-DE with a certain game collection size could easily take minutes using SMB while it takes just seconds when using the NFS protocol. This is not a network throughput issue and using something like a 2.5 Gigabit or even 10 Gigabit wired interface will not help you as the SMB protocol has exceedingly bad latency regardless of physical adapter speed.

Unix-based operating systems like Linux and macOS ship with an NFS client built-in.

Here's how to mount an NFS drive from a NAS called MyNAS on macOS:

sudo mkdir /private/ROMs
sudo mount -t nfs -o resvport MyNAS:/ROMs /private/ROMs

On Linux it's quite similar:

sudo mkdir /mnt/ROMs
sudo mount MyNAS:/ROMs /mnt/ROMs

On Windows 10 and 11 the NFS client first needs to be installed as it's not enabled by default. Open the Control Panel, then Programs and Features, then select Turn Windows features on or off at the left side of the window and tick the box Services for NFS. It's unclear if both child items Administrative Tools and Client for NFS need to be selected, but it's probably safest to enable both of them.

Following this you can mount the NFS share in a terminal window as on a Unix system:

mount MyNAS:/ROMs g:

Note that the above are only examples to illustrate the general approach, you may need to take additional steps to make the configuration persistent across reboot and you may need to make other preparations. The NAS/file server also needs to be configured of course, but that's beyond the scope of this document.

Specific notes for Windows

In general it should be straightforward to run ES-DE on Windows. Almost all emulators are available on this operating system and driver quality and controller support is normally very good.

Just make sure to never place games or other resources on network shares using the Microsoft SMB protocol as that will lead to unacceptable performance degradations and extremely long startup times if you have a large collection. See the point above on how to setup an NFS share if you insist on placing files or other resources on network drives.

Also make sure that you don't use the exFAT filesystem as its very poor disk I/O performance will make ES-DE run really slowly. Using this filesystem will make the theme downloader fail as well.

In order for ES-DE to run, graphics drivers with OpenGL support have to be installed. If not, the application simply won't start. For really old graphics cards the available drivers may not provide an OpenGL version that is modern enough for ES-DE to work, and in this case a last resort solution would be to install the Mesa3D for Windows library which provides software-based OpenGL rendering. The 64-bit version of this library can be downloaded from https://fdossena.com/?p=mesa/index.frag and you simply extract the opengl32.dll file into the ES-DE installation directory. Just be aware that the performance may be quite bad.

On some GPUs with buggy drivers, ES-DE may only display a black screen on startup or when launching a game. The problem can be worked around by specifying a window size for ES-DE that is a single pixel wider than the actual screen resolution. So for example for a 1280x800 display, the resolution can be set to 1281x800 and then rendering should work correctly. This is applied using the --resolution command line option, for example:

ES-DE.exe --resolution 1281 800

Some computers using Intel Iris Xe GPUs refuse to start ES-DE or display excessive graphics corruption. These problems are seemingly caused by driver bugs and do not occur when using Linux with the same hardware. There is no known solution or workaround to this issue other than switching to Linux or waiting for Intel to resolve the problem with a driver update.

Some older games (and possibly emulators too) may not work correctly or even start at all if ES-DE is set to run in the background while a game is launched. So if you experience strange issues with some games, make sure that the setting Run in background (while game is launched) is disabled. If launching any of these problematic games from the desktop system, also make sure to use the default emulator entry Suspend ES-DE and not the alternative emulator Keep ES-DE running.

In a similar fashion, some older games may require the compatibility mode to be set to an older Windows release. This is done by right clicking on the .exe file or .lnk shortcut for the game or emulator, selecting Properties and then the Compatibility tab, then checking the box named Run this program in compatibility mode for: and finally selecting an appropriate Windows release. Some experimentation with different Windows versions may be required. Don't attempt to change the compatibility mode for ES-DE itself though as that may cause any types of unforeseen issues.

Installing DS4Windows may break controller input in ES-DE for unknown reasons. Uninstalling this software should resolve the issue. On Windows 11 both DualShock 4 (PS4) and DualSense (PS5) controllers have been tested wired and via Bluetooth and both work fine in both ES-DE and RetroArch without any special drivers or configuration.

There are two ES-DE releases available for Windows; a regular installer and a portable/ZIP version. If going for the first option, an issue is that many emulators are not shipped with proper installers that implement any mechanism to inform ES-DE where they have been installed (like adding a Registry key with their installation path). These emulators are commonly shipped as a ZIP file that can be unpacked anywhere on the filesystem.

In order for ES-DE to find these emulators you need to add their directories to the operating system's Path environment variable. This is very easy to do, just open the Settings application and then search for path in the Find a setting search box. Select the Edit the system environment variables entry and then click the Environment variables... button and add the emulator directory to the Path variable. You need to restart ES-DE after changing the variable, but following this the emulator should be found when launching a game. If running ES-DE via Steam, you need to restart Steam as well to apply the changes to the Path variable.

The second alternative is to use the portable/ZIP release of ES-DE. This can be unzipped anywhere, including to removable devices such as hard drives or USB memory sticks. Together with games and emulators this makes for a fully portable retrogaming solution. There is a README.txt file distributed with this release that describes the setup, but essentially you just place your games in the ROMs directory and your emulators in the Emulators directory, both of which are included in the portable release.

If you want to create your own portable intallation from scratch or customize the setup, INSTALL-DEV.md provides additional details.

A number of systems have alternative emulator entries named Shortcut or script which allows the direct execution of .lnk shortcut files or .bat batch files. It's not possible by default to directly launch .ps1 PowerShell scripts. As running PowerShell scripts is not even enabled by default on Windows they are for sure not recommended. If you still want to use them the best approach is to execute them via either a .lnk shortcut file or a .bat wrapper script where you explicitly call powershell.exe with the -command flag. If you instead insist on running them directly from ES-DE, you'll need to add a custom system or find rule configuration where you execute powershell.exe instead of cmd.exe and you'll also need to add .ps1 as a file extension for each relevant system.

Some disk operations can have abysmal performance on Windows, and this may be especially obvious for the theme downloader. This is often caused by anti-virus software like Microsoft Defender. If it takes say 30 seconds rather than 300 milliseconds to open the theme downloader then it may be a good idea to add an exlusion for the ES-DE\themes\ directory to Microsoft Defender. The same may also be true for other directories like the ROMs folder if disk performance is terrible. Refer to your anti-virus software documentation on how to setup such exclusions.

Specific notes for macOS

As macOS does not support Vulkan some emulators are not available, and some that do exist have not been updated for this operating system in recent years. But emulator support is steadily improving and native ARM releases ("Apple Silicon") are also getting more common. One issue though is that some emulators are not codesigned and notarized so macOS refuses to run them by default. You can override the operating system's security settings however, which will work around this problem. Some emulators are also available via the Homebrew package manager and in many instances ES-DE includes support for these releases using the bundled configuration.

Lack of controller support is a bit of a problem on macOS, and in some instances controller drivers are available but quite buggy. In general it seems as if Sony PlayStation controllers are better supported than Microsoft Xbox controllers. For third party controllers you need to investigate macOS support as it seems to be quite limited.

There is a very annoying default configuration when using Sony controllers like the DualShock 4 and DualSense (and possibly others) where double tapping the Share button starts the screen recording functionality of the operating system. This normally presents a popup window for whether to approve the screen recording. To disable this functionality you need to create a custom controller profile and assign that to your specific controller. This is done via System Settings and then the Game Controllers entry. You'll find the relevant setting under the Share Gestures section of the controller profile configuration screen. Refer to your operating system documentation for more details about this topic.

One macOS-specific requirement is that the RetroArch setting Start in Fullscreen mode is enabled or ES-DE will not be able to switch to the emulator window when launching games. As a workaround you can switch to the window manually using Command + Tab but it probably doesn't make sense to run emulators in windowed mode anyway. This issue has not been observed with any other emulators.

At the time of writing there is an additional issue with the ARM release of RetroArch where ES-DE will not be able to consistently switch to its window on game launch if the setting Close windows when quitting an application under the Desktop & Dock entry in the macOS System Settings has been set to disabled. This error does not occur for the Intel/x86 release of RetroArch or with any other standalone emulators (including those built specifically for the ARM architecture).

The first time you launch a RetroArch-emulated game from within ES-DE the operating system will present you with a security option with the following description:

"ES-DE" would like to access files in your Documents folder.

If you don't allow this, you will not be able to place system BIOS ROMs in the RetroArch default system directory ~/Documents/RetroArch/system even if you've already given RetroArch access to this folder. This is so because RetroArch runs as a subprocess to ES-DE and therefore inherits the security settings from the parent application. Attempting to launch a game without enabling the access will simply display an error message in the emulator that the BIOS files are missing. This of course only applies to emulators that require BIOS ROMs, all other games should work fine regardless of this security setting.

If you accidentally refused ES-DE the folder access, you can fix this by opening System Settings, selecting Privacy & Security and within the GUI choose Files and Folders. The option you need to enable is Documents Folder under ES-DE.

A minor annoyance is that macOS creates metadata files starting with ._ in the filename when placing game/ROM files on some filesystem types such as exFAT. This means that you will see double entries inside ES-DE for all such games. To hide these extra files, the option Show hidden files and folders (requires restart) in the Other settings menu can be set to disabled.

Specific notes for Steam Deck

As the Steam Deck is essentially a Linux desktop computer with a custom user interface, there is really not much to consider when running ES-DE on this device, except that SteamOS uses an immutable filesystem which adds some restrictions not present in most other Linux distributions. There is a specific AppImage available for the Steam Deck though that is recommended to use, as some settings have been tuned for the best possible experience on this device.

Another way to install ES-DE is via RetroDECK which is shipped as a Flatpak and can be easily installed via Discover. As RetroDECK bundles both ES-DE and all its emulators inside the Flatpak you don't need to update any emulators separately or set Flatpak permissions manually. The drawback compared to running ES-DE standalone is that less systems and emulators are supported. Most popular systems should work fine though and more emulators are getting added continuously so the situation will improve over time. Also note that if going for RetroDECK you will have a non-standard ES-DE installation so some parts of this user guide will no longer apply. For documentation specific to RetroDECK, refer to their wiki.

It's also possible to install ES-DE using EmuDeck which will automatically download the latest Steam Deck-specific AppImage. Just be aware that if using EmuDeck you will have a non-standard ES-DE installation as their installer makes some customizations to paths and other settings. For this and other reasons it's therefore not recommended to use EmuDeck, it's generally better to make a manual installation of ES-DE and your emulators and set everything up exactly to your liking.

Unless RetroDECK is used, Flatpak releases of some emulators may need some extra permissions to be able to launch games placed on external devices such as a memory card. This is the case for instance for melonDS and RPCS3. The easiest way to do this is by using Flatseal. The option you need to enable is generally All system files in the Filesystem section. If using EmuDeck some of these settings will be applied automatically via their installer.

If you are unfamiliar with Linux/Unix operating systems, make sure to at least read up on the concepts of dotfiles (hidden files and directories), home directories (including use of the tilde ~ character) and symbolic links (symlinks):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_file_and_hidden_directory#Unix_and_Unix-like_environments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_directory#Unix
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

Specific notes for Android

The Android port of ES-DE is quite different than the other versions, so it has its specifics covered by a dedicated ANDROID.md document.

Specific notes for Haiku

The Haiku port of ES-DE is currently experimental as the OS itself is experimental and has some issues. Still most functionality in ES-DE is working and there is support for a quite large number of systems and emulators. If you're interested in Haiku it's for sure worth trying it out. See the dedicated HAIKU.md document for more details.

Specific notes for Raspberry Pi

For the best experience with the Raspberry Pi it's adviced to run Android on it. There are custom OS builds available here:
https://konstakang.com/

If instead going for regular Linux, then by default ES-DE on the Raspberry Pi requires a desktop environment to run, or more specifically a window manager and a sound server (like PulseAudio or PipeWire). It is however possible to use KMS/direct framebuffer access if the DEINIT_ON_LAUNCH flag is used when building ES-DE, as documented in the Building on Unix section of the INSTALL-DEV.md document.

Note that there are no prebuilt Linux packages for the Raspberry Pi, so you will need to compile ES-DE yourself.

The Raspberry Pi 4/400 is the minimum recommended version and earlier boards have not been tested.

In general, 720p works fine with the RPi 4, and 1080p is tolerable but not really a nice and smooth experience. Due to the relative weakness of the Rasperry Pi GPU, the video scanline rendering options for the screensaver and media viewer have been disabled (only for Linux and not for Android). These options can be re-enabled via the menu if you don't mind lower video framerates.

Game system customizations

The game systems configuration file es_systems.xml is located in the ES-DE resources directory which is part of the application installation. As such this file is not intended to be modified directly. If system customizations are required, a separate es_systems.xml file should instead be placed in the custom_systems folder in the ES-DE application data directory.

On Linux this means /home/<username>/ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems.xml, on macOS /Users/<username>/ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems.xml, on Windows C:\Users\<username>\ES-DE\custom_systems\es_systems.xml or ES-DE\ES-DE\custom_systems\es_systems.xml depending on whether the installer release or the portable release is used, and on Android it's ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems.xml.

If you're using the AppImage release of ES-DE then the bundled es_systems.xml file is embedded in the AppImage together with the rest of the resources. You can extract it if you need it as a reference when creating your customized entries, or you can find it here.

Although it's possible to make a copy of the bundled configuration file, to modify it and then place it in this directory, that is not how the system customization is designed to be used. Instead the intention is that the file in custom_systems complements the bundled configuration, meaning only systems that are to be customized should be included.

For example you may want to replace the emulator launch command, modify the full name or change the supported file extensions for a single system. In this case it wouldn't make sense to copy the complete bundled file and just apply these minor modifications, instead an es_systems.xml file only containing the configuration for that single system should be placed in the custom_systems directory.

Instructions on how to customize the es_systems.xml file can be found in INSTALL-DEV.md.

In addition to the above it's also possible to customize the find rules via the es_find_rules.xml file. The logic is essentially identical to what is described for es_systems.xml, and details regarding this file can be found in INSTALL-DEV.md as well.

Migrating from EmulationStation

IMPORTANT!!! IMPORTANT!!! IMPORTANT!!!

ES-DE is partially compatible with EmulationStation as both frontends originally shared the same source code. That is, ES-DE should generally be able to read data from EmulationStation. But the opposite is not true and it's a one-way ticket for your gamelist.xml files and your custom collection files when migrating to ES-DE as they will be modified in ways that EmulationStation will see as data loss. For instance ES-DE does not use tags inside the gamelist.xml files to find game media but instead matches the media to the names of the game/ROM files. So it will not save any such tags back to the gamelist files during updates, effectively disabling the game media if the files are opened in EmulationStation.

Another potential issue when migrating gamelist.xml files from EmulationStation is that the path tag requires a leading ./ in ES-DE while that may not be present in files coming from EmulationStation. If you don't see any metadata for your games inside ES-DE, then simply add the ./ characters to each path tag and it should hopefully work.

Example of an unreadable path tag:

<path>Another World.lha</path>

Example of a correct path tag readable by ES-DE:

<path>./Another World.lha</path>

And if you have gamelist.xml files in your ROMs directory tree then ES-DE will ignore those by default, so you need to move them to the ~/ES-DE/gamelists/ tree.

If migrating from Batocera, RetroBat or Recalbox, be aware that ES-DE does not always use the same system names as those frontends. This means that your game files may not be found unless the folders are renamed accordingly. Such an example is the Sega SG-1000 system which in Batocera, RetroBat and Recalbox has the sg1000 system name, but is sg-1000 in ES-DE. See the Supported game systems table at the bottom of this guide for the correct system names in ES-DE.

Removing orphaned data

Manually removing game files from the ROMs directory tree instead of deleting them from ES-DE using the metadata editor will make any corresponding scraped media files, gamelist.xml entries and custom collection entries orphaned, i.e. they will refer to non-existent files. Although this is correctly handled by ES-DE and is not causing any serious issues, it does lead to unnecessary disk space usage and it does produce log warnings in es_log.txt on application startup. If a huge amount of game files have been manually removed it can also lead to performance problems.

In order to remove such unnecessary media files and configuration file entries, the Orphaned data cleanup utility in the Utilities menu can be used. This tool should be largely self-explanatory. And although it should generally be safe to use, unforeseen issues can occur so make sure to make backups of at least your ES-DE/gamelists and ES-DE/collections directories before attempting to use this tool.

It's recommended to run this utility with the Show hidden games setting enabled as orphaned gamelist.xml folder entries may otherwise not get purged.

If a system has a flatten.txt file present in the root of its directory, then the system will be completely skipped and an error will be logged (using folder flattening is strongly discouraged in general).

Note that there are no guarantees that any processed gamelist.xml files will be usable in any other applications than ES-DE. An attempt is made to retain the file structure but data unknown to ES-DE may get purged during cleanup.

If the utility finds any data to be removed, a backup of the old files will be made. This will end up in a CLEANUP directory and will contain a date and time stamp. For example:

~/ES-DE/gamelists/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_142830/dos/gamelist.xml
~/ES-DE/gamelists/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_142830/ports/gamelist.xml
~/ES-DE/collections/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_143216/custom-Action.cfg
~/ES-DE/collections/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_143216/custom-Fighting.cfg
~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_123406/atari2600/titlescreens/H.E.R.O..png
~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/CLEANUP/2023-07-27_123406/c64/3dboxes/Minerer 2049.crt.png

This means that you will need to manually delete these backup directories to free up disk space when you are certain that you no longer need the data.

All files and entries that are removed are logged to ~/ES-DE/logs/es_log.txt so it could be a good idea to make a backup copy of this file after running the cleanup, for future reference.

Any media directories that are empty after the cleanup will also be removed by this utility.

Note that only systems and collections that are currently enabled will be processed by the utility.

The Orphaned data cleanup utility after successfully removing some gamelist.xml entries.

Running on high resolution displays

ES-DE fully supports high resolution displays such as 1440p, 4K, 6K, 8K, ultrawide monitors etc. But many emulators (e.g. RetroArch) will also run using the same resolution which may cause performance problems on slower machines or when using resource intensive shaders. Although some emulator cores will have options to set their internal resolution, they still need to be scaled up to the screen resolution.

A solution to this is to use the custom event scripts functionality to set a temporary resolution upon launching a game that will be reverted when returning to ES-DE. Such a setup is detailed in INSTALL-DEV.md for Linux, but should hopefully be possible to implement similarly on Windows. When going for this setup it's important that the setting Run in background (while game is launched) is disabled or ES-DE may not be able to correctly switch to the emulator window when launching games.

On macOS it's problematic to change screen resolutions on the fly or on a per-application basis as Apple has seemingly disabled most of this functionality in recent operating system releases. The only real option here is to lower the display resolution prior to launching ES-DE.

Advanced display configuration

ES-DE supports a number of advanced settings to fine-tune the display output. By default the application will run in fullscreen mode at the native display resolution, but using the --resolution command line option it's possible to set this to an arbitrary resolution. By default this will change ES-DE into running in windowed mode, but if also using the --fullscreen-padding command line option the window will be fullscreen with the application contents centered, padded on a black background. This can be useful for displays where a bezel or similar covers parts of the monitor, and it can be combined with the --screenoffset command line option to adjust the positioning within the application window.

Tate mode (vertical screen orientation) is also fully supported including both running at a vertical resolution as set on the OS level, or to rotate the screen contents within the application window and keep the display resolution at its non-rotated default state. The latter is sometimes required as some emulators don't work well on rotated screen layouts. Screen rotation can be applied either via the --screenrotate command line option or via the corresponding setting in the Other settings menu.

Below are some examples. For consistency it's assumed that the display resolution is set to 1920x1080 although in practice it's perhaps more likely that a lower resolution CRT monitor is used for some of these scenarios.

Running at a lower application resolution in a window:

es-de --resolution 1280 720

Running at a lower application resolution in padded fullscreen mode:

es-de --resolution 1824 1026 --fullscreen-padding 1

Same as above but also offsetting the screen slightly to the left and downwards:

es-de --resolution 1824 1026 --fullscreen-padding 1 --screenoffset -40 22

Rotate application screen contents 90 degrees while running at the native 1920x1080 screen resolution:

es-de --screenrotate 90

Input device configuration

ES-DE automatically configures the keyboard and any connected controllers using default button mappings, and normally no additional setup is required. But if you would like to apply custom button mappings for your devices or if you have an unusual device which isn't automatically configured, you can run the Configure keyboard and controllers tool from the Input device settings entry on the main menu.

You can also force a run of this tool directly on startup via the command line argument --force-input-config.

The actual procedure to map the inputs should be self-explanatory, just follow the on-screen instructions. Note that custom button mappings will not change the help system entries.

Any custom configuration is applied per unique device ID (GUID). So if two identical controllers are used with ES-DE, both will have the same configuration applied. If connecting controllers of the same type but of different revisions, the GUID may differ and therefore the custom configuration would need to be applied to each device individually.

If you have issues with your input configuration, as a last resort you can reset all mappings by deleting or renaming the file ~/ES-DE/settings/es_input.xml

System view (main screen)

When starting ES-DE with the default settings, you will see the System view first. From here you can navigate your game systems and enter their respective gamelists.

Systems are sorted by their full names by default, as defined in the es_systems.xml file. It's however possible to change their sorting using the Systems sorting option in the UI settings menu, or to create a custom sorting configuration file as documented in the INSTALL-DEV.md document.

The System view is the default starting point for the application, it's here that you browse through your game systems.

Gamelist view

The gamelist view is where you browse and start your games, and it's where you will spend most of your time using ES-DE.

For themes that include variant trigger configuration you may see different layouts per system depending on whether you have scraped game media or not. This functionality can be disabled via the Enable theme variant triggers option in the UI Settings menu.

If the theme supports it, there's a gamelist information field displayed in the gamelist view, showing the number of games for the system (total and favorites) as well as a folder icon if a folder has been entered. When applying any filters to the gamelist, the game counter is replaced with the amount of games filtered, as in 'filtered / total games', e.g. '19 / 77'. If there are game entries in the filter result that are marked not to be counted as games, the number of such files will be indicated as 'filtered + filtered non-games / total games', for example '23 + 4 / 77' indicating 23 normal games, 4 non-games out of a total of 77. Due to this approach it's theoretically possible that the combined filtered game amount exceeds the number of counted games in the collection, for instance '69 + 11 / 77'. This is not considered a bug and is so by design. This gamelist information field functionality is specific to ES-DE so older themes will not support this.

Another feature which requires theme support is badges, which is a set of icons displaying the status for various metadata fields. The currently supported badge types are favorite, completed, kidgame, broken, collection, folder, manual, controller and alternative emulator. If any of the first four metadata fields have been set for a game, their corresponding badges will be displayed. If a game-specific controller has been selected via the metadata editor, the corresponding controller badge will be shown, and if an alternative emulator has been selected for the specific game, that badge will be displayed. Setting an alternative emulator system-wide will not display this badge as it's only intended to indicate game-specific overrides. As well, disabling the option Enable alternative emulators per game will also hide the alternative emulator badges.

The Gamelist view is where you browse the games for a specific system.

Here's an example of a theme variant trigger applying a simplified layout if there is no scraped game media available for the system. After scraping at least one game the layout will automatically change to the full design.

UI modes

ES-DE supports three separate modes, Full, Kiosk and Kid.

These modes modify the application behavior in the following way:

Full - This is the default mode which enables all functionality.
Kiosk - The main menu will be severely restricted, only displaying an entry to adjust the different audio volume levels. The gamelist options menu will be restricted as well, removing the metadata editor and the ability to modify custom game collections. And finally the ability to flag or unflag games as favorites will be removed. Apart from this all games will be playable.
Kid - Only games marked as being suitable for children will be displayed (this flag is set manually per game using the metadata editor). Additionally, the gamelist options menu is disabled as is the ability to flag and unflag games as favorites. There is also a separate option available to enable or disable the main menu when in Kid mode, see Enable menu in kid mode for additional information.

There is an unlock code available to revert to the Full mode from the Kiosk or Kid mode, as is described when changing this setting from the main menu. By default the button sequence is Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A (or equivalent buttons if an Xbox controller is not used). Either the keyboard or a controller can be used to input the passkey sequence, but it can't be entered when a menu is open.

The application can also be forced into any of the three modes via the command line options --force-full, --force-kiosk and --force-kid. This is only temporary until the restart of the application, unless the settings menu is entered and the setting is saved to the configuration file (this assumes that the main menu is available in the selected UI mode of course).

Help system

There is a help system available throughout the application that provides an overview of possible actions and buttons that can be used. Note that some general actions are never shown, such as the ability to quick jump in gamelists, menus and text input fields using the shoulder and trigger buttons. It's possible to disable the help system via the Display on-screen help option in the UI settings menu.

The help system is displayed at the bottom of the screen for this theme, although it could be positioned elsewhere for other themes.

The built-in help system will provide a contextual summary of the available navigation options, but here's still a general overview. These are the buttons mappings automatically applied by ES-DE, but they can be customized using the input configurator as described earlier in this document. It's not an exhaustive list, but it covers most situations. The button names are based on the Xbox 360 controller as that is the naming convention used by the SDL library which handles the controller input in ES-DE.

When editing text using the virtual keyboard but using a physical keyboard as input device instead of a controller, then there are some slight exceptions to the normal input logic. The Enter key will always apply the changes and the Escape key will always go back. As well, if you have mapped any regular keys to the left, right or down buttons or to the shoulder or trigger buttons, then these will not be usable in the text input field. You will instead have to use the virtual keyboard buttons to enter these characters. Note that this is not an issue if using the default keyboard configuration as the buttons just mentioned are then mapped to special keys only, as detailed below.

When editing text it's also possible to paste from the clipboard into ES-DE using Command + V on macOS and Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert on all other operating systems.

Default keyboard mappings are shown in brackets below.

It's assumed that the option Swap the A/B and X/Y buttons in the Input device settings menu is disabled as some buttons will otherwise obviously be swapped.

Up and down
(Arrow up / Arrow down)

Navigates between system and game entries where these buttons are applicable, such as for textlists, grids and vertical carousels. Also used in menus for general navigation. For the media viewer it changes viewing mode between game media and PDF manuals.

Left and right
(Arrow left / Arrow right)

Navigates between system and game entries where these buttons are applicable, such as for grids and horizontal carousels. Navigates between gamelists if the Quick system select option has been set to use these buttons and the primary element supports it. Navigates between media files in the media viewer and selects a random game when using the Video or Slideshow screensavers if the Enable screensaver controls option has been enabled. Also used in menus for general navigation.

Start button
(Escape)

Opens and closes the main menu.

Back button
(F1)

Opens and closes the gamelist options menu in the gamelist view.

Left and right shoulder buttons
(Page up / Page down)

Provides quick jumping in textlists and menus, jumps 10 games in the gamelists and 6 entries in the menus. Navigates between gamelists if the Quick system select option has been set to use these buttons and the primary element supports it. Also used as back and blankspace keys in text edit dialogs and for zooming in and out when viewing PDF game manuals.

Left and right trigger buttons
(Home / End)

Jumps to the first or last entries in carousels, grids and textlists as well as in menus and text edit dialogs. Navigates between gamelists if the Quick system select option has been set to use these buttons and the primary element supports it. Also jumps to the first or last entry/page when using the media viewer.

Left and right thumbstick click
(F2 / F3)

Jumps to a random game or system depending on whether pressed when in the system view or gamelist view. Only applicable if the Random entry button option has been configured accordingly.

A button
(Enter)

Select button which opens gamelists from the system view, launches games, enters folders, selects menu entries etc.

B button
(Back key)

Back button, self explanatory.

X button
(Delete)

Starts the media viewer in the gamelist view or the screensaver in the system view (if the Enable screensaver controls setting is enabled). Used by some other minor functions as explained by the help system and/or this guide.

Y button
(Insert on Linux and Windows, F13 on macOS)

Marks games as favorites in the gamelist view (if the Enable toggle favorites button option has been enabled). Used by some other minor functions as explained by the help system and/or this guide.

Alt + F4 (Windows and Linux) or Command + Q (macOS) (keyboard only)

Quits the application. This key combination can be changed to Ctrl + Q, Alt + Q or F4 using the Keyboard quit shortcut menu option described later in this document.

Themes

ES-DE ships with the Linear, Modern and Slate themes and additional ones can be installed using the built-in theme downloader. More themes made specifically for ES-DE can be found on the Internet, and you can customize or create your own ones too. Note that on Android specifically only the Linear theme is bundled with the application, but Modern and Slate can be installed via the theme downloader.

ES-DE does not support EmulationStation themes, such as those from RetroPie, Recalbox, RetroBat or Batocera.

There are several user-selectable theme options in the UI Settings menu, most notably Theme variant which is essentially a form of theme profile. This could be anything, like different ways to navigate the themes, different layouts and designs etc. Additionally the Theme color scheme setting makes it possible to select between different color schemes, if supported by the theme. You can change the font size too for themes that offer this, via the Theme font size setting. The two remaining options Theme aspect ratio and Theme transitions are also important but you can normally leave them at their default Automatic values, especially the Theme aspect ratio option as it will be automatically detected. Be aware that all these theme settings are optional, it's up to the theme developer whether to add support for them to their themes.

Themes are most easily installed using the built-in theme downloader, but you can also manually add them to your ES-DE home directory, i.e. ES-DE/themes/. By just adding them there, one folder each, they will be found during startup and you can then choose between them via the UI Settings menu on the main menu. If using the portable release of ES-DE on Windows, the ES-DE application data can be found in the root of the ES-DE directory.

Although you should place additional themes in your ES-DE application data directory, the Linear, Modern and Slate themes are located in the installation folder as they come bundled with the application. For example this could be /usr/share/es-de/themes/ on Linux, /Applications/ES-DE.app/Contents/Resources/themes/ on macOS or C:\Program Files\ES-DE\themes\ on Windows. If using the portable ES-DE release on Windows, the themes folder will be located in the root of the ES-DE directory.

Note that if using the AppImage release on Linux, then there is no installation folder as all files are contained inside the AppImage file.

If you would like to customize the Linear, Modern or Slate themes, simply make a copy of their directories to ES-DE/themes/ and then those copies will take precedence over the ones in the application installation directory.

Refer to the official themes list for a selection of high-quality themes (these are also available via the built-in theme downloader):
https://gitlab.com/es-de/themes/themes-list

This is a screenshot of the Slate theme that is bundled with ES-DE in addition to the default Linear theme.

Theme downloader

There is a built-in theme downloader that can be accessed from the UI Settings menu. It lets you download new themes and apply updates to installed themes. You can also delete installed themes directly from this user interface.

The basic functionality is hopefully largely self-explanatory, check the on-screen helpsystem for information on available actions. There are also popup dialogs displayed for actions that require user confirmation, or if there are any errors.

Information about each theme is displayed in the user interface including the number of available variants, color schemes and aspect ratios as well as a screenshot. You can also view additional screenshots in fullscreen mode by pressing the X button.

Themes are downloaded from their respective GitHub or GitLab sites using Git (or more specifically using libgit2) so apart from the initial download, subsequent updates should be fast as only new or modified files will be fetched. Compression is also applied during transfer to speed up things further. Due to the complex nature of Git repositories it's not possible to abort downloads as that could lead to data corruption. If that would still happen, such as if you have a power failure or kill the ES-DE process while a download is running, the theme downloader should detect the corrupt repository on next startup and display an error message. It will in this case also rename the theme directory by adding the _CORRUPT_DISABLED extension to it and start a new fresh download.

If you have manually downloaded any of the themes from the official themes list then these would need to be downloaded again as they will not contain the necessary information required by the theme downloader. A dialog will be presented to inform you about this and the theme directory will be renamed by adding the _DISABLED extension to its name. To conserve disk space it's a good idea to manually delete these _DISABLED directories outside of ES-DE. Alternatively you could just completely delete the theme from the user interface using the Y button and start a fresh download.

If you have customized a theme by for instance modifying any of its XML files, then this will be highlighted with an exclamation mark and the text LOCAL CHANGES in the theme downloader interface. If you attempt to fetch updates for such a theme you will be asked a question of whether to overwrite your local changes, or whether to cancel. If you have however added additional files to the theme that are not included in the theme repository, then these will not interfere and you can go ahead and fetch theme updates without any risk of having your local files being deleted. But there is a special (although unlikely) situation, if you add files that are not part of the theme repository but that are later added by the theme developer as well, then your local copies of any such files will be ovewritten when fetching theme updates.

In worst case there could be a situation where a repository is corrupted and the theme downloader can't properly identify or handle the corruption. In this case you will have to rename or delete that directory. This could also apply to the actual themes list repository. The latter is named themes-list so by just deleting this directory (i.e. ~/ES-DE/themes/themes-list) you'll reset the theme downloader to its initial state.

Note that the exFAT filesystem can't be used as it makes the theme downloader fail. But using this filesystem is strongly discouraged anyway as it offers very poor disk I/O performance which makes ES-DE run really slowly.

The theme downloader with a number of installed themes.

Emulator setup

ES-DE is a frontend application and does not provide any emulation by itself. It does however come preconfigured for use with emulators as setup in the es_systems.xml file. Most systems are by default configured to use RetroArch but in many instances alternative standalone emulators can be selected instead as described elsewhere in this guide.

Installation and configuration of RetroArch and other emulators is beyond the scope of this guide, but many good resources can be found online on how to do this.

Keep in mind that ES-DE will not install any RetroArch cores, you need to do this manually from within the RetroArch user interface.

If ES-DE is unable to find an emulator when a game is launched, a notification popup will be shown. Likewise a notification will be shown if the defined emulator core is not installed. The es_log.txt file will also provide additional details.

Using the Steam release of RetroArch

As this release of RetroArch is executed via the Steam application it's behaving a bit glitchy and strange with ES-DE (which is due to the nature of Steam). In addition to this there seem to be some bugs in either Steam or RetroArch, or both. The following issues have been observed:

ES-DE will continue to run in the background due to the way that Steam works
Game launching is not seamless and there will be some flickering
If the Steam GUI is visible, focus may not return to ES-DE when exiting a game. Minimizing Steam increases the chances of this working properly but it's not guaranteed to completely fix the problem
Filenames containing apostrophes do not work, you need to rename these game files to be able to launch them
Core searches will not work, if an emulator core is missing there will be no error notification inside ES-DE and game launching will just silently fail
Logging output from emulators is not possible due to ES-DE running in the background

As well, adding support for the Steam release of RetroArch for all systems that ES-DE supports requires hundreds of additional alternative emulator entries. For all these reasons there will be no official support for this release of RetroArch. If you insist on still using it, it's quite easy to make custom system configuration entries as the setup has been partly prepared for in the bundled configuration.

Simply add alternative emulator entries such as the following example (which enables support for the Nestopia UE core for the nes system):

<command label="Nestopia UE (Steam)">%RUNINBACKGROUND% %EMULATOR_STEAM% -applaunch 1118310 -L nestopia_libretro %ROM%</command>

This will work on both Linux and Windows.

A complete entry for the nes system could look like the following:

<system>
    <name>nes</name>
    <fullname>Nintendo Entertainment System</fullname>
    <path>%ROMPATH%/nes</path>
    <extension>.nes .NES .unf .UNF .unif .UNIF .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
    <command label="Nestopia UE (Steam)">%RUNINBACKGROUND% %EMULATOR_STEAM% -applaunch 1118310 -L nestopia_libretro %ROM%</command>
    <command label="FCEUmm (Steam)">%RUNINBACKGROUND% %EMULATOR_STEAM% -applaunch 1118310 -L fceumm_libretro %ROM%</command>
    <platform>nes</platform>
    <theme>nes</theme>
</system>

Using emulators in AppImage format on Linux

AppImages is a great way to package emulators on Linux as they work across many different distributions. There is one small problem though in that there is no standardized directory for storing these files, meaning ES-DE could have issues locating them.

Therefore all bundled emulator configuration entries that support AppImages will look for these files in the following locations:

~/Applications/
~/.local/share/applications/
~/.local/bin/
~/bin/

It's generally recommended to go for the ~/Applications/ directory, but depending on your Linux distribution this may or may not exist by default. If the directory doesn't exist, then just go ahead and create it. Keep in mind that Linux is case-sensitive so make sure to spell it with a capital A.

As AppImages often embed version information into the actual filename, the bundled configuration uses wildcards to locate these files, such as rpcs3*.AppImage which would match the filename rpcs3-v0.0.19-13103-cc21d1b3_linux64.AppImage for instance. Note that if multiple files match the wildcard pattern, the first file returned by the operating system will be selected.

This approach also works when using AppImageLauncher. When first launching an AppImage with AppImageLauncher installed a question will be asked whether to integrate the application. If accepting this, the AppImage will be moved to the ~/Applications directory and a hash will be added to the filename, like in this example:

rpcs3-v0.0.19-13103-cc21d1b3_linux64_54579676ed3fa60dafec7188286495e4.AppImage

Again, the wildcard matching means this filename should be found by ES-DE when launching a game so no additional setup should be required.

Just be aware that AppImageLauncher causes multiple issues and its use is therefore not recommended. You can read more about this in the next section below.

If not using AppImageLauncher, then make sure to set the AppImages as executable or ES-DE will not be able to launch them. For example:

cd ~/Applications
chmod +x rpcs3*.AppImage

The following emulators are supported in AppImage format when using the bundled configuration:

System name	Emulator	Filename configuration
Multiple	RetroArch	RetroArch-Linux*.AppImage
Multiple	Mesen	Mesen*.AppImage
dreamcast	Flycast	flycast-x86*.AppImage
dreamcast	Flycast Dojo	flycast-dojo*.AppImage
gba	mGBA	mGBA*.AppImage
gc	Dolphin	Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage
gc	Triforce	dolphin-emu-triforce*.AppImage
macintosh	Basilisk II	BasiliskII*.AppImage
macintosh	SheepShaver	SheepShaver*.AppImage
n3ds	Citra	citra-qt*.AppImage
n3ds	Lime3DS	lime3ds-gui*.AppImage
n3ds	Panda3DS	Alber-*.AppImage
n64/n64dd	Rosalie's Mupen GUI	RMG*.AppImage
ngage/symbian	EKA2L1	EKA2L1*.AppImage
ps2	PCSX2	pcsx2*.AppImage
ps2	Play!	Play!*.AppImage
ps3	RPCS3	rpcs3*.AppImage
psvita	Vita3K	Vita3K*.AppImage
psx	DuckStation	DuckStation*.AppImage
snes	Snes9x	Snes9x*.AppImage
xbox	xemu	xemu*.AppImage
wii	Dolphin	Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage
wiiu	Cemu	Cemu*.AppImage
zmachine	Gargoyle	Gargoyle*.AppImage

Using AppImageLauncher on Linux

AppImageLauncher will by default move any AppImage you attempt to run to the root of the ~/Applications directory and integreate it into the desktop environment's application menu. While this may sound convenient it causes multiple issues.

It's a gross oversimplification to assume that people want all their AppImages in the ~/Applications directory. For example OpenBOR games are supposed to be packaged as standalone units with the AppImage game engine together with all game assets as different games may require different game engine versions. Another example would be Windows games that are packaged together with Wine or Proton into an AppImage. In ES-DE there are multiple systems that can scrape and launch AppImages directly, which means they need to be placed into the ROMs directory tree.

For these and other reasons it's not recommended to use AppImageLauncher. If you still insist on using it you will need to setup some symlinks to point the relocated AppImages back to their expected locations. This is covered in some specific sections of this user guide, but not everywhere as AppImageLauncher is not a recommended solution for ES-DE.

AppImage vs Flatpak search order on Linux

Emulator AppImages are almost always searched before Flatpaks by the bundled configuration. Take the following es_find_rules.xml entry as an example:

<emulator name="DOLPHIN">
    <!-- Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin -->
    <rule type="systempath">
        <entry>dolphin-emu</entry>
        <entry>org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu</entry>
    </rule>
    <rule type="staticpath">
        <entry>~/Applications/Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage</entry>
        <entry>~/.local/share/applications/Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage</entry>
        <entry>~/.local/bin/Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage</entry>
        <entry>~/bin/Dolphin_Emulator*.AppImage</entry>
        <entry>/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu</entry>
        <entry>~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin/org.DolphinEmu.dolphin-emu</entry>
    </rule>
</emulator>

The staticpath rules are always parsed in the order they are defined, and as the AppImage entries are listed above the Flatpak entries, these will be searched first.

There is however a workaround available to launch the Flatpak first, should you prefer that. As you can see in the above example there is also a systempath entry for the Flatpak launch file, and by manually defining the path to your Flatpak bin directory you can make use of this systempath entry instead, which will always be executed before the staticpath entries.

For example if using the ES-DE AppImage release, this would be the command to execute:

PATH=/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin:~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin:$PATH ./ES-DE_x64.AppImage

Obviously you would need to change the path to the AppImage if it's not in your current working directory.

You can also set the PATH variable permanently in your shell environment configuration file:

export PATH=/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin:~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/bin:$PATH

Refer to your operating system documentation for more details on how the PATH environmental variable works and how to customize your shell environment.

Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux

Normally on Linux you would install emulators using either one of the established cross-distribution package formats, i.e. AppImage, Snap or Flatpak, or you would install them using the operating system repository (including the AUR if available on your OS). Less likely would be to manually build from source code and install to a standard system directory. In all these instances ES-DE should be able to find the emulator when launching a game. But in some cases you may instead manually download an emulator as an archive file to unzip somewhere on the file system. Normally you would want to place these files in your home directory, and if running a distribution that has an immutable filesystem (such as SteamOS or Fedora Silverblue), you don't even have the choice to install them to a standard system directory.

For these situations ES-DE looks for emulators in the same directories where it looks for AppImages, meaning:

~/Applications/
~/.local/share/applications/
~/.local/bin/
~/bin/

So placing a manually downloaded emulator binary in either of these directories will make ES-DE able to locate it during game launch.

The following manually downloaded emulators are supported when using the bundled configuration:

System name	Emulator	Filename
adam/colecovision	ColEm	colem/colem
amiga/amiga1200/amiga600/amigacd32/cdtv	Amiberry	amiberry/amiberry
amstradcpc	ACE-DL	AceDL/AceDL
amstradcpc	CPCemu	cpcemu/cpcemu
apple2	LinApple	linapple/linapple
atari2600	Gopher2600	gopher2600/gopher2600_linux_amd64
atarijaguar/atarijaguarcd	BigPEmu	bigpemu/bigpemu
coco/dragon32/tanodragon	XRoar	xroar/xroar
daphne	Hypseus Singe	hypseus-singe/hypseus.bin
dreamcast	Redream	redream/redream
easyrpg	EasyRPG	easyrpg/easyrpg-player
fbneo/neogeo/neogeocd/neogeocdjp	FinalBurn Neo	fbneo/fbneo
flash	Lightspark	lightspark/lightspark
flash	Ruffle	ruffle/ruffle
fmtowns	Tsugaru	tsugaru/Tsugaru_CUI
gb/gba/gbc/nds	SkyEmu	SkyEmu/SkyEmu
gb/gbc	Gearboy	gearboy/gearboy
model3	Supermodel	Supermodel/supermodel
famicom/nes	puNES	punes/punes
mame-advmame	AdvanceMAME	advancemame/advmame
oric	Oricutron	oricutron/Oricutron
pc88	QUASI88	quasi88/quasi88
pico8	PICO-8	pico-8/pico8
psvita	Vita3K	Vita3K/Vita3K
samcoupe	SimCoupé	simcoupe/simcoupe
switch	Ryujinx	publish/Ryujinx
switch	Ryujinx	publish/Ryujinx.Ava
trs-80	sdl2trs	sdl2trs/sdl2trs
vpinball	Visual Pinball X	VPinballX/VPinballX_GL
wiiu	Cemu	Cemu/Cemu
zxnext	#CSpect	CSpect/CSpect.exe
zxnext	ZEsarUX	ZEsarUX/zesarux

#CSpect requires the Mono .NET framework to run, hence the .exe extension.

Note that the Vita3K binary is not set as executable after unpacking the archive, so you need to do that once before ES-DE can run it:

cd ~/Applications/Vita3K
chmod +x Vita3K

The same is true for Cemu:

cd ~/Applications/Cemu
chmod +x Cemu

And for SkyEmu:

cd ~/Applications/SkyEmu
chmod +x SkyEmu

And for VPinballX_GL:

cd ~/Applications/VPinballX
chmod +x VPinballX_GL

Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton

On Linux it's possible to run emulators developed specifically for Microsoft Windows via the Wine compatibility layer. Support is also included for the Proton fork of Wine.

ES-DE will look for Wine, Proton and the Windows emulators in the same directories where it looks for emulator AppImages and manually downloaded emulators (as explained in the sections above), meaning:

~/Applications/
~/.local/share/applications/
~/.local/bin/
~/bin/

The AppImage release of Wine or Proton is required, which can be downloaded from here:
https://github.com/mmtrt/WINE_AppImage/releases

For regular Wine, make sure to get the stable x86_64 release, for this example we assume that the file wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64.AppImage has been downloaded.

For Proton we assume that the file wine-staging_ge-proton_8-14-x86_64.AppImage has been downloaded.

For Wine, create an ~/Applications/Wine directory and be mindful that the letter case is correct. Then move the Wine AppImage into this new directory and set executable permissions for the file:

cd ~/Applications/Wine
chmod +x wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64.AppImage

Likewise for Proton, create an ~/Applications/Proton directory, move the AppImage there and run the chmod command:

cd ~/Applications/Proton
chmod +x wine-staging_ge-proton_8-14-x86_64.AppImage

The find rules for Wine and Proton look like the following, so the AppImage filenames need to match this pattern:

<entry>~/Applications/Wine/wine*.AppImage</entry>
<entry>~/Applications/Proton/wine*.AppImage</entry>

As an optional final touch it's a good idea to add entries for the Wine configuration tool WineCfg so it can be easily launched from inside ES-DE. The desktop system is most suitable for this. Simply create two .sh files for this purpose, for example:

~/ROMs/desktop/WineCfg (Wine).sh
~/ROMs/desktop/WineCfg (Proton).sh

The contents of the WineCfg (Wine).sh file could look something like the following (modify based on your AppImage filename of course):

~/Applications/Wine/wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64.AppImage WineCfg

Likewise the contents of the WineCfg (Proton).sh file could look something like the following:

~/Applications/Proton/wine-staging_ge-proton_8-14-x86_64.AppImage WineCfg

The following Windows emulators are supported, and the setup for most of these is covered in detail in specific sections of this document:

System name	Emulator	Filename
atarijaguar/atarijaguarcd	BigPEmu	BigPEmu/BigPEmu.exe
famicom/nes	3dSen	3dSen/3dSen.exe
model2	Model 2 Emulator	m2emulator/EMULATOR.EXE
x68000	XM6 Pro-68k	XM6 Pro-68k/XM6.exe
xbox360	xenia	xenia/xenia.exe
xbox360	xenia	xenia/xenia_canary.exe

Setup for AppImageLauncher

AppImageLauncher will by default move any AppImage you attempt to run to the root of the ~/Applications directory. This annoyingly also includes files in subdirectories in the ~/Applications tree, so the Wine and Proton AppImages would get relocated there too.

For instance:

~/Applications/Wine/wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64.AppImage

Would be moved to:

~/Applications/wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64_7218a7d163a0ce403cac23ebcb3747a3.AppImage

A hash will be applied to the filename as part of the move process.

To work around this simply symlink the newly moved and renamed AppImage back into the Wine or Proton directory, like so:

cd ~/Applications/Wine
ln -s ../wine-stable_8.0.2-x86_64_7218a7d163a0ce403cac23ebcb3747a3.AppImage .

While it's possible to setup a custom find rule entry to look for the Wine and Proton AppImages directly in ~/Applications this is not a good idea as the filename similarities between these two files can lead to a mixup, you really want them separated into their own directories.

An alternative and recommended solution to avoid the symlinking would be to not use AppImageLauncher at all.

Running emulators in fullscreen mode

In general ES-DE does not pass command line parameters to emulators to start them in fullscreen mode. This is so as for most (if not all) emulators, command line arguments overrides the settings the user has defined. This means that windowed mode would become impossible to achieve without creating custom systems configuration entries if ES-DE enforced fullscreen mode. There are only a very few exceptions for emulators where there is no other way to enter fullscreen mode than by passing such options during game launch.

So if an emulator starts in windowed mode and you prefer to have it running in fullscreen mode instead, make sure to enable that option in the emulator settings or configuration file (which should be a one-time job).

Getting your games into ES-DE

For most systems game setup is straightforward, just put your game files into the folder corresponding to the platform name (these names can be found at the end of this guide) and you're good to go.

But for some systems a more elaborate setup is required, and the configuration for a number of such systems can be found below.

Single game file installation

Let's start with the simple scenario of a single ROM file per game, which is the case for the majority of platforms. For this example we're setting up ES-DE to play Nintendo Entertainment System games.

The supported file extensions are listed in linux/es_systems.xml, macos/es_systems.xml and windows/es_systems.xml but if you generated the game system directories on first application startup or later via Create/update system directories in the Utilities menu, then there will be a file named systeminfo.txt in each game system directory that includes the list of supported file extensions.

Here is a simplified example from linux/es_systems.xml:

<system>
    <name>nes</name>
    <fullname>Nintendo Entertainment System</fullname>
    <path>%ROMPATH%/nes</path>
    <extension>.nes .NES .unf .UNF .unif .UNIF .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
    <command label="Mesen">%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/mesen_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <command label="Nestopia UE">%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/nestopia_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <command label="FCEUmm">%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/fceumm_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <command label="QuickNES">%EMULATOR_RETROARCH% -L %CORE_RETROARCH%/quicknes_libretro.so %ROM%</command>
    <platform>nes</platform>
    <theme>nes</theme>
</system>

The ROM files must be named using one of the supported file extensions, or ES-DE won't find them.

It's highly recommended to use filenames that correspond to the full name of the game (except for special cases like arcade games), otherwise you may need to manually feed the scraper the game name when scraping which is very tedious.

Symlinks are supported for both ROM directories and individual game files, but make sure to never symlink between files within the same system directory or there may be undefined application behavior when scraping, launching games etc.

The default game folder is ~/ROMs. On Linux this defaults to /home/<username>/ROMs, on macOS /Users/<username>/ROMs and on Windows C:\Users\<username>\ROMs or ES-DE\ROMs depending on whether the installer release or the portable release is used. If the --home command line option was used to start ES-DE, the tilde symbol will resolve to whatever directory was passed as an argument to this option.

Assuming the default ROM directory is used, we need to create a subdirectory corresponding to the <path> tag in es_systems.xml, for this example it's nes.

So it would look something like the following:

/home/myusername/ROMs/nes     # Linux
/Users/myusername/ROMs/nes    # macOS
C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\nes  # Windows installer
ES-DE\ROMs\nes                # Windows portable

Now simply copy your game ROMs into this folder, and you should end up with something like this Linux example:

~/ROMs/nes/Legend of Zelda, the.zip
~/ROMs/nes/Metal Gear.zip
~/ROMs/nes/Super Mario Bros. 3.zip

Note that these directories are case sensitive on Linux/Unix, so creating a directory named Nes instead of nes won't work.

That's it, start ES-DE and the NES game system should be populated. You can now scrape information and media for the games, and assuming you've setup RetroArch correctly with the Mesen core, you can launch games. If you instead prefer to use any of the three alternative emulators listed above (Nestopia UE, FCEUmm or QuickNES) then you can install one of those cores instead and change your emulator preference using the Alternative emulators interface in the Other settings menu or on a per-game basis via the metadata editor. Note that alternative emulators are only available for some game systems.

Multiple game files installation

For some systems, there are sometimes (or always) multiple files per game. Such an example would be the Commodore 64 when multidisk games are being played. For such instances, simply group the files inside folders.

The system name for the Commodore 64 is c64, so the following structure would be a possible approach:

~/ROMs/c64/Cartridge
~/ROMs/c64/Tape
~/ROMs/c64/Disk
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2.m3u/LNINJA2A.D64
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2.m3u/LNINJA2B.D64
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2.m3u/Last Ninja 2.m3u
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Pirates!.m3u/PIRAT-E0.d64
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Pirates!.m3u/PIRAT-E1.d64
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Pirates!.m3u/PIRAT-E2.d64
~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Pirates!.m3u/Pirates!.m3u

It's highly recommended to create .m3u playlist files for multi-disc images as this normally automates disk swapping in the emulator. It's then this .m3u file that should be selected for launching the game.

The .m3u file simply contains a list of the game files, for example in the case of Last Ninja 2.m3u:

LNINJA2A.D64
LNINJA2B.D64

Setting the directories to the same name as the .m3u files will interpret them as files, meaning they will behave just like any normal files inside ES-DE instead of being displayed as folders. When launching such a game, the file inside the directory that matches the directory name will be passed to the emulator. See the following section below for more information about this functionality.

This setup is of course entirely optional, you can also leave the directories as normal folders, meaning they will behave just like you would expect, i.e. you will have to enter them and select the file you want to launch. If going for this setup it's possible to easily hide the files that are not relevant using the metadata editor.

Directories interpreted as files

There are two scenarios where it's useful to interpret directories as files inside ES-DE. The first one is to hide the directory structure for multi-file/multi-disc games while still being able to directly launch files inside these folders, and the second is that some emulators support passing a directory rather than an individual file as the game ROM argument.

In both cases, renaming a directory to one of the supported file extensions will automatically make ES-DE interpret it as a file. This also means that the directory can be part of the automatic collections and any custom collections.

The only difference between a real file and a directory interpreted as a file is that the Delete button in the metadata editor will be disabled as ES-DE does not support deletion of directories for safety reasons.

For the first scenario, to automatically launch a file inside a directory, just rename the directory to the same name as the file inside the folder that you would like to launch. For example:

~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/
~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio.cue
~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio.gdi
~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio (Track 1).bin
~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio (Track 2).bin
~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio (Track 3).bin

In this case the directory is named Jet Grind Radio.cue, i.e. exactly the same name as one of the files inside the directory. This means that when launching the game, ~/ROMs/dreamcast/Jet Grind Radio.cue/Jet Grind Radio.cue will actually be passed to the emulator.

Here's another example when using .m3u files:

~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/
~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1).chd
~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2).chd
~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/Final Fantasy VII (Disc 3).chd
~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/Final Fantasy VII.m3u

In exactly the same manner, the file ~/ROMs/psx/Final Fantasy VII.m3u/Final Fantasy VII.m3u will be passed to the emulator on game launch. See the section just above this one, Multiple game files installation for an explanations of how .m3u files work.

The second scenario is when an emulator supports passing a directory rather than a file to launch a game. Such an example is the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3.

For PS3 games one supported file extension in es_systems.xml is .ps3 so this is what a game directory could look like:

~/ROMs/ps3/Gran Turismo 5.ps3

It's possible to combine these types of special directories with normal directories, for a setup like this:

~/ROMs/ps3/racing/Gran Turismo 5.ps3

Also in this case the directory will be displayed as a regular game file inside ES-DE and when launching the game the directory is passed as the game ROM argument to RPCS3.

Folder flattening

This functionality is experimental and may cause all sorts of issues like corrupting your gamelist.xml files, so make sure to have backups of your data prior to attempting to use this.

ES-DE works according to the filesystem paradigm used on most operating systems, meaning the file and directory structure of your ROMs directory is reflected inside the application. So if you create a directory on the filesystem and place some games in there, it will be reflected inside ES-DE as a folder that you can enter and launch games from.

A slight exception to this is the Directories interpreted as files functionality where you can display a folder as a single entry. But even then, the basic directory structure is retained.

However, some users have a setup where they have separated games inside their systems into folders but would still want to see these as a flat structure in ES-DE. While this is possible to accomplish, it's discouraged as it will cause multiple issues:

It completely disables folder support for the system
Any identically named files will be added only once in a semi-random fashion, meaning you could miss some games
If there is metadata available for multiple games with the same filename (which could happen if scraping was done prior to flattening the folders) then the behavior is undefined and metadata from the wrong game may get used
Some systems like MS-DOS and ScummVM may be completely broken
The Orphaned data cleanup utility will not process the system
The setup may cause confusion when reorganizing your collection and similar because what you'll see inside ES-DE will not reflect what you see when navigating the ROM directory in your operating system's file manager

Only enable this functionality if you know exactly what you're doing and understand the adverse side effects mentioned above. If you have any name collisions in your directory structure then make sure to rename each file to have a unique name. Also delete your gamelist.xml file and rescrape the entire system after fixing any collisions as it's otherwise random which metadata will be used for those games.

If you still want to go ahead and enable folder flattening, then place an empty file named flatten.txt in the root of each system where you would like to have this applied.

Here's an example setup:

~/ROMs/nes/EU/Kid Icarus.zip
~/ROMs/nes/EU/Metal Gear (EU).zip
~/ROMs/nes/USA/Kid Icarus.zip
~/ROMs/nes/USA/Metal Gear (USA).zip
~/ROMs/nes/Contra.zip
~/ROMs/nes/Recca.zip
~/ROMs/nes/flatten.txt

For this example the following entries will show up inside ES-DE:

Contra
Kid Icarus
Metal Gear (EU)
Metal Gear (USA)
Recca

Note that Kid Icarus will only show up once since there is a name collision present and in this case only the first file processed will be added and any other identically named files will be ignored. Also note that in this case it's random whether metadata from EU/Kid Icarus or USA/Kid Icarus will be used.

Platform-specific setup

Not all systems are as simple to setup as what was described in the previous sections, and in some cases there may be multiple ways to perform the configuration. Specifics for such platforms are covered below.

Apple II

On Android only MAME4droid 2024 is supported for the apple2 system. Make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

On Linux the default emulator for the apple2 system is LinApple and on Windows it's AppleWin. Additionally the alternative emulators Mednafen and MAME standalone are supported. On macOS there is a port of AppleWin available named Mariani but it appears broken at the moment as it does not accept any command line parameters. So instead only Mednafen and MAME are supported on macOS.

Depending on which Linux operating system you're using, LinApple may not be readily available and you may have to build it from source code or obtain a binary from somewhere on the Internet. See the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details on where it needs to be installed. If you're using an OS with access to the AUR, such as Arch or Manjaro, then LinApple is available there. Note that you need to use the linapple-git package as the regular linapple package does not work correctly.

Once the LinApple or AppleWin emulator is installed no additional configuration is required, just drop your games into the ~/ROMs/apple2 folder and launch them from inside ES-DE.

If using Mednafen you need to place some Apple II ROM files in the emulator firmware directory, refer to the Mednafen documentation for details about this.

If you want to use MAME standalone then you need to place the following ROM files in the ~/ROMs/apple2 directory:

a2diskiing.zip
apple2e.zip
d2fdc.zip
votrsc01.zip
votrsc01a.zip

Note that you will need to enable UI controls in MAME to be able to exit the emulator via the normal exit key. The following page documents the default keys for exiting and toggling UI mode:
https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/defaultkeys.html

Apple IIGS

The Apple IIGS computer is emulated using MAME. On desktop operating systems there is a dedicated emulator available for this system named GSplus but it appears to not be able to parse command line parameters correctly so disk images can't be supplied to it. As such it's currently unsupported.

If using Android then make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

In order to run Apple IIGS games in MAME, you need to place the following ROM file in the ~/ROMs/apple2gs directory:

apple2gs.zip

Apple Macintosh

On Android only MAME4droid 2024 is supported for the macintosh system. Make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

There are two approaches to emulating these computers, the first is using games booted from diskettes and the second is to setup an entire OS installation as a hard disk image and run the games from there (this latter approach is not supported on Android). The first approach is only applicable for older models like the Macintosh SE and Macintosh Plus (i.e. the era prior to hard drives becoming prevalent), and the second approach can be used for more modern models.

Method 1, booting from diskette images

Booting from diskettes is the default approach and MAME standalone is used for this. The games need to be in the .dsk file format and only 400K and 800K diskettes are supported. There are four relevant emulator entries available:

MAME Mac SE Bootable (Standalone)
MAME Mac SE Boot Disk (Standalone)
MAME Mac Plus Bootable (Standalone)
MAME Mac Plus Boot Disk (Standalone)

Note that on Android these emulator entries are named slightly differently as the MAME4droid 2024 emulator is used on this operating system.

To use these you need the MAME files adbmodem.zip, macse.zip and macplus.zip placed in the ~/ROMs/macintosh/ directory.

The Bootable entries are straightforward, these are games that are self-contained on a single diskette and that can simply be booted as-is. The Boot Disk entries are games that can't be booted directly but instead require a separate boot diskette. To run these you need to place a disk image named boot.dsk together with the game files and ES-DE will then insert this into the first floppy drive on game launch and place the game diskette in the second floppy drive. Once Mac OS has started up you can then start the game from inside the operating system. Basically any bootable diskette can be used as long as it's 400K or 800K in size and runs a Mac OS release compatible with the game you intend to play. For example the System Tools diskette from the System 6.0.8 installation media works fine for this purpose.

This is an example of what the game setup could look like:

~/ROMs/macintosh/adbmodem.zip
~/ROMs/macintosh/boot.dsk
~/ROMs/macintosh/macplus.zip
~/ROMs/macintosh/macse.zip
~/ROMs/macintosh/Shufflepuck Cafe.dsk
~/ROMs/macintosh/StuntCopter.dsk

For this example Shufflepuck Cafe requires a boot disk to run and StuntCopter can be booted directly.

Method 2, booting from a hard disk image

The second approach to Macintosh emulation is to setup a hard disk image, boot into this and run the games from there. For this setup the Basilisk II emulator is used for older Macintosh II and Quadra computers and SheepShaver for more modern PowerPC-based models.

Emulation for this system works quite differently than other platforms as ES-DE only acts as a game browser which simply launches the emulator. The game then needs to be manually started from inside Mac OS.

As for how to setup the Basilisk II emulator the following YouTube video is a good resource:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSWWZ4hkvVk

Once the emulator is up and running and you can boot into Mac OS 7 or 8 you need to install your games. These are commonly distributed with the .sit file extension which are compressed archives in the proprietary StuffIt Expander format. You should uncompress these files inside the emulator or otherwise you will very likely run into problems with running your games. This is also covered in the YouTube video.

As for game locations it's possible to uncompress the games inside the ~/ROMs/macintosh folder and mount this inside the emulator, but this is not recommended. It's instead better to create a Games folder or similar inside Mac OS and place your installed games there.

The setup of SheepShaver is essentially identical to that of Basilisk II as these two emulators are developed by the same team and are therefore very similar.

On macOS you need to download the separate Basilisk II GUI application to configure the emulator and with SheepShaver you need to start the emulator using a command line option to point to a valid ROM file. Only then can you reach the Preferences from the menu (this is however only needed the first time you setup SheepShaver). Quite a strange and unusual approach.

To add a game entry in ES-DE just create an empty file with the .game extension, for example Marathon.game. This entry can then be scraped and edited in the same way as any regular system. But as mentioned above, ES-DE will only act as a browser and individual games cannot be started directly. So when you launch a game, the emulator will boot into the Mac OS desktop and you will have to manually navigate to your game folder to run the game.

To launch a game entry using SheepShaver instead of Basilisk II you just need to select the alternative emulator SheepShaver (Standalone).

This is an example of what the game setup could look like:

~/ROMs/macintosh/Marathon.game
~/ROMs/macintosh/Marathon 2.game
~/ROMs/macintosh/Prince of Persia.game

Note that scraper support is currently very poor for this system, so you may need to manually add images and information for your games. It's encouraged to support ScreenScraper and TheGamesDB by contributing game media and metadata so this situation improves over time.

Arcade and Neo Geo

If using Android then make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

General

For all the supported MAME variants as well as Final Burn Alpha/FinalBurn Neo and Neo Geo, single file archives should be used. These files should retain the MAME software list filenames as ES-DE ships with MAME lookup tables, meaning the software list names are automatically expanded to full game names.

For instance topgunnr.7z will be expanded to Top Gunner.

This is required by the TheGamesDB scraper where the expanded filenames are used for game searches. (Screenscraper natively supports searches using the MAME names). It's also quite nice to have the gamelist populated with the expanded game names even before any scraping has taken place.

BIOS and device files must be placed together with the ROM files in the game system directory and not in the MAME configuration/home directory. It's pointless to separate potentially hundreds of BIOS and device files from the game files, and ES-DE will also automatically filter out such files. This means they will never show up in the gamelist. But this only applies to files that are listed in the regular MAME driver file, so BIOSes and devices for systems like MESS will not be filtered out. You'll instead need to manually hide these files using the Hidden option in the metadata editor.

If using the standalone release of FinalBurn Neo you need to define the ROM directory in the fbneo.ini file or via the user interface as this emulator does not support passing the full path to the game ROM on game launch (see the comments about Model 2 Emulator below for more details).

Likewise if using AdvanceMAME you need to define the ROM directory in the advmame.rc configuration file.

Sega Model 2

If emulating Sega Model 2 games using Model 2 Emulator (natively on Windows or using Wine or Proton on Linux), then you need to change the ROM directory path in the EMULATOR.INI file to point to your Model 2 ROMs.

On Linux it could look something like the following:

[RomDirs]
Dir1=/home/myusername/ROMs/model2

If you're using a portable ES-DE installation on Windows, then you can set the ROM directory path to be relative, for example:

[RomDirs]
Dir1=..\..\ROMs\arcade\Sega Model 2

The EMULATOR.INI file is found in the Model 2 Emulator installation directory.

Note that Model 2 Emulator is a bit broken and on Windows most GPU drivers it will only work correctly if ES-DE keeps running in the background while the game is launched. However, for some GPU drivers the opposite is true and the emulator will only work if ES-DE is suspended. To use the latter setup, switch to the alternative emulator entry Model 2 Emulator [Suspend ES-DE] (Standalone).

To run Model 2 Emulator on Linux you need Wine or Proton, how to setup this is covered in the Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton section.

After Wine or Proton has been installed, unpack the emulator files into the ~/Applications/m2emulator/ directory.

Depending on your setup you may also need to add the d3dcompiler_47.dll file to this directory or the emulator could crash on startup. You can download this file from here:

https://github.com/mozilla/fxc2/blob/master/dll/d3dcompiler_47_32.dll

Just make sure to rename it so it ends up as ~/Applications/m2emulator/d3dcompiler_47.dll and you should be good to go.

It seems as if Proton generally provides better performance for this emulator than plain Wine, so it's probably a good idea to use the former.

On macOS, the only available emulator for Sega Model 2 is MAME, either the RetroArch - Current core or MAME standalone. Compatibility is still quite poor with only a handful of games working correctly, but this is likely to improve going forward as almost all games for this platform can already start and run to a certain degree. Some games flagged as not working by MAME are still playable with only minor glitches to audio and graphics, just make sure to use a recent ROM set for maximum compatibility.

Sega Model 3

In the past a custom Supermodel build was provided for Linux as there was no other way to run this emulator on devices like the Steam Deck. As there is now a Flatpak available this should be used instead and no further custom builds will be provided by the ES-DE project.

However, for this Flatpak to work you need to copy the Assets and Config directories from the Flatpak installation folder to the model3 ROM directory, for example:

cd ~/ROMs/model3
cp -r /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.supermodel3.Supermodel/x86_64/stable/active/files/bin/Assets .
cp -r /var/lib/flatpak/app/com.supermodel3.Supermodel/x86_64/stable/active/files/bin/Config .

An alternative approach which is recommended is to download the ES-DE specific Supermodel_config_2023-10-29.zip configuration package. Follow the instructions in the included Readme.txt file, in summary you need to place the Assets, Config and NVRAM directories into ~/ROMs/model3/ and you should be good to go. This package provides per-game button mappings and NVRAM files.

This approach should hopefully work fine if you have installed Supermodel via the AUR as well, and it may work on Windows too although you probably need to customize the Supermodel.ini file a bit. However, on Windows the files should go into the emulator installation directory and not into the ~/ROMs/model3/ directory.

To enable fullscreen mode on Windows, add FullScreen=1 to Config/Supermodel.ini as this setting does not seem to be included by default.

The following page provides a lot of additional useful information on how to configure Supermodel (the contents of the custom config package is based on this work):
https://forums.launchbox-app.com/files/file/3857-sega-model-3-supermodel-git-everything-pre-configured-inc-controls-for-pc-controller-mouse-light-guns-test-menus-configured-free-play-all-games-in-english-2-player-mouse-support-audio-adjusted-layout-imagesthe-whole-9-yards/?tab=comments

It's also possible to add per-game command line parameters that will be passed to Supermodel on launch. To accomplish this, create a file named <game>.commands in the same directory as the game file, for example daytona2.commands and add the options to this file. Here is an example of what the file contents could look like:

-legacy3d -show-fps

Although there is a Homebrew release of Supermodel for macOS this seems to be quite old and is apparently not working correctly so for the time being the model3 system is unsupported on this operating system.

MAME standalone on macOS

If using the Homebrew release of MAME standalone on macOS and emulating MESS systems like astrocde and ti99, then you need to configure the path to the MAME hash files in the mame.ini file. Alternatively you can symlink the installed hash directory to ~/.mame/ like the following (you will of course need to modify the command depending on which MAME version you have installed):

ln -s /opt/homebrew/Cellar/mame/0.248/share/mame/hash ~/.mame/      # on ARM/Apple
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/mame/0.248/share/mame/hash ~/.mame/         # on x86/Intel

Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD

These systems are generally straightforward to setup. For regular Atari Jaguar games you'll have a single ROM or zip archive per game that you place in the root of the ~/ROMs/atarijaguar system directory. For Atari Jaguar CD games it's recommended to go for the .cdi format and you place these directly in the root of the ~/ROMs/atarijaguarcd directory.

The only emulator that can run Atari Jaguar CD games is BigPEmu which is available for Linux and Windows. On Linux you can also run the Windows release of this emulator, should you want to. To accomplish this you need to run it via the Wine (or Proton) translation layer.

How to setup Wine is covered in the Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton section.

Once Wine or Proton has been setup, download BigPEmu and unzip it into ~/Applications/BigPEmu/
You should now have something similar to this on your filesystem:

~/Applications/BigPEmu/Data/
~/Applications/BigPEmu/Plugins/
~/Applications/BigPEmu/Scripts/
~/Applications/BigPEmu/Strings/
~/Applications/BigPEmu/BigPEmu.exe
~/Applications/BigPEmu/ReadMe.txt

That's basically it, for the atarijaguar system just make sure to select BigPEmu (Wine) or BigPEmu (Proton) from the Alternative emulators interface or set it on a per-game basis using the metadata editor.

There are many settings in Wine that may affect compatibility, performance etc. but covering all that is beyond the scope of this guide.

In addition to the above instructions there's an unofficial YouTube video available on how to setup the Windows release of BigPEmu with ES-DE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuPAjgICc-4

Commodore Amiga and CDTV

There are multiple ways to run these games, for the computer models like the A500, A1200 etc. it's either via diskette images, hard disk images or using specially packaged WHDLoad games. For the CD32 and CDTV you normally run games via CD-ROM disc images. As for emulators all operating systems that ES-DE runs on support the PAUE RetroArch core and the FS-UAE standalone emulator. On Linux and macOS there is also support for the Amiberry standalone emulator.

PUAE

This emulator is by far the most straightforward Amiga emulator to use, it's easy to configure and it runs all file types that ES-DE supports. It can run zipped files too for all supported formats.

PUAE requires Amiga Kickstart ROMs to run, you can find more information about that topic here:
https://github.com/libretro/libretro-uae/blob/master/README.md

For the Amiga computer models the recommended approach is to go for WHDLoad-packaged files in the .lha or .zip format. While it's also possible to use WHDLoad hard drive images in .hdf or .hdz format these will only work in PAUE so they are not really recommended as you may want to use another emulator in the future.

An alternative would be to use .adf or .ipf diskette images as not all games may be available with WHDLoad support. For this you can either place single-diskette images in the root folder or in a dedicated diskette directory, or multi-diskette games in separate folders. It's recommended to create .m3u playlist files for multi-diskette games as described here (although this feature is only supported by PUAE and not by FS-UAE and Amiberry).

Here's an example of what the file structure could look like:

~/ROMs/amiga/Multidisk/ZakMcKracken.m3u/ZakMcKracken (Disk 1 of 2).adf
~/ROMs/amiga/Multidisk/ZakMcKracken.m3u/ZakMcKracken (Disk 2 of 2).adf
~/ROMs/amiga/Multidisk/ZakMcKracken.m3u/ZakMcKracken.m3u
~/ROMs/amiga/ChaosEngine.zip
~/ROMs/amiga/Dungeon Master.lha
~/ROMs/amiga/Robbeary.ipf

For the Amiga CD32 and Commodore CDTV you can run games in several disc image formats like .chd, .cue and .iso. The setup is straightforward, just add an image file per game or make a subdirectory for games with multiple files and use the directories interpreted as files functionality to present these games as single entries inside ES-DE. Here's an example setup:

~/ROMs/amigacd32/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue
~/ROMs/amigacd32/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue/James Pond 2 - Robocod (Track 1).bin
~/ROMs/amigacd32/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue/James Pond 2 - Robocod (Track 2).bin
~/ROMs/amigacd32/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue/James Pond 2 - Robocod (Track 3).bin
~/ROMs/amigacd32/James Pond 2 - Robocod.cue/James Pond 2 - Robocod (Track 4).bin
~/ROMs/amigacd32/Prey - An Alien Encounter.iso

In some cases like for CDTV games, the Amiga model autodetection may not work correctly and you may therefore need to explicitly select it in the RetroArch menu system. The relevant documentation can be found here:
https://docs.libretro.com/library/puae/

FS-UAE

This emulator is a bit confusing in that both the core FS-UAE binary as well as the separate FS-UAE Launcher binary are needed in order for it to by usable be ES-DE. Adding to to the confusion is the fact that sometimes these two are packaged together and sometimes they aren't.

If installing FS-UAE from the AUR then the Launcher is not included, but if you instead install the FS-UAE Launcher specifically then FS-UAE will be installed as it's a dependency. For the Flatpak release the Launcher is included together with the emulator even though the Flatpak doesn't mention this fact.

On macOS and Windows you need to manually download and install both FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher:
https://github.com/FrodeSolheim/fs-uae/releases
https://github.com/FrodeSolheim/fs-uae-launcher/releases

If you however install the fs-uae-launcher Cask via Homebrew in macOS then it will also install the emulator.

On Windows you need to place FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher next to each other on the filesystem or it will not work. If using the portable release this is clearly indicated in the README.txt file bundled with ES-DE, like so:

Emulators\FS-UAE\Windows\x86-64\fs-uae.exe
Emulators\FS-UAE-Launcher\Windows\x86-64\fs-uae-launcher.exe

FS-UAE needs Amiga Kickstart ROMs to run correctly, you can read about the specific files needed on the following page:
https://fs-uae.net/docs/kickstarts

It's also recommended to place the first installation diskette for Workbench v3.0 into the FS-UAE/Floppies/ directory.

Following the addition of the Kickstart ROMs and the Workbench floppy disk, open FS-UAE Launcher and select Update File Database from the menu. Then press the Scan button and all Kickstart ROMs should be marked with a green checkmark.

For additional details about the FS-UAE and FS-UAE Launcher setup and configuration refer to the official emulator documentation:
https://fs-uae.net/docs

Once you have FS-UAE up and running it's pretty straightforward although the emulator comes with some limitations. For the Amiga computer models the recommended approach is to go for WHDLoad-packaged games in the .lha or .zip format. Note that the .hdf and .hdz formats are not supported by FS-UAE in this context.

An alternative would be to use .adf or .ipf diskette images as not all games may be available with WHDLoad support. If you want to use .ipf files then you need to install the CAPSImg plugin which can be downloaded from here:
https://fs-uae.net/download#plugins

Note that .m3u files are not supported by FS-UAE.

For the Amiga CD32 and Commodore CDTV you can run games in several disc image formats like .chd, .cue and .iso but unlike PUAE you can't run zipped disc image files.

For example game setups refer to the PUAE section above as it's virtually identical to what you'll want with FS-UAE.

Amiberry

The Amiberry emulator is only available on Linux and macOS and it's a bit limited at the time of writing. So for the time being ES-DE only supports WHDLoad games when using it for the Amiga computer models. Although the official emulator documentation states that it should work to launch WHDLoad-packaged games in .zip format this does not seem to be the case. Instead only the .lha format seems to work.

For the Amiga CD32 and Commodore CDTV you can run games in the .cue and .iso formats.

Amiberry needs Amiga Kickstart ROMs to run correctly, you can read about the specific files needed on the following page:
https://github.com/BlitterStudio/amiberry/wiki/Kickstart-ROMs-%28BIOS%29

Console Arcade Systems

Note that on Android specifically some of the arcade boards mentioned below are not supported as there are simply no suitable emulators available.

The consolearcade system is intended for the various arcade boards that were based on home console platforms. For many of the older systems MAME can be used for emulation, but some of the more modern systems require the use of other emulators, which is precisely what is provided by this system.

The following arcade boards have been considered:

Arcade board	Console	Emulator
Atari CoJag	Atari Jaguar	MAME
Capcom Sony ZN-1/ZN-2	Sony PlayStation	MAME
Konami M2	3DO Interactive Multiplayer	MAME
Konami System 573/GQ/GV/Twinkle	Sony PlayStation	MAME
Namco System 10/11/12	Sony PlayStation	MAME
Namco System 147/246/256	Sony PlayStation 2	Play!
Namco System 357/359/369	Sony Playstation 3	RPCS3
Namco-Sega-Nintendo Triforce	Nintendo GameCube	Triforce (Dolphin)
Nintendo VS. System/PlayChoice-10	Nintendo Famicom/NES	MAME
Sammy Corporation Atomiswave	Sega Dreamcast	Flycast, Flycast Dojo
Sega Chihiro	Microsoft Xbox	xemu, Cxbx-Reloaded, MAME
Sega Naomi/Naomi 2/SP	Sega Dreamcast	Flycast
Sega Mega Play/Mega-Tech/C-2	Sega Mega Drive/Genesis	MAME
Sega Shooting Zone/System E	Sega Master System	MAME
Sega Titan Video Game System (ST-V)	Sega Saturn	Kronos, Mednafen, MAME
SETA Aleck 64	Nintendo 64	MAME
Taito FX-1A/FX-1B	Sony PlayStation	MAME

Note that not all emulators are supported on all operating systems that ES-DE runs on, see the Supported game systems section for more details.

You can also read more about the console arcade boards here:
http://system16.com/base.php

When it comes to practically organizing these games it's recommended to use a folder structure, especially since it's necessary to assign per-game alternative emulators via the metadata editor. So a setup could look something like the following:

~/ROMs/consolearcade/Capcom Sony ZN-1/
~/ROMs/consolearcade/Capcom Sony ZN-2/
~/ROMs/consolearcade/Namco System 246/
~/ROMs/consolearcade/Sega Chihiro/
~/ROMs/consolearcade/Sega ST-V/
~/ROMs/consolearcade/Taito FX-1B/

How to configure each emulator is far beyond the scope of this document, but there are many resources available on the Internet on how to accomplish this.

DOS / PC

For this platform there are two basic approaches for how the setup could be done; either to present each game as a single entry inside ES-DE, or to retain each game's directory structure. The first alternative is more user-friendly, tidy and requires less setup but basically restricts the emulator selection to the DOSBox-Pure RetroArch core. There is an alternative way to setup single entries to work with all DOSBox forks, but it has some drawbacks as discussed below.

If you prefer to present the games as single entries you could compress each game directory into a ZIP file with either the .zip or .dosz file extension. On game launch a menu will be displayed by DOSBox-Pure, asking which file inside the archive you would like to execute. This makes it possible to select the actual game file, or for example a setup utility like SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.EXE. Attempting to launch such an archive file with any other DOSBox fork will fail, or not work as expected.

Here's an example of a .zip archive setup for use with DOSBox-Pure:

~/ROMs/dos/Dune 2 - The Building of a Dynasty.zip
~/ROMs/dos/Quake.zip
~/ROMs/dos/Tyrian.zip
~/ROMs/dos/UFO Enemy Unknown.zip

The alternative setup to get single entries working is to use the Directories interpreted as files functionality explained elsewhere in this guide. This makes it possible to use other DOSBox forks than DOSBox-Pure, but requires some additional setup. How this works is that you create a .bat file inside each game directory with the name of the game, and inside this .bat file you enter the game file you would like to launch. You then rename the game directory to the name of the .bat file including the file extension.

There are however multiple issues with this approach, the first being that only DOSBox-X supports long filenames (LFN) so you can only use directory names with a maximum of 8 characters plus the .bat extension if using another DOSBox fork. The second issue is that as of the time of writing, this setup does not seem to work at all with DOSBox-Core.

The third issue is that by this setup you will no longer be able to reach any other file than the binary you have defined inside the .bat file. So if you want to be able to reach both the game itself and a configuration utility like SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.EXE, then you would have to create some kind of simple menu inside the batch file that will be displayed on game launch. While this is certainly doable, it's beyond the scope of this guide.

Here's an example of the Directories interpreted as files setup for use with any DOSBox fork except DOSBox-Core:

~/ROMs/dos/Dune 2/Dune 2.bat
~/ROMs/dos/Quake.bat/Quake.bat
~/ROMs/dos/Tyrian.bat/Tyrian.bat
~/ROMs/dos/Xcom1/Xcom1.bat

If DOSBox-X is used, then the game names could be longer than this, as long filenames (LFN) are supported by this fork.

For this example, the contents of Tyrian.bat could look like the following:

TYRIAN.EXE

The second approach for DOS games is to keep the directory structure intact for each game, just as if running the game on a real DOS PC. If going for this approach it's recommended to set the metadata field Exclude from game counter to enabled for all files except the actual file used to launch the game, i.e. the binary or the .bat batch file. This is done so that the game counter correctly reflects the number of games you have installed. It's also possible to mark files and subdirectories as hidden to avoid seeing them in ES-DE. Both of these fields can be set using the metadata editor. While this setup is a bit tedious and not as tidy, it can be used with all DOSBox forks while still being able to easily access all files inside the game directory, such as any game configuration utilities.

When going for this approach the game folders can be scraped so that it looks nice when browsing the gamelist, but make sure to also scrape the files used to launch the games or otherwise their entries in the collections All games, Favorites and Last played as well as any custom collections will miss the game metadata and game media. If you don't have these collections activated, then this can of course be skipped.

Regardless of game setup method, per-game settings can be applied. If using the DOSBox RetroArch cores this is done via the RetroArch GUI and for DOSBox-X and DOSBox Staging it's accomplished by placing a custom dosbox.conf in the game directory.

Dragon 32 and Tano Dragon

The Dragon 32, Dragon 64 and Tano Dragon are all slight variations of the Tandy Color Computer, so these machines are largely compatible with each other. They're all emulated using MAME standalone (MAME4droid 2024 on Android) or the XRoar emulator.

MAME

To use MAME you need the dragon32.zip and dragon_fdc.zip BIOS files in the ROMs/dragon32 directory and you need the tanodr64.zip BIOS file in ROMs/tanodragon.

For the dragon32 system there are four MAME emulator entries for tape and cartridge for the Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 models respectively and for the tanodragon system there are two entries for tape and cartridge.

XRoar

This emulator is available for Linux, macOS and Windows, although on Linux you may need to build it from source code depending on which distribution you're using. Refer to the XRoar website for more information. If you manually download or build the emulator yourself then see the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details on where you need to install it.

In order to emulate the Dragon 32 you need the ROM file d32.rom and to emulate the Dragon 64 or Tano Dragon you need the d64rom1.rom and d64rom2.rom files. It's unclear whether ddos10.rom will also be needed for some games and applications. Even without these files the emulator will probably start, but you will likely see random character on screen and few if any games will run correctly. On Linux these files need to be placed into the ~/.xroar/roms directory and on macOS you need to place them in ~/Library/XRoar/roms. Note that neither of these directories are automatically created by the emulator so you need to create them yourself. On Windows you simply place the ROM files into the emulator installation directory next to the xroar.exe binary.

Following this setup there is not much to it, launching a cartridge or cassette image file will automatically run the game.

For the dragon32 system you can switch to emulating the Dragon 64 model by selecting the alternative emulator XRoar Dragon 64 (Standalone).

EasyRPG Game Engine

Both the EasyRPG RetroArch core, which is named RPG Maker 2000/2003 (EasyRPG) in the RetroArch GUI, and the standalone EasyRPG Player are supported.

Some Linux distributions ship with the standalone EasyRPG Player in the repository and on Ubuntu-based systems it's available as a Snap. But for some distributions it may need to be built from source code or manually downloaded. For these scenarios see the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide.

If using the RetroArch core you can either launch games compressed as .zip archives, or you can uncompress and rename them by adding .easyrpg to the directory name. The latter alternative is recommended.

Using either approach, the games should go into the ~/ROMs/easyrpg directory. This is all the setup required, and here's an example of what it could look like:

~/ROMs/easyrpg/Dreamscape.easyrpg/
~/ROMs/easyrpg/The Chimera Report.zip

Setup for the standalone EasyRPG Player is identical with the exception that running games compressed as .zip files is not supported. So in this case the setup should look like the following:

~/ROMs/easyrpg/Dreamscape.easyrpg/
~/ROMs/easyrpg/The Chimera Report.easyrpg/

Fujitsu FM Towns

This system is emulated using MAME or Tsugaru on desktop operating systems and MAME4droid 2024 on Android.

If using Android then make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

MAME

When using MAME only CD-ROM games are supported and the .chd format is recommended. It's not adviced to go for game files using MAME software list names as these can't be scraped by either ScreenScraper or TheGames DB. It's instead better to use files with full game names.

You also need the fmtowns.zip BIOS archive placed in ~/ROMs/fmtowns/ for the games to run.

Here's an example setup:

~/ROMs/fmtowns/Flying Shark (Jp-En).chd
~/ROMs/fmtowns/Shadow of the Beast (1994)(Psygnosis)(Jp-En).bin
~/ROMs/fmtowns/Shadow of the Beast (1994)(Psygnosis)(Jp-En).cue
~/ROMs/fmtowns/fmtowns.zip

Note that if you're using MAME standalone you will need to enable UI controls to be able to exit the emulator via the normal exit key. The following page documents the default keys for exiting and toggling UI mode:
https://docs.mamedev.org/usingmame/defaultkeys.html

Tsugaru

The Tsugaru emulator is available for Linux and Windows and can be downloaded from https://github.com/captainys/TOWNSEMU

While there's a macOS release available it's not packaged properly and it does not include a command line binary which makes it unusable with ES-DE. Also note that there is no AppImage release for Linux and the binary build is made specifically for Ubuntu. It may work on other distributions but you'll need to test it.

For both the Windows and Linux release you need to create a roms subdirectory inside the emulator directory where the system BIOS/ROM files need to be located. These are the required files, and they have to be named in uppercase:

FMT_DIC.ROM
FMT_DOS.ROM
FMT_F20.ROM
FMT_FNT.ROM
FMT_SYS.ROM

The directory structure should look like the following on Windows:

tsugaru\roms\
tsugaru\Tsugaru_CUI.exe
tsugaru\Tsugaru_GUI.exe

And on Linux it's basically identical:

tsugaru/roms/
tsugaru/Tsugaru_CUI
tsugaru/Tsugaru_GUI

See the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details on where to locate the emulator directory.

Only CD-ROM games in .iso and .cue format are supported, and you simply place these inside the ~/ROMs/fmtowns directory.

Optionally you can provide custom emulator command line flags on a per-game basis. This can be used to set things like the CPU frequency of the emulated machine, controller/input settings and more. Refer to the Tsugaru emulator documentation for more details about available options.

On Linux controller input seems to be broken for the time being, so you will likely need to map this input to the keyboard instead. Mouse input is also very laggy and it's unclear whether this can be improved via some emulator setting.

To create a game-specific configuration entry, simply add a file with the same filename as the gamefile but with the .cfg file extension, for example:

~/ROMs/fmtowns/Shadow of the Beast (1994)(Psygnosis)(Jp-En).bin
~/ROMs/fmtowns/Shadow of the Beast (1994)(Psygnosis)(Jp-En).cfg
~/ROMs/fmtowns/Shadow of the Beast (1994)(Psygnosis)(Jp-En).cue

To map the controller to the keyboard and to set a 33 MHz CPU speed, the file content of the .cfg file would look like the following:

-FREQ 33 -GAMEPORT0 KEY

LaserDisc Games

Note that on Android the Hypseus Singe emulator is not available. However the setup for MAME (using MAME4droid 2024) and DirkSimple still applies. If using Android also make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

There are three ways to run LaserDisc games in ES-DE, via MAME, via Hypseus Singe or via the DirkSimple RetroArch core. There are also two separate systems available, daphne and laserdisc. The latter is recommended as the daphne system is mostly existing for legacy reasons and may be removed in a future ES-DE release. The configuration for these two systems is identical as they are essentially clones.

At the time of writing MAME and Hypseus Singe are mostly mutually exlusive as MAME tends to primarily support the games that Hypseus Singe doesn't support. In the future this is likely to change with MAME getting support for more LaserDisc games.

The following page lists support for LaserDisc games for these two emulators:
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Arcade_LaserDisc_emulators

MAME

Running LaserDisc games via MAME is very straightforward. Essentially you need the game packaged for MAME with its software list name as filename, and you'll need to place the LaserDisc image file in .chd format in its separate subdirectory. Here's such an example setup:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/cubeqst/cubeqst.chd
~/ROMs/laserdisc/firefox/firefox.chd
~/ROMs/laserdisc/cubeqst.zip
~/ROMs/laserdisc/firefox.zip

Following this setup you simply select either the MAME - Current or MAME (Standalone) alternative emulator and launch the .zip file to start the game.

DirkSimple

At the time of writing this is a new emulator and it only supports two games: Dragon's Lair (lair) and Cliff Hanger (cliff). As time goes by support is hopefully added for more games. Note that this emulator is currently missing some functionality like the scoreboard, it really is a bare-bones approach to running these games.

As the name implies setup is indeed simple, the only prerequisites is to have the game's video and audio tracks combined into a single Ogg Theora file with the .ogv file extension, and to place the game's data files in the RetroArch system directory. How this is accomplished is documented on the DirkSimple GitHub page:
https://github.com/icculus/DirkSimple

The game files need to retain their Daphne short names or it will not work. Here's an example setup:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.ogv
~/ROMs/laserdisc/cliff.ogv

There's not much more to it, just make sure to select the DirkSimple alternative emulator entry and then it should work fine to run the .ogv files.

Hypseus Singe

Hypseus Singe is a fork of the Daphne arcade LaserDisc emulator that is still maintained. The setup is quite particular so make sure to read this section thoroughly to get it to work.

The latest release can be downloaded from here:
https://github.com/DirtBagXon/hypseus-singe/releases

The first step is to install the emulator. On Windows download the win64 release and unpack it and you're good to go.

Similarly on Linux, download the ES-DE specific build that contains an AppImage of the emulator as well as some additional required files. It should be unpacked into the ~/Applications directory, such as:

/home/myusername/Applications/hypseus-singe/

If the Applications directory doesn't exist yet, then just go ahead and create it and unpack the emulator inside it. Just be aware that the name has to start with a capital A.

Although there is an official Hypseus Singe release available for macOS ARM this appears somehow broken so you may need to compile it yourself. This is a bit involved so it's beyond the scope of this document to describe it. For this reason macOS is not listed as supported but the configuration is still bundled so if you're persistent and manage to get the emulator to work, it will hopefully work from within ES-DE as well.

After the emulator has been installed, copy the required BIOS ROMs into Hypseus Singe\roms\ on Windows or ~/Applications/hypseus-singe/roms/ on Linux.

Controller configuration using the hypinput.ini file is described in the official Hypseus Singe documentation, but the following example is usable with Xbox 360-compatible controllers:

[KEYBOARD]
KEY_UP = SDLK_UP SDLK_r 0 -002
KEY_DOWN = SDLK_DOWN SDLK_f 0 +002
KEY_LEFT = SDLK_LEFT SDLK_d 0 -001
KEY_RIGHT = SDLK_RIGHT SDLK_g 0 +001
KEY_COIN1 = SDLK_5 0 7
KEY_COIN2 = SDLK_6 0 0
KEY_START1 = SDLK_1 0 8
KEY_START2 = SDLK_2 0 0
KEY_BUTTON1 = SDLK_LCTRL SDLK_a 1
KEY_BUTTON2 = SDLK_LALT SDLK_s 0
KEY_BUTTON3 = SDLK_SPACE SDLK_d 11
KEY_SKILL1 = SDLK_LSHIFT SDLK_w 3
KEY_SKILL2 = SDLK_z SDLK_i 4
KEY_SKILL3 = SDLK_x SDLK_k 2
KEY_SERVICE = SDLK_9 0 0
KEY_TEST = SDLK_F2 0 0
KEY_RESET = SDLK_0 0 0
KEY_SCREENSHOT = SDLK_F12 0 0
KEY_QUIT = SDLK_ESCAPE SDLK_q 17
KEY_PAUSE = SDLK_p 0 0
KEY_CONSOLE = SDLK_BACKSLASH 0 0
KEY_TILT = SDLK_t 0 0
END

With this configuration, pressing the Back and Start buttons (or equivalent on non-Xbox 360 controllers) at the same time exits the emulator.

There are two types of games supported by Hypseus and these are Daphne and Singe. It's beyond the scope of this document to describe these game formats in detail but there are many resources available online for this. The setup differs a bit between these two types however, and you need to use an alternative emulator entry in ES-DE to launch Singe games.

In addition to the above instructions there's an unofficial YouTube video available on how to setup Hypseus Singe on the Steam Deck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO2UiI6byJo

Daphne games

For Daphne games the structure will look something like the following, which is for the game Dragon's Lair:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.dat
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.m2v
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.m2v.bf
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.ogg
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.ogg.bf
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.txt

The directory name has to keep this naming convention with the name consisting of the Daphne game type (lair for this example) followed by the .daphne extension. This name logic with a short name per game is similar to how it works in MAME and ScummVM. A list of available games can be found here:
http://www.daphne-emu.com/mediawiki/index.php/CmdLine

In order to get the games to work, simply create an empty file named <game>.daphne inside the game directory, for example lair.daphne in this case. The Directories interpreted as files functionality will then allow the game to be launched even though it shows up as a single entry inside ES-DE.

There is also the option to add command line parameters for each game which is somehow important as different games may require different DIP switches to be set and you may also want to apply general options like fullscreen mode.

To accomplish this, create a file named <game>.commands such as lair.commands for this example. The content of this file could look something like the following:

-fastboot -fullscreen

The -fastboot option is recommended in particular since it leads to a much shorter startup time for those games that support it. All command line options are described at the daphne-emu.com URL posted above.

With these files in place, the game directory should look something like this:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.commands
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.daphne
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.dat
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.m2v
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.m2v.bf
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.ogg
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.ogg.bf
~/ROMs/laserdisc/lair.daphne/lair.txt

Singe games

Singe games work a bit differently compared to Daphne games. They come packaged with a lot of files and the game directories normally just consist of the game names, such as:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/fireandice/
~/ROMs/laserdisc/mononoke/

To make these games work, rename the directories by appending the .singe extension, such as:

~/ROMs/laserdisc/fireandice.singe/
~/ROMs/laserdisc/mononoke.singe/

You could optionally create a .commands file as well to specify some additional command line parameters, as described above in the Daphne section.

The next step is to modify the <game>.singe file to point to the exact game directory.

So for example on Linux, modify the file ~/ROMs/laserdisc/mononoke.singe/mononoke.singe by changing the following line:

MYDIR = "singe/mononoke/"

To this:

MYDIR = "/home/myusername/ROMs/laserdisc/mononoke.singe/"

Note that the tilde ~ character can not be used inside this file to point to your home directory, you have to set the absolute path. And you should of course replace myusername with your own username. The forward slash at the end of the path is also required.

If on Windows, it could look like the following instead:

MYDIR = "C:\\Users\\myusername\\ROMs\\laserdisc\\mononoke.singe\\"

You have to put double backslash characters as shown above (including at the end of the path), otherwise the game won't start.

The last step to get Singe games to work is to assign the alternative emulator Hypseus [Singe] (Standalone) to these games. This is done via the Alternative emulator entry in the metadata editor. Attempting to launch a Singe game using the default emulator will not work.

LCD handheld games

This section applies to both the gameandwatch and lcdgames systems as they are essentially identical, except a slightly different scraper configuration.

There are two ways to play these games, either via emulation or via simulation.

Method 1, emulation

Proper emulation is done via the MAME - Current RetroArch core or the MAME standalone emulator. The games need to be in the MAME format and follow the MAME software list naming conventions, i.e. it will not be possible to run .mgw games with this emulator. The example game Donkey Kong would have the filename gnw_dkong.zip and you'll place this file in the gameandwatch or lcdgames directory.

However the game is only half of what's needed to properly emulate these games as you'll also need the artwork to see an image of the actual physical device when running the game. The artwork would also come in a .zip file with the same name as the game itself, e.g. gnw_dkong.zip and it must be located in the MAME artwork directory so it can be found by MAME.

For the RetroArch core this means it has to be placed in the system directory, specifically in system/mame/artwork/

For MAME standalone there are two options available for the artwork location in the form of two separate MAME emulator entries, either the default MAME Local Artwork (Standalone) entry or MAME (Standalone). The former will require the artwork files to be placed in a directory inside the gameandwatch or lcdgames folder, which can be quite convenient as it's then bundled with the game files. Simply create an artwork subdirectory and place the files there. The second emulator entry will require the artwork files to be placed in the default MAME artwork directory. This location differs between operating systems and distributions so refer to the MAME documentation on where to find this folder. Here's an example of what Donkey Kong would look like when going for the default option using the gameandwatch system:

~/ROMs/gameandwatch/gnw_dkong.zip
~/ROMs/gameandwatch/artwork/gnw_dkong.zip

As the artwork files also come with the .zip file extension they will show up inside ES-DE as if they were game files. So it's recommended to hide the entire artwork directory using the Hidden option in the metadata editor, or alternatively exclude them from the multi-scraper using the Exclude from multi-scraper option.

Be aware that neither ScreenScraper nor TheGamesDB currently support the MAME software list names natively so you'll need to refine the searches or the scraper services are unlikely to return any results at all (or very inaccurate results at best). However, if you have game files that match the MD5 hashes in the ScreenScraper database, then the games will scrape correctly regardless of their names.

Method 2, simulation

Simulation is done via the Handheld Electronic (GW) RetroArch core, in which case games come with the .mgw file extension. You simply place these files in the gameandwatch or lcdgames directory and they can be launched and played. The filenames will probably be verbose and include the complete game name, for example Donkey Kong (Nintendo, Multi Screen).mgw so both ScreenScraper and TheGamesDB should be able to find the game entries when scraping. Here's an example using the gameandwatch system:

~/ROMs/gameandwatch/Donkey Kong (Nintendo, Multi Screen).mgw

Lutris

Adding these games is most easily accomplished by using .desktop files that can be created from inside the Lutris application. Right click on each game you would like to add to ES-DE and select Create desktop shortcut, then simply move these shortcuts from your desktop to the lutris system directory. You may also want to rename some of the files as their names may be a bit cryptic which could confuse the scraper. Remember that it's the physical filenames that will show up inside ES-DE.

After doing this you should end up with something like the following:

~/ROMs/lutris/Diablo.desktop
~/ROMs/lutris/Fallout.desktop

As an alternative you can add Lutris games to the Ports system using the procedure described above.

Microsoft Windows 3.x and 9x

There are multiple ways to run Windows 3.x and Windows 9x games and two different approaches are covered here. The first option is to run these games inside a complete operating system emulated via DOSBox and the second option is to use shortcuts, scripts or AppImages to run the games separately via applications like Wine or Lutris or by using source ports and similar. It may also be possible to run these games as zip files via DOSBox-Pure (which is available as an alternative emulator for these systems), but it's not covered here.

The second approach is very flexible but does not lead to the most authentic experience in many cases. It will also not be covered in detail here. As long as you have a script, shortcut or AppImage that can be launched outside ES-DE you should be able to place it into the ~/ROMs/windows3x or ~/ROMs/windows9x directories and launch it inside ES-DE as well (assuming you have selected the correct alternative emulator entry). If you've named the files appropriately it should also be possible to scrape them.

As for the default approach which is to emulate an entire operating system and launch games from there, the DOSBox-X standalone emulator is required. Although it should be possible to use another DOSBox fork, this is something that would need a custom system configuration entry and possibly a slightly different configuration than what is described below.

The setup example covered here is for Windows 3.x but the process is virtually identical for Windows 9x.

Some preparation steps are not described here as they are way beyond the scope of this guide, the most important of these is to prepare a bootable harddisk image with the operating system and all necessary drivers. There are many good DOSBox resources available online on how to accomplish this.

Assuming you have a bootable harddisk image, the following directory structure could be setup:

~/ROMs/windows3x/CD Images/
~/ROMs/windows3x/Disk Images/
~/ROMs/windows3x/Install/

The CD Images directory is optional and will only be needed if you intend to run CD-based games. The Disk Images directory is where you'll place your harddrive images. You may choose to have a single image or multiple images depending on your requirements. For instance it could be a good idea to prepare separate images for different emulated hardware or screen resolutions so you won't have to change settings back and forth when launching games that have different prerequisites.

The Install directory is optional and could be used to access installation media that is not CD-based, such as unpacked floppy images or .exe installers. It's probably a good idea to only mount this directory when needed.

For this example we assume you have setup Windows 3.11 at 640x480 and 1024x768 screen resolutions:

~/ROMs/windows3x/CD Images/
~/ROMs/windows3x/Disk Images/Win311_640x480.img
~/ROMs/windows3x/Disk Images/Win311_1024x768.img
~/ROMs/windows3x/Install/

We now want to setup two games, the CD-based game MYST that should run at 640x480 resolution and the floppy-installed game SimTower which should run at 1024x768 resolution. It's assumed that both of these games have already been installed to the disk images.

There are multiple ways to configure DOSBox to launch games and mount disk images, but the recommended approach covered here is to use a dummy .bat file and a different DOSBox configuration file per game that contains custom autoexec entries.

As a first step create an empty .bat file per game. As we need a separate directory per game it's recommened to use the directories interpreted as files functionality so the games will be displayed as if they were single file entries:

~/ROMs/windows3x/MYST.bat/MYST.bat
~/ROMs/windows3x/SimTower.bat/SimTower.bat

Following this add a dosbox-x.conf file to each of the game directories. This is a good thing as it makes it possible to tune setting like CPU speed and available memory on a per-game basis and it's also required to use specific autoexec entries per game.

The multitude of settings in these configuration files are beyond the scope of this guide and are instead covered by the DOSBox-X documentation, but the autoexec section is relevant for our setup and is therefore covered briefly here.

The entire file structure could now look something like the following:

~/ROMs/windows3x/CD Images/MYST/MYST.iso
~/ROMs/windows3x/Disk Images/Win311_640x480.img
~/ROMs/windows3x/Disk Images/Win311_1024x768.img
~/ROMs/windows3x/Install/
~/ROMs/windows3x/MYST.bat/MYST.bat
~/ROMs/windows3x/MYST.bat/dosbox-x.conf
~/ROMs/windows3x/SimTower.bat/SimTower.bat
~/ROMs/windows3x/SimTower.bat/dosbox-x.conf

Here is the autoexec section of the dosbox-x.conf file for MYST:

[autoexec]
@echo off
rem mount e "..\Install"
imgmount d "..\CD Images\MYST\MYST.iso" -t cdrom
imgmount c "..\Disk Images\Win311_640x480.img" -size 512,63,32,520
boot -l c

And for SimTower:

[autoexec]
@echo off
rem mount e "..\Install"
imgmount c "..\Disk Images\Win311_1024x768.img" -size 512,63,32,520
boot -l c

The -size flag will need to be adapted to the geometry of the virtual harddrive as explained by the DOSBox-X documentation. Mounting of the Install directory is probably best left commented out until you actually need to install more games, utilities or drivers to the harddisk image.

If you perform the setup as described above you'll have a single entry per game in the gamelist view that can be scraped and handled as any normal game, and you'll be able to apply per-game DOSBox settings while still limiting the number of harddisk images by sharing them between your games.

Microsoft Xbox 360

This system is emulated using xenia, and although there are a lot of topics to consider for this emulator such as how to handle multi-disc games, DLCs etc. this section will only cover the basics on how to run single-disc ISO images and XBLA games. For the remaining details there are many resources available online.

General

Single-disc ISO images can simply be placed in the root of the ~/ROMs/xbox360 system directory, like the following:

~/ROMs/xbox360/Gears of War.iso
~/ROMs/xbox360/Gears of War 3.iso

Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) games work quite differently, these are generally shipped in directory structures with quite cryptic filenames that are also extensionless. Here's an example:

Castle Crashers/
Castle Crashers/584108B7/
Castle Crashers/584108B7/000D0000/
Castle Crashers/584108B7/000D0000/F9432A7FE407A3C196C95D0FFD4A540937FD4EEC58

For this example it's F9432A7FE407A3C196C95D0FFD4A540937FD4EEC58 that is the actual game file. It's recommended to move this file to the root of the ~/ROMs/xbox360 system directory and to rename it to the game name followed by (XBLA) to make it clear that it's an Xbox Live Arcade game. After doing this our example directory structure would look like the following:

~/ROMs/xbox360/Castle Crashers (XBLA)
~/ROMs/xbox360/Gears of War.iso
~/ROMs/xbox360/Gears of War 3.iso

Note again that the Castle Crashers game does not have a file extension, this is correct and the game can still be launched from inside ES-DE.

There is also a handy tool available to automate the XBLA renaming process, you can find it here:
https://github.com/cmclark00/XBLA-Automation

Running xenia on Linux

Although xenia is officially only available for the Windows operating system it's still possible to run it on Linux. To accomplish this you need to run it via the Wine (or Proton) translation layer.

How to setup Wine is covered in the Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton section.

Once Wine or Proton has been setup, download xenia and unzip it into ~/Applications/xenia/

Also create an empty file named portable.txt inside this directory. You should now have something similar to this on your filesystem:

~/Applications/xenia/LICENSE
~/Applications/xenia/portable.txt
~/Applications/xenia/xenia.exe
~/Applications/xenia/xenia.pdb

Make sure that you have placed a valid game file into ~/ROMs/xbox360 and then go ahead and start ES-DE and run the game. You should see xenia starting up and you may hear some sound from the loaded game, but the screen will be black. Quit xenia and check inside the ~/Applications/xenia directory where there should now be a file named xenia.config.toml

You'll need to modify the following lines in this file:

gpu = "any"                                         # Graphics system. Use: [any, d3d12, vulkan, null]
fullscreen = false                                  # Whether to launch the emulator in fullscreen.

To this:

gpu = "vulkan"                                      # Graphics system. Use: [any, d3d12, vulkan, null]
fullscreen = true                                   # Whether to launch the emulator in fullscreen.

There are of course many more settings for xenia and Wine that may be adjusted for optimal performance and compatibility but that's beyond the scope of this guide.

The canary release of xenia can also be used but it's not possible to set the xenia release per game. Instead the find rules will first look for xenia.exe and if that can't be found it will look for xenia_canary.exe. Be aware that if using the canary release of xenia, the configuration file is named xenia-canary.config.toml instead of xenia.config.toml

For a more complex setup like requiring different Wine or xenia versions per game or similar the xbox360 system on Linux also supports the Shortcut or script alternative emulator entry. Using this you can create shell scripts with specific configuration or you could alternatively install Xbox 360 games via Lutris or similar and export .desktop shortcuts from there and place these inside the ~/ROMs/xbox360 directory. Just make sure to select the appropriate alternative emulator entry if doing this, or it will not work.

M.U.G.E.N Game Engine

M.U.G.E.N games can be played using the Ikemen GO game engine which is being actively developed and is available on Linux, macOS and Windows. The original M.U.G.E.N engine which only exists for Windows has not had any updates in years and is therefore considered obsolete and won't be covered here. But it's still possible to use it on Windows via the same approach described for Ikemen GO so if you really want to use it, then you can.

Basic setup

These games are shipped as self-contained units with the game engine binary included in the game directory structure. On Windows .lnk files are used to launch the games and on Linux and macOS files or symlinks with the .mugen extension are required.

For this example we'll go with the game Ultimate Sonic Mugen.

On Windows, go into the game directory, right click on the Ikemen_GO.exe file, select Create Shortcut followed by Create Desktop Shortcut. This will create a file with the .lnk extension. Rename the file to Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk and try to run this file to make sure that the game starts and runs correctly. Note that this setup is not portable, if you move your game files somewhere else you will need to manually update your shortcuts as these contain absolute paths.

On Linux and macOS, go into the game directory and rename the Ikemen_GO_Linux or Ikemen_GO_MacOS binary to the name of the game and add the .mugen extension to the filename, for example Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen. Try to run this file to make sure that the game starts and runs correctly.

Starting ES-DE and launching the game should now work fine, but a further improvement is to use the directories interpreted as files functionality to display the game as a single entry instead of a directory. To accomplish this, simply rename the game directory to the same name as the game file, which for this example would be Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk or Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen depending on which operating system you use.

The setup should now look something like the following on Windows:

~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\chars\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\data\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\external\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\font\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\sound\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\stages\
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\Ikemen_GO.exe
~\ROMs\mugen\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk\Ultimate Sonic Mugen.lnk

And like this on Linux or macOS:

~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/chars/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/data/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/external/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/font/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/sound/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/stages/
~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen.mugen

Configuring M.U.G.E.N games for use with Ikemen GO

This section is only included to provide some general understanding on how to convert M.U.G.E.N games to run with Ikemen GO, it's in no way a complete tutorial and the steps needed are likely slightly different for each game. Refer to the Ikemen GO support forums and documentation for more thorough information.

We'll use the game Ultimate Sonic Mugen for this example.

Download Ikemen GO from https://github.com/ikemen-engine/Ikemen-GO/releases, the package you want is Ikemen_GO_v0.98.2.zip or similar, depending on which version you're downloading. Unpack the file to a suitable location.

Download the game Ultimate Sonic Mugen and unpack it to a suitable location.

Create a new game directory, for example ~/ROMs/mugen/Ultimate Sonic Mugen

Copy the following directories from the downloaded game directory to the empty game directory you just created:

chars
data
font
sound
stages

If you're using an operating system with a case-sensitive file system like Linux, then you also need to rename every file inside the data directory to lowercase characters. This includes also the file extensions.

Copy the following directories from the Ikemen GO directory to the game directory:

data
external
font
The game binary, either Ikemen_GO.exe, Ikemen_GO_Linux or Ikemen_GO_MacOS

Do NOT overwrite any files when copying over the data and font directories, or the game will not work correctly.

Nintendo 64DD

The Japan-only 64DD floppy disk addon for the Nintendo 64 is of limited use since there were almost no games released for it, but ES-DE still supports it. The setup below is applicable to both the regular n64 system and the specific n64dd system, with the exception of ares which can't launch 64DD games if they are placed in the regular n64 system.

The setup is quite particular and works differently between the four supported emulators ParaLLEl N64, Mupen64Plus-Next, Rosalie's Mupen GUI and ares.

ParaLLEl N64

For ParaLLEl N64, place a file named 64DD_IPL.bin in the root of the RetroArch system directory. Refer to the RetroArch documentation if you're uncertain where this directory is located.

This file which is commonly referred to as Nintendo 64DD IPL v1.2 or similar has to have an MD5 hash value of 8d3d9f294b6e174bc7b1d2fd1c727530 or it will not work.

The final step is to enable the option 64DD Hardware in the ParaLLEl N64 core options inside RetroArch. Following this you should be able to launch games with the .ndd file extension, or such files compressed into .zip or .7z archives.

Mupen64Plus-Next

For Mupen64Plus-Next you should use the exact same IPL file as for ParaLLEl N64 but it has to be placed inside the Mupen64plus subdirectory in the RetroArch system directory. The file also has to be named IPL.n64 instead of 64DD_IPL.bin.

For this emulator you can't launch .ndd files directly, instead you have to place the non-disk version of the game next to the disk version and launch the non-disk version.

This is such an example setup for Super Mario 64:

~/ROMs/n64dd/Super Mario 64.v64
~/ROMs/n64dd/Super Mario 64.v64.ndd

So to clarify it's Super Mario 64.v64 that has to be launched. Compressing this file into a .zip or .7z file will not work, the game has to be uncompresssed. If using Mupen64Plus-Next it's probably also a good idea to hide the .ndd files from the gamelist (using the Hidden option in the metadata editor) for a more tidy setup.

Rosalie's Mupen GUI

For RMG you should use the exact same IPL file as for ParaLLEl N64 but it has to be named IPL.n64 and you can browse to its location from the emulator settings menu.

Following this setup you will be able to launch games with the .ndd, .d64, .7z and .zip file extensions.

ares

For ares you need the 64DD_IPL.bin file added to the Firmware configuration screen inside the emulator. Following this you should be able to launch games with the .ndd file extension or such files compressed into .zip archives.

Nintendo NES and Famicom in 3D

There is a commercial and proprietary emulator named 3dSen that can be used to run NES and Famicom games in 3D. Only a limited set of games are supported and the quality of the 3D effect varies, but it's an interesting effect if you don't mind supporting closed-source emulator projects.

For this guide it's assumed that you have purchased the emulator via Steam. ES-DE will however not run it via the Steam frontend, you'll instead need to relocate the 3dSen installation directory as detailed below.

Linux-specific installation

As 3dSen is a Windows-only emulator you'll need Wine (or Proton) to run it.

How to setup Wine is covered in the Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton section.

Once Wine or Proton has been setup, move or copy all 3dSen files to ~/Applications/3dSen/

Windows-specific installation

If using the installer release of ES-DE you need to add the location of the 3dSen directory to your Path environment variable and if using the portable release you need to copy the 3dSen directory to the Emulators folder.

Game setup

In order to launch games using 3dSen you first need to add each game to the emulator interface. This is required as 3dSen does not support passing a game file location from the command line. Refer to the 3dSen documentation on how to accomplish this.

After adding the games inside 3dSen you need to create launch files for use with ES-DE. These are simply named the same as the game files, but with the .3dsen extension:

~/ROMs/nes/Contra.3dsen
~/ROMs/nes/Contra.nes
~/ROMs/nes/Ice Climber.3dsen
~/ROMs/nes/Ice Climber.nes

You could of course separate the 3D files into their own directory if you prefer that:

~/ROMs/nes/3D/Contra.3dsen
~/ROMs/nes/3D/Ice Climber.3dsen
~/ROMs/nes/Contra.nes
~/ROMs/nes/Ice Climber.nes

Finally you need to add the 3dSen game ID to each file. The RetroBat project maintains a list of supported game IDs for the 3dSen emulator that you can find here:
https://wiki.retrobat.org/systems-and-emulators/supported-game-systems/game-consoles/nintendo-game-consoles/nes-3d

To launch the .3dsen files you'll need to use the alternative emulator entry 3dSen (Wine), 3dSen (Proton) or 3dSen (Standalone) depending on your operating system. As you're unlikely to use 3dSen as your primary NES or Famicom emulator it's recommended to set this on a per-game basis using the metadata editor.

Nintendo Wii U

The .wua archive format is the preferred method to use for Wii U games, but the method of using unpacked games is also documented here for reference.

.wud and .wux files are supported as well, but these two formats are not discussed here as the .wua format is clearly the way to go in the future.

Method 1, using .wua files

Start Cemu and install the game, any updates as well as optional DLCs to the Cemu NAND. After the installation is completed, open the Title Manager from the Tools menu, select your game, right click and select Convert to compressed Wii U archive (.wua) and select your wiiu system directory as the target. You can modify the file name if you want to, or keep it at its default value. Press the Save button and the game will be automatically packaged as a .wua file.

Following this just start ES-DE and the game should be shown as a single entry that can be launched using Cemu.

Method 2, unpacked games

Only the setup on Windows is covered here, but it's the same principle in Linux and macOS.

Using this unpacked approach, the content of each game is divided into the three directories code, content and meta.

The first step is to prepare the target directory in the wiiu system directory, for this example we'll go for the game Super Mario 3D World. So simply create a directory with this name inside the wiiu folder. It should look something like the following:

C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\wiiu\Super Mario 3D World\

The next step is done inside the Cemu user interface. You should install the game, any updates as well as optional DLCs to the Cemu NAND. After the installation is completed, right click on the game and choose Game directory. An Explorer window should now open showing the content of the game. Here's the game directory for our example:

C:\Games\cemu\mlc01\usr\title\00050000\10145d00\code

Go up one level and copy the code, content and meta directories and paste them into the C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\wiiu\Super Mario 3D World\ directory. It should now look something like the following:

C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\wiiu\Super Mario 3D World\code
C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\wiiu\Super Mario 3D World\content
C:\Users\myusername\ROMs\wiiu\Super Mario 3D World\meta

Starting ES-DE should now show the Super Mario 3D World entry for the Wii U system. The actual game file with the extension .rpx is stored inside the code directory, and does not normally match the name of the game. For this example it's named RedCarpet.rpx. When scraping the .rpx file you therefore need to refine the search and manually enter the game name. ES-DE fully supports scraping of directories, so you can scrape the Super Mario 3D World folder as well.

OpenBOR

The Open Beats of Rage (OpenBOR) game engine is available on Android, Windows and Linux. Unfortunately the macOS port seems to have been abandoned.

These games are often but not always distributed together with the game engine as specific engine versions may be required for some games. The setup is slightly different between Windows and Linux so they are described separately here.

Android

Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to launch individual OpenBOR games from ES-DE on Android, instead the OpenBOR user interface will open on game launch and you need to manually start your game from there. This means games need to be installed upfront in OpenBOR and .openbor dummy files should be added to the ROMs/openbor directory. These will then appear as individual games inside ES-DE and you can add metadata to them, scrape them etc. Refer to the OpenBOR documentation on how to add your game PAKs.

Here's an example setup:

/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS.openbor
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/openbor/He-Man.openbor

Windows:

There are two different OpenBOR setup methods supported on Windows, either to place the game directories directly inside the ROMs\openbor directory or to place the games somewhere else on the filesystems and create .lnk shortcuts and place these inside the ROMs\openbor directory.

Let's use the game Knights & Dragons The Endless Quest as an example. When the game archive has been uncompressed it looks like the following:

~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\
~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\Logs\
~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\Paks\
~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\Saves\
~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\ScreenShots\
~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\OpenBOR.exe

Starting ES-DE with this setup actually works fine, you can enter the game folder and launch the OpenBOR.exe file which will run the game. But to make it a bit tidier you can rename the OpenBOR.exe file to the name of the game, such as:

~\ROMs\openbor\D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS\The Endless Quest.exe

This will make the game show up with that name inside ES-DE and it will also make it easy to scrape. A further improvement is to use the directories interpreted as files functionality to display the game as a single entry instead of a directory. To accomplish this, simply rename the game directory to the same name as the .exe file, for example:

~\ROMs\openbor\The Endless Quest.exe\The Endless Quest.exe

Doing this will make the game show up as if it was a single file inside ES-DE and it can be included in automatic collections, custom collections and so on.

The second option on Windows is to unpack the game somewhere outside the ROMs directory tree and make a shortcut to the OpenBOR.exe binary. Just right click on this file in Explorer and select Create shortcut. You can then rename this .lnk file to the name of the game and move it to the ROMs\openbor directory, for example:

~\ROMs\openbor\The Endless Quest.lnk

The drawback to using shortcuts is that they're not portable, if you change the location of your games, you will need to manually update the shortcuts as well.

Linux:

On Linux you need to supply your own game engine binary as few (if any) games are distributed with the Linux release of OpenBOR. Download the .7z archive from the https://github.com/DCurrent/openbor repository. The file you want is OpenBOR_3.0_6391.AppImage which is located inside the LINUX/OpenBOR folder. If you need an older engine for some specific game, then you may need to download an earlier release instead.

Copy this file to the game directory and make it executable using the command chmod +x OpenBOR_3.0_6391.AppImage

Using the same game example as for the Windows instructions above, the directory structure should look like the following:

~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/Logs/
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/Paks/
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/Saves/
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/ScreenShots/
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/OpenBOR_3.0_6391.AppImage
~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/OpenBOR.exe

You can delete the OpenBOR.exe file since you don't need it, and it's recommended to rename the OpenBOR_3.0_6391.AppImage file to the name of the game, such as:

~/ROMs/openbor/D&D - K&D - The Endless Quest LNS/The Endless Quest.AppImage

~/ROMs/openbor/The Endless Quest.AppImage/The Endless Quest.AppImage

Doing this will make the game show up as if it was a single file inside ES-DE and it can be included in automatic collections, custom collections and so on.

PICO-8

PICO-8 Fantasy Console is a game engine developed by Lexaloffle Games that you need to buy a license to use. Doing so will provide you with download links to releases for Linux, macOS and Windows. Make sure to use the 64-bit release as the 32-bit release reportedly has some technical issues. On macOS and Windows the installation is straightforward, but on Linux you need to place PICO-8 in a location recognized by ES-DE. See the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details.

On Android it's recommended to use the Fake-08 RetroArch core, although this needs to be manually downloaded. How that is done is covered briefly in the ANDROID.md document.

After the emulator has been installed you are ready to add some games. There are two ways to play games using PICO-8, either to add them to ES-DE as for any other system, or using the built-in Splore tool to explore and run games all through the PICO-8 user interface.

For the first approach you can download games from the PICO-8 forum and these are quite uniquely distributed as .png images. You just download these and place them inside the ~/ROMs/pico8 directory, for example:

~/ROMs/pico8/c_e_l_e_s_t_e-0.p8.png
~/ROMs/pico8/xzero-3.p8.png

After this you just launch them like any regular game. You can also scrape many of these games using ScreenScraper, but you will need to refine the game names in most instances since most have filenames that the scraper service won't recognize. It's therefore recommended to run the scraper in interactive mode for these games or to scrape them one by one from the metadata editor.

The second alternative for playing PICO-8 games is to run Splore to browse and launch games from inside the game engine user interface. To do this, first add a dummy game file to the ROMs/pico8 directory. It can be named anything but splore.png is recommended. The file content doesn't matter, it can even be an empty file. Following this, change to the alternative emulator PICO-8 Splore (Standalone) for this specific entry using the metadata editor. If you now launch the file, you will be brought straight to the Splore browser inside PICO-8.

This is what the complete setup could look like:

~/ROMs/pico8/c_e_l_e_s_t_e-0.p8.png
~/ROMs/pico8/splore.png
~/ROMs/pico8/xzero-3.p8.png

Using the Fake-08 and Retro8 RetroArch cores

On Android the Fake-08 core provides a good alternative to the official PICO-8 engine which is not available on this operating system. ES-DE also includes support for the Retro8 RetroArch core across all platforms, but it's borderline unusable and does not seem to be actively developed any longer.

To use the .png file extension with Fake-08 and Retro8 you need to disable the built-in image viewer in RetroArch, otherwise you'll have to rename your game files to only use the .p8 extension, such as this:

~/ROMs/pico8/c_e_l_e_s_t_e-0.p8
~/ROMs/pico8/xzero-3.p8

Ports and desktop applications

The emulators system is essentially a clone of the desktop system so it's not discussed specifically in this section.

As ports and desktop applications are handled in almost exactly the same way in ES-DE both of these are described in this section. For these systems it's generally native applications rather that emulated games that are executed. There are two main approaches to setting up such entries and these are shortcuts and scripts. Note that these can be mixed in the same system, you can have some entries that are shortcuts and some that are scripts and they will still all work. On Linux there is also a third option to launch AppImages directly, which is covered below as well.

For the ports system specifically there are also some alternative emulator entries which run RetroArch cores for source ports/game engines. How to setup these is beyond the scope of this document, but it's described in detail in the RetroArch documentation:
https://docs.libretro.com/

For the desktop system specifically, you can choose to suspend ES-DE while an application or game is launched, or you can choose to keep ES-DE running in the background. This is controlled by the selection of either the default emulator Suspend ES-DE or the alternative emulator Keep ES-DE running. As is the case for all alternative emulator entries, this can be configured system-wide or on a per-game basis.

Method 1, shortcuts

Shortcuts are very easy to setup, on Windows you can simply copy any .lnk file from the Start Menu into the ports or desktop system folders and then you can launch them directly from inside ES-DE. You can also create shortcuts manually to any file by right clicking on it in Explorer and selecting Create shortcut.

Likewise on Linux you can copy any .desktop shortcut into these system directories and they can then be launched by ES-DE.

Here's an example on Windows:

~\ROMs\ports\cannonball.lnk
~\ROMs\ports\openxcom.lnk

And here's an example on Linux:

~/ROMs/desktop/org.libretro.RetroArch.desktop
~/ROMs/desktop/spotify.desktop

On macOS there are two ways to create shortcuts to applications, the first option is .app folders which can be directly executed by ES-DE and the second option is aliases. The easiest way to create an alias is to open two Finder windows, one for your Applications folder and one for your ~/ROMs/desktop folder. Then you can simply drag an application over to the desktop folder which will automatically create an alias file. Alternatively you can right click on an application and select Make Alias and then copy the file over. As a final step you need to add the .app extension to the alias file so that ES-DE can find it on startup. Note that this extension will not be visible in Finder, but if you right click on the file and select Get Info you will see the .app extension in the info window.

Here's an example using alias files on macOS:

~/ROMs/desktop/RetroArch.app
~/ROMs/desktop/System Preferences.app

Method 2, scripts

For more advanced setups you may want to use scripts. While it's possible to add these files directly to the root of the system directories it's instead generally recommended to setup a separate directory per game as there may be more than a single file required. For instance you may have multiple game variants or mods or you may want to keep game data files within the ROM directory tree. Only examples for Linux are provided here, but it's the same process for Windows and macOS except that in Windows .bat batch files are used instead of shell scripts.

Here's a setup of GZDoom and vkQuake:

~/ROMs/ports/GZDoom/gzdoom.sh
~/ROMs/ports/vkQuake/vkquake.sh
~/ROMs/ports/vkQuake/vkquake_arcane_dimensions.sh

gzdoom.sh:

#!/bin/bash
GZ_dir=~/ROMs/ports/GZDoom

gzdoom -iwad $GZ_dir/GameData/Doom/doom.wad -config $GZ_dir/gzdoom.ini -savedir $GZ_dir/Savegames \
-file $GZ_dir/Mods/DoomMetalVol4_44100.wad \
-file $GZ_dir/Mods/brutalv21.pk3 \
-file $GZ_dir/Mods/DHTP-2019_11_17.pk3

vkquake.sh:

#!/bin/bash
~/Applications/vkquake/vkquake.AppImage -basedir ~/ROMs/ports/vkQuake/GameData/Quake

vkquake_arcane_dimensions.sh:

#!/bin/bash
~/Applications/vkquake/vkquake.AppImage -basedir ~/ROMs/ports/vkQuake/GameData/Quake -game ad

You don't need to set execution permissions for these scripts, ES-DE will run them anyway.

Method 3, AppImages Linux only

On Linux it's also possible to launch AppImages directly without having to call them from a shell script. For emulators it's generally required to keep their AppImages in the ~/Applications/ directory and symlink them into the ROMs directory tree, but for other applications and games it may be fine to store them directly in the ROMs tree. In order for this to work you need to use one of the alternative emulator entries that enable AppImages to be launched. It will not work if attempting to use the emulator entries that run scripts and shortcuts. You can set the alternative emulator per game/file from the metadata editor.

ScummVM

Note that the Android release of ScummVM standalone differs from the releases for desktop operating systems in that all games need to be installed in the app before they can be launched from ES-DE. There are some very specific configuration steps that need to be followed to get this to work, but they are thoroughly described in the ScummVM user interface the first time you launch the app, and there is also a built-in help system that you can peruse. Apart from that the setup is identical to the other platforms.

ScummVM overlaps a bit with DOS when it comes to the logic of setting it up. It's recommended to keep games in separate folders, so if you have a game distributed as a ZIP file, uncompress it to its own directory.

Although ScummVM supports launching of .exe files, ES-DE is currently not configured as such and it's instead recommended to create a .scummvm file in each game directory and launch that. This makes for a cleaner setup as you don't need to run game configuration utilities like INSTALL.EXE or SETUP.EXE directly as you would with DOSBox. Rather the game configuration is done within the ScummVM emulator.

The .scummvm file must be named using the correct Game Short Name and it must also contain this short name as a single string/word. You can find the complete list of supported ScummVM games with their corresponding short names here:
https://www.scummvm.org/compatibility

An example setup could look like the following:

~/ROMs/scummvm/Beneath a Steel Sky/sky.scummvm
~/ROMs/scummvm/Flight of the Amazon Queen/queen.scummvm

To clarify, the sky.scummvm file should contain just the single word sky and likewise the queen.scummvm file should only contain the word queen.

However, note that ScummVM on Android (and possibly on other operating systems as well) sometimes changes the short name inside its user interface, for example an index could be added so that instead of sky it says sky-1 or some variation of that. In this case you need to have this exact string inside the .scummvm file instead of the default name from the compatibility list linked above.

In order to avoid having to display each game as a directory inside ES-DE (that needs to be entered each time you want to launch a game), you can optionally interpret each game directory as a file. Make sure to read the Directories interpreted as files section here to understand how this functionality works, but essentially the following would be the setup required for our example:

~/ROMs/scummvm/sky.scummvm/sky.scummvm
~/ROMs/scummvm/queen.scummvm/queen.scummvm

In this case the two entries sky and queen will show up inside ES-DE and these will be handled like any other game files and can be part of automatic and custom collections for instance.

The only drawback of this approach is that when scraping using TheGamesDB you will get very inaccurate results as this scraper service does not support ScummVM short names. It can however be worked around by refining the searches. ScreenScraper does natively support ScummVM short names and you should get very accurate results with this scraper service.

A final alternative is to use folder links to keep the directory structure intact while still being able to launch the game file directly without having to enter the directory, but for ScummVM specifically that is not really recommended.

If you're using the Flatpak release of ScummVM on Linux then you need to manually grant the application the necessary permissions using Flatseal or similar, otherwise you won't be able to launch any games.

Sony PlayStation 3

There are two ways to add PS3 games to ES-DE, by using shortcuts or by adding game directories directly to the ~/ROMs/ps3 folder and interpreting these as files. Shortcuts is generally the way to go as it's easier to setup and for HDD/pkg games it's the only way to make it work unless you manually create symlinks to the internal RPCS3 directory structure. So another benefit with shortcuts is consistency as both HDD/pkg games and disc-based games will be setup in the same manner. This also means that the same RPCS3 emulator entry can be used to launch every game. The drawback to using shortcuts is that they're not portable, if you change the location of RPCS3 or your games, you need to manually update the shortcuts as well.

Be aware that if you still want to have games installed using the directory method, then you will need to change to the alternative emulator RPCS3 Directory (Standalone) or you won't be able to launch these games. As is the case for all alternative emulator entries, this can be configured system-wide or on a per-game basis.

If using the Flatpak release of RPCS3 on Linux and your games are stored on an external device (such as a memory card), then you need to give RPCS3 the necessary permissions. The easiest way to do this is by using Flatseal. The option you need to enable is All system files in the Filesystem section.

Apart from this you need to install the PS3 system firmware to use the emulator, but that is described in the RPCS3 documentation.

Method 1, shortcuts

First install your games inside RPCS3, then right click on each entry and select Create Shortcut followed by Create Desktop Shortcut. On Windows this will create shortcuts with the .lnk extension, on macOS they will have the .app extension and on Linux they will have the .desktop extension.

Then simply move these files from your desktop to your ~/ROMs/ps3 directory and you're done. Here's an example of what this could look like on Linux:

~/ROMs/ps3/Bejeweled 2.desktop
~/ROMs/ps3/Gran Turismo 5.desktop

Note that if using the Flatpak release of RPCS3 on Linux there is currently a bug where the .desktop files will include the wrong path to the emulator binary. The Exec key will look something like this:

Exec="/app/bin/rpcs3" --no-gui "/home/myusername/.var/app/net.rpcs3.RPCS3/config/rpcs3/dev_hdd0/game/NPUA30002"

You need to change this to the full path of the emulator binary, such as:

Exec="/var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/net.rpcs3.RPCS3" --no-gui "/home/myusername/.var/app/net.rpcs3.RPCS3/config/rpcs3/dev_hdd0/game/NPUA30002"

If using the AppImage release of RPCS3 on Linux then another issue may be that the path to the emulator could change when upgrading to a newer release, which may or may not require manual updates to the desktop files.

Regardless of how you've installed RPCS3, make sure to always test the shortcuts outside ES-DE first, because if they don't work from the desktop, then they will not work from inside ES-DE either.

Method 2, directories

This approach is only intended for disc-based games as for HDD/pkg games you should use shortcuts instead. When using this method you need to retain the directory structure of the Blu-ray disc, and each directory needs to be renamed by adding the .ps3 extension. This will make ES-DE interpret the directory as if it were a file and pass that directory to the emulator when launching a game.

Here's an example of what a game entry could look like:

~/ROMs/ps3/Gran Turismo 5.ps3

It's possible to create a symlink instead, and in this case only the symlink needs to have the .ps3 extension. But if you want to locate your games outside the ~/ROMs/ps3 directory anyway, then it's probably easier to just use shortcuts.

When using this setup method you need to set the alternative emulator to RPCS3 Directory (Standalone) or game launching will not work.

Sony PlayStation Vita

There is also a video on the official ES-DE YouTube channel on how to setup Vita3K:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U8yAUJ9-Tk

On Android and Windows the Vita3K installation is straightforward, but on Linux you may need to place the emulator in a location recognized by ES-DE. See the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details. If using a Linux distribution that provides Vita3K via the repository (such as the AUR on Arch/Manjaro) then you can skip this step and install the emulator using your OS package manager.

Although a macOS release of Vita3K seems to be in the works this does not seem to be readily available for download so there is currently no macOS support for this system in ES-DE.

After you've installed Vita3K, add your games via the GUI and make sure that they work correctly when launched from inside the emulator.

To add an installed game to ES-DE, create an empty file in ~/ROMs/psvita and name it as the game name followed by the .psvita file extension, such as the following:

~/ROMs/psvita/WipEout 2048.psvita

Then add the game Title ID to this file. This ID can be found inside the Vita3K GUI, in the Title ID column. For example the game WipEout 2048 has an ID that is PCSF00007. So simply add the string PCSF00007 to the WipEout 2048.psvita file and the setup for this game is complete.

Game launching and scraping should now work fine in ES-DE.

Steam

These games can easily be added to ES-DE using shortcuts, just be aware that this requires that the games have been installed locally.

Make sure to have the Steam application minimized when launching games from ES-DE or otherwise Steam may try to steal focus and you would need to manually switch to the ES-DE window after quitting a game. Unfortunately this does not seem to work on macOS as Steam insists on stealing focus on this operating system.

Windows

Simply copy the Start Menu entries for your Steam games into the ~\ROMs\steam directory. These files have the .url extension and can be launched directly from within ES-DE. For example you may end up with something like the following:

~\ROMs\steam\Axiom Verge.url
~\ROMs\steam\Undertale.url

Linux

Copy the .desktop shortcuts for your games into the ~/ROMs/steam directory. If your desktop environment does not allow you to copy them directly from the application menu then you may need to navigate to ~/.local/share/applications using your file manager and copy the .desktop files from there. Alternatively you can also create shortcuts from inside Steam by right clicking on a game, selecting Manage and then Add desktop shortcut. These file can then be moved from your desktop to your ~/ROMs/steam directory. This is an example of what you could end up with:

~/ROMs/steam/Axiom Verge.desktop
~/ROMs/steam/Undertale.desktop

macOS

On macOS the shortcuts come with the .app extension and are actually directories rather than files. They work exactly as regular shortcuts though. Unless you already have shortcuts available for your games, then go into Steam, right click on a game and select Manage followed by Add desktop shortcut. Then move these .app directories to the ~/ROMs/steam directory. You should have something like the following after making these steps:

~/ROMs/steam/Axiom Verge.app/
~/ROMs/steam/Undertale.app/

Symbian and Nokia N-Gage

At the time of writing the Linux AppImage release of EKA2L1 is partially broken and can't be used to run N-Gage games, instead an alternative emulator entry to run the Windows version of EKA2L1 can be used. This should only be temporary until the bugs have been resolved by the EKA2L1 team, so detailed instructions on how to setup the Windows version on Linux will not be provided below. The documentation instead assumes that the AppImage works as intended.

As the Nokia N-Gage was running Symbian it may seem like the ngage and symbian systems would be identical. There is however a difference in that N-Gage games were shipped on MMC memory cards while regular Symbian games were packaged as Software Installation Script files with the .sis or .sisx extension. Although the EKA2L1 emulator is used for both systems the setup is quite different, as detailed below.

Android

For the symbian system it's possible to launch individual games directly from ES-DE, but for the ngage system this is unfortunately not possible. Instead the EKA2L1 user interface will open on game launch and you need to manually start your game from inside the emulator. For both the symbian and ngage systems all games need to be installed upfront in EKA2L1.

For N-Gage games it's a good idea to just create empty dummy files with the .ngage file extensions inside the ROMs/ngage directory. These will then appear as indvidual games inside ES-DE and you can add metadata to them, scrape them etc.

For Symbian games you can export JSON launch files from EKA2L1 that can be run directly from ES-DE. Just open EKA2L1, long press the game icon and select Create launch file from the popup list. Then just select the ROMs/symbian directory and the file will be saved there and game launching from ES-DE will work as expected.

Here's an example setup:

/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/ngage/Asphalt 2.ngage
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/ngage/Bomberman.ngage
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/ngage/CallofDuty.ngage
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/symbian/Animal Farm.json
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/symbian/AnotherWorld.json

General setup

The EKA2L1 installation should be fairly straightforward, for Linux there is an official AppImage, for macOS there is a DMG installer and for Windows a zip archive release.

After you have the emulator up and running you need to install ROMs for the devices you want to emulate. For the ngage system you want to use the RH-29 ROM, and for the symbian system ES-DE comes preconfigured with emulator entries for the RH-29 (Nokia N-Gage), RM-84 (Nokia N70) and RM-507 (Nokia N97) models. In addition to those there's a custom device entry that is explained in more depth later below. The details of ROM installation and how to setup the emulator is covered by this official YouTube video by the EKA2L1 team:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUlsSGkRjc&list=PLkrpMo4_xadtJ_Kqvc5BSTSi39ollsAbR

The following URL also contains links to important information regarding ROMs and other topics:

https://eka2l1.miraheze.org/wiki/Important_Links

In summary EKA2L1 works quite differently than other emulators, when you install a game it will be available to the devices that support this type of game, it means that after adding a game it will likely not be visible for all the devices you have installed. Likewise you need to tell EKA2L1 which device to use when launching a game, which is precisely why there are multiple emulator entries for the symbian system. But more about that below in the specific ngage and symbian sections.

Nokia N-Gage

These games were shipped as MMC cards, and there are two ways to run them from ES-DE, either to install them in EKA2L1 first and call the game name when launching the game, or to mount a .zip file for the game and run it directly. The latter is the recommended approach and it's provided by the default emulator entry EKA2L1 [Mounted] (Standalone). As long as you have the RH-29 ROM installed in EKA2L1 and games properly packaged in zip format you can just launch the files in ES-DE and everything should work fine.

There is however two specific requirements when it comes to this approach. First the games need to be packaged properly, and this means that each zip archive needs to contain the system folder directly in the root of the archive. Take this example for the game Bomberman, the zip contents need to look like the following:

system/

An archive with the following layout will for example not work:

Bomberman/
Bomberman/system/

The second requirement is correct naming of the zip files, they have to have the same name as what you see inside EKA2L1 when you've mounted or installed the game there. The following Wikipedia entry contains the list of all N-Gage games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N-Gage_games

The table below shows the game name from this list and the required filenames. It's obviously not complete so you'll need to figure out the proper names on your own for the remaining games. Fortunately the N-Gage game library isn't that big so it's not an overwhelming task.

Game Name	Required filename
Ashen	Ashen.zip
Asphalt Urban GT	Asphalt.zip
Asphalt Urban GT 2	Asphalt 2.zip
Atari Masterpieces Vol. I	Atari MP Vol I.zip
Atari Masterpieces Vol. II	Atari MP Vol II.zip
Barakel: The Fallen Angel	Barakel.zip
Bomberman	Bomberman.zip
Call of Duty	CallofDuty.zip

Note that the case has to be right, naming Bomberman.zip as BomberMan.zip will for instance not work. The emulator is completely unforgiving and will hang forever if you attempt to launch a game with the wrong filename.

The second approach of installing the games first in EKA2L1 is essentially identical to the zip archive approach. You'll use the alternative emulator entry EKA2L1 [Installed] (Standalone) to lauch such games. Only difference is that you'll have the option between running the zip files as for the primary approach, or you can setup an empty dummy file in ES-DE and run that instead. Such dummy files must have the .ngage extension. But regardless of method the game files need to follow the naming described above.

A minor drawback is that scraping can be a bit problematic for some games like CallofDuty which may require you to refine the name to find a match. However most filenames will correspond closely enough to their real names that the scraper service should be able to identify them correctly.

Here's an example of what an installation could look like:

~/ROMs/ngage/Asphalt 2.zip
~/ROMs/ngage/Bomberman.zip
~/ROMs/ngage/CallofDuty.ngage

Symbian

Symbian games are shipped as Software Installation Script files with the .sis or .sisx extension. You always need to install these games in EKA2L1 before they can be launched from ES-DE. In the same manner as for N-Gage games, you can then decide to run the actual game file from inside ES-DE or a dummy file. Dummy files must have the .symbian extension.

As is the case for N-Gage games, whatever file you launch from ES-DE has to perfectly match the name that you see for the installed game inside EKA2L1. If even a single character is wrong the emulator will hang forever on game launch.

~/ROMs/symbian/Animal Farm.sis
~/ROMs/symbian/AnotherWorld.symbian
~/ROMs/symbian/Rodland.sis

The default emulator for the symbian system is EKA2L1 [Nokia N-Gage] (Standalone) and as the name implies it's using the RH-29 device in EKA2L1. If you want to run a game using the Nokia N70 phone model (device RM-84) then you need to use the emulator entry EKA2L1 [Nokia N70] (Standalone) and for Nokia N97 (device RM-507) it's EKA2L1 [Nokia N97] (Standalone).

Finally there's an emulator entry named EKA2L1 [Custom device] (Standalone) which let's you use any custom device type you want. To use this, simply create a text file with the .device extension that is named the same way as the game file. In this file enter the device type you want to use and it will be injected into the launch command on game launch. Here's an example of such a setup:

~/ROMs/symbian/Animal Farm.sis
~/ROMs/symbian/Animal Farm.device
~/ROMs/symbian/AnotherWorld.symbian
~/ROMs/symbian/AnotherWorld.device

Tandy Color Computer

This computer (which is confusingly also known as TRS-80 Color Computer even though it's a completely different machine than the TRS-80) is emulated using MAME standalone or the XRoar emulator.

MAME

To use MAME you simply need the coco.zip and coco_fdc.zip BIOS files in the ROMs/coco directory and your games should work. Note however that only cartridge and tape files can be used with MAME (via two separate emulator entries), and not diskettes.

When running tape files there is quite some loading time involved, so it's recommended to fast-forward through the loading process. How this is done differs per platform but usually it's via the page down key on Linux and via the insert key on Windows. For this to work you may first need to disable UI controls in MAME via the scroll lock key. For MAME4droid 2024 you can hold the Start and A buttons to fast-forward. For additional details about this functionality refer to the MAME documentation.

XRoar

In order for XRoar to work correctly you need the ROM files bas13.rom, disk11.rom and extbas11.rom. Even without these files the emulator will probably start, but you will likely see random character on screen and few if any games will run correctly. On Linux these files need to be placed into the ~/.xroar/roms directory and on macOS you need to place them in ~/Library/XRoar/roms. Note that neither of these directories are automatically created by the emulator so you need to create them yourself. On Windows you simply place the ROM files into the emulator installation directory next to the xroar.exe binary.

Following this setup there is not much to it, launching a cartridge or cassette image file will automatically run the game. If launching a diskette image you will probably need to manually run the game file from inside the emulated operating system. Such commands are beyond the scope of this document, but the following quick reference PDF provides a good command overview.

There is also excellent emulator documentation available at the XRoar website.

Two emulator entries are available for this system, XRoar CoCo 2 NTSC (Standalone) and XRoar CoCo 2 PAL (Standalone) which should hopefully be self-explanatory.

Tandy TRS-80

Tandy Corporation made the somewhat dumb decision of naming several unrelated computers as TRS-80 which has caused decades of confusion. The Tandy TRS-80 system in ES-DE emulates the original black-and-white TRS-80 Model I. If you want to emulate the TRS-80 Color Computer then you'll want to use the Tandy Color Computer system instead.

The TRS-80 is emulated using sdl2trs which is available for Linux and Windows, seemingly there is no macOS port. If you use a Debian-based Linux distribution there is a .deb package made by the developers and if you're using an Arch-based distribution you can install it using the AUR. For other distributions you may have to build from source code or download a pre-built binary from some other location. See the Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux section of this guide for more details on where sdl2trs will need to be installed in that case.

On Windows only the 64-bit release of the emulator is supported, with the filename sdl2trs64.exe.

The setup requires the files level2.rom and boot.dsk to be placed in the root of the ~/ROMs/trs-80 directory. Note that both filenames are case sensitive. The boot.dsk file has to be a copy of one of the supported DOS operating systems for the TRS-80, but NewDos/80 v2.0 is recommended.

The setup in ES-DE supports three types of game files:

Diskette images (.dsk extension) that have to be accessed via DOS
Diskette images (.dsk extension) that can be booted directly
Direct launch of program files (.cmd extension)

These modes are executed using three separate emulator entries, so you will need to change to either of the alternative emulator entries if you want to use option two or three above.

Most games and software needs to be executed via the DOS operating system so in most instances you should leave the emulator set to sdl2trs DOS Diskette (Standalone). In this case the DOS operating system on the boot.dsk diskette image will be inserted into the first virtual floppy drive and automatically loaded. The launched .dsk image will be in the second drive. No automatic startup of the content of this diskette will take place, instead you need to run the game file manually. You can use the DIR command to see a listing of files on the diskette, and you simply run any CMD file by typing its name, for instance ZORK2. Running BASIC games require additional commands but that is beyond the scope of this document, there are many resources available online on how to use the TRS-80 computer.

To instead run a bootable floppy image you need to change to the alternative emulator entry sdl2trs Bootable Diskette (Standalone). Launching such a diskette image will insert it into the first virtual floppy drive and automatically load the game.

The third option requires the sdl2trs CMD File (Standalone) emulator entry. In the same manner as a bootable diskette image, the game file with the .cmd extension will be automatically loaded when launched.

There is no scraper support specifically for the TRS-80, instead these games will be scraped as TRS-80 Color Computer (also known as Tandy Color Computer) which is likely highly inaccurate.

Here's what a complete setup could look like:

~/ROMs/trs-80/boot.dsk
~/ROMs/trs-80/level2.rom
~/ROMs/trs-80/palace.cmd
~/ROMs/trs-80/zaxxon.dsk
~/ROMs/trs-80/zork1.dsk
~/ROMs/trs-80/zork2.dsk

Tangerine Computer Systems Oric

These games can be run using either MAME standalone or the Oricutron emulator. The latter is readily available on Windows but quite problematic to get hold on for Linux and macOS. It's also not available for Android at all.

MAME

To use MAME you simply need the oric1.zip BIOS file in the ROMs/oric directory and your games should work. Note however that only tape files can be used with MAME, and not diskettes. To run diskette files you will need to use Oricutron instead.

Oricutron

Although there is a macOS build available at the Oricutron download page this seems to not work properly, or it's unclear how it should be used. Likewise on Linux there seems to be no binaries available for download so you need to build the emulator yourself. As multiple files like images and roms are needed to run this emulator, it's easiest to download and extract the Windows version which contains all this data and then build from source code and simply copy over the Oricutron binary (example below using Ubuntu):

mkdir -p ~/Applications/oricutron
cp Oricutron_win32_v12.zip ~/Applications/oricutron
cd ~/Applications/oricutron
unzip Oricutron_win32_v12.zip
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libsdl1.2-dev
git clone https://github.com/pete-gordon/oricutron.git
cd oricutron
cmake .
make -j
cp Oricutron ..

Once the emulator is up and running there is not really much else to consider, simply drop the games into the ~/ROMs/oric directory and launch them.

Texas Instruments TI-99

The TI-99 is emulated via MAME, and only the standalone release of this emulator is supported. Unfortunately it seems as if the Homebrew build on macOS is broken as no TI-99 games can be launched. As such this system is unsupported on macOS, but the configuration entries still exist in the bundled es_find_rules.xml and es_systems.xml files so if you manage to get the emulator to run, ES-DE should work with these games.

If using Android then make sure you've read the MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid section of the Android documentation and that your ROM directory is configured correctly inside the emulator.

Emulating the TI-99 can be quite confusing as games are available in various incompatible formats, and most emulators are particular when it comes to what file types they support. In ES-DE only cartridge-based games are supported, so you can't for instance play games distributed as floppy disk images. And only games packaged for MAME using the MAME software list name standard can be used. This includes .7z and .zip files as well as .rpk cartridge images. It's strongly recommended to go for the MAME TI-99 ROM set that consists only of .zip files as these have the highest chance of working correctly.

In addition to the game files you need the ti99_4a.zip archive which contains the TI-99 system ROMs. This file has to be placed in the root of the ~/ROMs/ti99 directory.

Scraping can also be a bit challenging as MAME software list names are used and neither ScreenScraper nor TheGamesDB can parse these names. So it's recommended to run the scraper in interactive mode and refine the searches for all games that are not properly identified.

Visual Pinball

Android

Unfortunately there does not seem to be a way to launch individual Visual Pinball tables from ES-DE on Android, instead the Visual Pinball user interface will open on game launch and you need to manually start your table from there. This means tables need to be installed upfront in Visual Pinball and .vpinball dummy files should be added to the ROMs/vpinball directory. These will then appear as individual games inside ES-DE and you can add metadata to them, scrape them etc.

Here's an example setup:

/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/vpinball/Apollo 13.vpinball
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/vpinball/Judge Dredd.vpinball

Linux, macOS and Windows

The pinball simulator Visual Pinball can be a bit tricky to setup as it supports a wide range of tables. Some of these require PinMAME and some don't. Some simulated tables are older electromechnical design and some are of more modern solid state designs. Some are recreations of real physical games and some are purely virtual and don't exist in physical form. In many cases there is not a definitive release for a table and you may need to assemble various files to get to a fully working game.

As pinball games is a complex topic it will only be covered briefly here, refer to the official Visual Pinball documentation for more details.

The Windows release of Visual Pinball can be downloaded here (make sure to get the GL version):
https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/releases

Apart from this the Windows-specific setup is not covered in this document, but you should be able to find a lot of resources online on this topic.

The Linux and macOS releases need to be downloaded from the GitHub Actions page for the time being:
https://github.com/vpinball/vpinball/actions

On Linux simply unpack the archive into ~/Applications/VPinballX and make sure to give the binary executable permissions:

cd ~/Applications/VPinballX
chmod +x VPinballX_GL

On macOS there is a DMG package that you simply install.

Once you've installed Visual Pinball start it once outside ES-DE and its .ini configuration file will be created. On Linux and macOS this is ~/.vpinball/VPinballX.ini

Set the following entries in this file:

VPRegPath = ./
PinMAMEPath = ./
PinMAMEIniPath = ./

If you don't do this the table may still start but won't work properly and you'll not be able to actually start a game.

ES-DE launches .vpx and .vpt files for the vpinball system, but most tables come shipped with multiple additional files that are needed for the table to work, for example:

~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/pinmame/
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.directb2s
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.ini
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vbs
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx

Assembling the necessary files to run a table is beyond the scope of this guide but there are various resources available online for this.

This specific table requires PinMAME to run, and the fh directory name is an example of the abbreviations commonly used in the pinball community. You can for instance find these names in the Internet Pinball Database where they are referred to as Common Abbreviations.

If you don't need to retain these abbreviations then you can simply setup your games using the directories interpreted as files functionality:

~/ROMs/vpinball/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx/pinmame/
~/ROMs/vpinball/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.directb2s
~/ROMs/vpinball/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.ini
~/ROMs/vpinball/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vbs
~/ROMs/vpinball/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx

If you however insist on retaining the abbreviations then you could use folder links to launch the .vpx or .vpt file inside the fh directory by editing the folder in the metadata editor and selecting the game file via the Folder link entry.

A final option would be to use the folder flattening functionality, although this has many negative side effects that you need to be aware of. If going for this approach make sure to thoroughly read the Folder flattening section of this document.

~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/pinmame/
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.directb2s
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.ini
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vbs
~/ROMs/vpinball/fh/Funhouse (Williams 1990)_Bigus(MOD)1.6.vpx
~/ROMs/vpinball/flatten.txt

With folder flattening in place the .vpx and .vpt files will show up as file entries directly in the root of the gamelist.

Scraping

Scraping means downloading metadata and game media files (images and videos) for the games in your collection.

In addition to this document there is a video on the official ES-DE YouTube channel on how to use the scraper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js_m_jVnX2s

ES-DE supports the two scraper services ScreenScraper.fr and TheGamesDB.net. In general TheGamesDB supports less formats and less systems but in some areas such PC gaming the quality is better and sometimes ScreenScraper is missing some specific information such as release dates where TheGamesDB may be able to fill in the gaps.

Here's an overview of what's supported when using these scrapers:

Media type or option	ScreenScraper	TheGamesDB
Region (EU/JP/US/WOR)	Yes	No
Multi-language	Yes	No
Game names	Yes	Yes
Ratings	Yes	No
Other game metadata	Yes	Yes
Videos	Yes	No
Screenshots	Yes	Yes
Title screens	Yes	Yes
Box covers	Yes	Yes
Box back covers	Yes	Yes
Marquees/wheels	Yes	Yes
3D boxes	Yes	No
Fan art	Yes	Yes
Physical media	Yes	No
Game manuals (PDF)	Yes	No

The category Other game metadata includes Description, Release date, Developer, Publisher, Genre and Players.

The Multi-language support includes translated game genres and game descriptions for a number of languages.

Physical media means images of cartridges, diskettes, tapes, CD-ROMs etc. that were used to distribute the games.

There are two approaches to scraping, either for a single game from the metadata editor, or for multiple games and systems using the multi-scraper.

Here's an example of the multi-scraper running in interactive mode, asking the user to make a selection from the multiple matching games returned by the scraper service.

Single-game scraper

The single-game scraper is launched from the metadata editor. You navigate to a game, open the gamelist options menu, choose Edit this game's metadata and then select the Scrape button (alternatively the Y button shortcut can be used to start the scraper).

Multi-scraper

The multi-scraper is accessed from the main menu by entering the Scraper menu and then selecting the Start button (or the Y button shortcut can be used).

Scraping process

The default mode for the scraper is Non-interactive mode, also referred to as Automatic mode. When using this mode the selected systems are scraped without requiring any user input. This is quite convenient, but has the drawback of not asking for input if there are multiple matching games. In this case the game that the scraper service thinks is the most accurate match will be returned. However, if the Search using file hashes scraper option is enabled and you're using ScreenScraper, then a hash value will be calculated from the actual game file and searches will be performed based on this. When using hash searches it's often a good idea to uncompress zip archives for systems with single game files (for instance a .bin file inside a .zip archive) as it's more likely that there's a match for such a file than for a compressed archive. Assuming there is a match for your file in the ScreenScraper database, this will lead to 100% accurate results. But if no matching file is found then it's possible that the fallback name search will return the wrong game, and therefore leading to the wrong game metadata and media being downloaded. In practice this issue is quite rare so it's generally recommended to keep the automatic mode enabled. If no result is found for a game, the scraper will skip to the next one in queue.

If interactive mode is instead enabled, the process of scraping games is basically identical between the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper. You're presented with the returned scraper results, and you're able to refine the search if the scraper could not find your game. Sometimes small changes like adding or removing a colon or a minus sign can yield better results. Note that searches are handled entirely by the scraper service, ES-DE just presents the results returned from the service. File hash searching is not supported by ScreenScraper if using this search method.

When scraping in interactive mode it's recommended to keep the Auto-accept single game matches option enabled as it will run the scraper in semi-automatic mode, only stopping to ask for user input if there are multiple results returned or if no game was found. If this option is disabled, the scraper will stop and ask for confirmation for every game.

Under normal circumstances the scraper service will only return games for the platforms used for searching, but sometimes when it's not sure about the results it will also include games from other platforms. If this happens, these additional platform names will be displayed within square brackets after the game name in the result list. And if a game system is configured for multiple platforms, then the specific platform returned per result will always be displayed within square brackets. The exception for these two scenarios is if the multi-scraper is running in fully automatic mode as the additional platform information is then always omitted. Note that the additional platform information will not be included in the scraped game name, it's only used for clarification within the scraper result list.

It's also possible to apply a filter for which games to scrape, which is very useful if for example continuing scraping a system that was previously not fully completed, or for re-scraping after new games have been added. This is accomplished using the Scrape these games option in the main scraper menu. Possible values are All games, Favorite games, No metadata, No game image, No game video or Folders only.

By default, ES-DE will search using the metadata name of the game. If no name has previously been defined via scraping or via manually entering it using the metadata editor, then the name used for searching will correspond to the physical filename minus all text inside either normal brackets () or square brackets []. So for example the physical filename Mygame (U) [v2].zip will be stripped to simply Mygame when performing the scraper search.

By disabling the option Search using metadata name, the physical filename will be used even if there is a scraped or manually entered name for the game.

There is however an exception to this for arcade games (MAME and Neo Geo) when using the TheGamesDB scraper. As this service does not support searches using the short software list MAME names, these will instead be automatically expanded to their full game names. This is done via a MAME name translation file supplied with the ES-DE installation. But when using ScreenScraper the Search using metadata name option is always respected as this service fully support scraping based on the software list MAME names.

Apart from this, hopefully the scraping process should be self-explanatory.

Manually copying game media files

If you already have a library of game media (images, videos and PDF manuals) you can manually copy these files into ES-DE. The same procedure applies if you want to add media for individual games, for instance when the scraper did not return any results or if you didn't like the media it provided.

The default media directory is ~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/<system name>/<media type>

This directory can however be changed using the Game media directory setting in the Other settings menu so make sure to check this setting before attempting to follow the instructions below. If the setting is blank, then the default directory is in use.

See the Supported game systems table at the bottom of this guide for a list of all system names.

An example on Android:

/storage/emulated/0/ES-DE/downloaded_media/c64/screenshots/

An example on Linux:

/home/myusername/ES-DE/downloaded_media/c64/screenshots/

An example on macOS:

/Users/myusername/ES-DE/downloaded_media/c64/screenshots/

An example on Windows (installer release):

C:\Users\Myusername\ES-DE\downloaded_media\c64\screenshots\

An example on Windows (portable release):

ES-DE\ES-DE\downloaded_media\c64\screenshots\

The media directories per game system are:

3dboxes
backcovers
covers
custom
fanart
manuals
marquees
miximages
physicalmedia
screenshots
titlescreens
videos

The miximages are generated by ES-DE. Normally that takes place automatically when scraping, but in this example of manually copying existing media files, the miximage offline generator should be used instead. This tool can generate the miximages for the complete game collection in one go. How that works is explained elsewhere in this guide.

The custom directory is not created automatically, it's an optional folder where it's possible to place an image per game that can be viewed as the last entry in the media viewer. It's intended for things like diagrams of game controller mappings that you may want to consult before starting a game. These files have to be saved with the .jpg or .png extension and they follow the same naming logic as all other media files, as explained next.

There's a handy spreadsheet here that explains each media type:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18VJAL44aNxsFOd4pVAONmdWwa7srCSzr2Z2SJEiNKnE/edit?gid=1812680930#gid=1812680930

The media files must correspond exactly to the game files. Take for example this game:

~/ROMs/c64/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2/Last Ninja 2.m3u

For this example, the filename structure needs to look like the following:

~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/c64/screenshots/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2/Last Ninja 2.jpg
~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/c64/videos/Multidisk/Last Ninja 2/Last Ninja 2.mp4

Note that there is seemingly an exception to this logic if the Directories interpreted as files functionality has been used, in which case the "file extension" added to the directory is also included in the game media filenames. Take for example the following ScummVM game:

~/ROMs/scummvm/dig.scummvm/dig.scummvm

The media files for this directory which is interpreted as a file will be:

~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/scummvm/screenshots/dig.scummvm.png
~/ES-DE/downloaded_media/scummvm/videos/dig.scummvm.mp4

This is not a bug as these are not really file extensions after all, it's just a directory with a dot in the filename that happens to look like a file extension because that's how the Directories interpreted as files logic works.

For images .jpg and .png file extensions are supported and for videos .avi, .mkv, .mov, .mp4 and .wmv are supported.

Remember that on Linux filenames are case sensitive, and as well the file extensions must be in lower case, such as .png instead of .PNG or .Png or the file won't be found.

It's possible to change the game media directory location from within ES-DE, for this see the option Game media directory in the Other settings menu.

This menu can be accessed from both the system view and gamelist view. It contains the scraper, application settings and various tools such as the input configurator and the miximage generator. Settings are saved when navigating back from any menu screen, assuming at least one setting was changed. Using the keyboard quit shortcut (Alt + F4 / Command + Q by default) will also save any pending changes.

The main menu with its multiple submenus using the default dark menu color scheme.

The main menu using the alternative light menu color scheme.

Following is a breakdown of the main menu entries.

Scraper

This menu contains the various options for the scraper, which is used to download metadata, images, videos and PDF manuals for your games.

Some of the scraper settings.

Scrape from

Scraper service selection, currently ScreenScraper.fr and TheGamesDB.net are supported.

Scrape these games

Criteria for what games to include. It can be set to All games, Favorite games, No metadata, No game image, No game video or Folders only. The No metadata option checks if the game has a description and the No game image checks for a miximage, then screenshot, then title screen and last box cover and if any of these images exist then the game is considered as already scraped.

Scrape these systems

A selection of which systems to scrape for. It's possible to automatically scrape several or all systems in one go.

Account settings

Setup of ScreenScraper account.

ScreenScraper username

Username as registered on screenscraper.fr.

ScreenScraper password

The password as registered on screenscraper.fr. This is masked using asterisks on the screen, and the password input field will be blank when attempting to update an existing password. This is by design and not a bug. Be aware that the es_settings.xml file contains the password in clear text.

Use this account for ScreenScraper

Whether to use the account that has been configured. If this is disabled, the username and password setup on this screen will be ignored during scraping. This can be useful if you have scraping issues and want to check whether it's related to your account or if it's a general problem. Note that screenscraper.fr does not return a proper error message regarding incorrect username and password, but enabling the Debug mode setting in the Other settings menu or starting ES-DE with the --debug flag will indicate in the es_log.txt file whether the username was included in the server response.

Content settings

Describes the content types to include in the scraping.

Game names

Whether to scrape the names of the games. This does not affect the actual files on the filesystem and the game name is primarily used for appearance and sorting purposes. The downloaded media files are matched against the physical game files on the filesystem, and not against this metadata. See the comments under Overwrite files and data below to understand some additional implications regarding game names.

Ratings (ScreenScraper only)

Downloads game ratings.

Other metadata

This includes the game description, release date, developer, publisher, genre and the number of players.

Videos (ScreenScraper only)

Videos of actual gameplay.

Screenshot images

Screenshot images of actual gameplay.

Title screen images

Screenshot images of the title screen.

Box cover images

Cover art, front of box/case.

Box back cover images

Back of box/case.

Marquee (wheel) images

Logotype for the game.

3D box images (ScreenScraper only)

3D image of box/case.

Physical media images (ScreenScraper only)

Images of cartridges, diskettes, tapes, CD-ROMs etc. that were used to distribute the games.

Fan art images

Fan art.

Game manuals (ScreenScraper only)

Manuals in PDF format. Note that these files can be quite large.

Miximage settings

These are the settings for the miximage generator, which can either be run from the scraper (single-game scraper or multi-scraper) or from the offline generator. The miximage combines the screenshot, marquee, box/cover and physical media images to make a composite picture that is displayed in the gamelist view. There are various settings for the generator.

Miximage resolution

It's possible to select betweeen the 1280x960, 1920x1440 and 640x480 resolutions for the generated miximages. It's normally recommended to use the default option 1280x960 which gives good image quality without slowing down ES-DE too much. But for very weak machines, 640x480 may be a better option. The 1920x1440 resolution is normally not recommended as it brings little quality improvements over 1280x960 while slowing down the application and taking up more disk space.

Horizontal screenshot fit

For horizontally oriented screenshots which do not match the aspect ratio of the miximage frame, this option defines how to fit the image. Valid options are contain which will keep the entire image within the frame while maintaining its aspect ratio, crop which will crop the image so it fills the entire frame, and stretch which will fill the entire frame while possibly breaking the aspect ratio of the image. Generally crop is the best option for widescreen images like games running at 16:9 aspect ratios and similar.

Vertical screenshot fit

For vertically oriented screenshots which do not match the aspect ratio of the miximage frame, this option defines how to fit the image. Valid options are contain which will keep the entire image within the frame while maintaining its aspect ratio, crop which will crop the image so it fills the entire frame, and stretch which will fill the entire frame while possibly breaking the aspect ratio of the image. Generally contain is the best option for vertically oriented images like vertical arcade shooters and similar.

Screenshot aspect ratio threshold

This option defines the tolerated deviation from the miximage frame's aspect ratio before applying crop and contain to a screenshot. As such this option has no effect if stretch has been selected as the screenshot fit. When set to low only very small deviations are accepted which will more strictly enforce the aspect ratio of the screenshot with the drawback of possibly adding a small amount of crop and blank area around the image. It's usually best to keep this option set to high which will stretch screenshots to a reasonable degree before applying any crop or contain fitting.

Blank areas fill color

When setting the screenshot fit to contain there will be blank areas around the screenshot as it's fitted within the miximage frame. This option defines whether to fill this area with a black color or if the frame color should be used instead.

Screenshot scaling method

The sharp scaling method uses nearest-neighbor interpolation which retains sharp pixels and looks better for most low-resolution retro games. The smooth scaling method uses the Lanczos algorithm and produces smoother pixels. This may look better on some more modern games at higher resolutions. If unsure, use the sharp method.

Box size

The size of the 3D game box, or the cover image if there is no 3D box and the Use cover image if 3D box is missing setting has been enabled. The available options are medium, small and large.

Physical media size

The size of the physical media image. The available options are medium, small and large.

Generate miximages when scraping

Enables or disables the miximage generator when scraping. Applies to both the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper.

Overwrite miximages (scraper/offline generator)

Controls whether miximages should be overwritten or not. Note that the scraper setting Overwrite files and data does not affect the miximages.

Remove letterboxes from screenshots

With this option enabled, any horizontal pure black areas at the top and bottom of the screenshots are automatically cropped.

Remove pillarboxes from screenshots

With this option enabled, any vertical pure black areas at the left and right sides of the screenshots are automatically cropped.

Rotate horizontally oriented boxes

Some consoles such as Super Nintendo have game boxes with the cover printed horizontally rather than using the more common vertical format. If enabling this setting, those images will be rotated 90 degrees so they stand up like the box images for most other systems.

Include marquee image

Whether to include the marquee (wheel) image in the composite miximage.

Include box image

Whether to include the box image in the composite miximage. If a 3D box exists for the game, this will be used.

Use cover image if 3D box is missing

Whether to use the 2D box cover as fallback if the 3D box image is missing for the game.

Include physical media image

Whether to include the image of the physical media used to distribute the game, for example a cartridge, diskette, tape, CD-ROM etc.

Offline generator

This is not a setting, but instead a GUI to generate miximages offline without going via the scraper. This tool uses the same game system selections as the scraper, so you need to select at least one system on the scraper menu before attempting to run it. All the miximage settings are applied in the same way as when generating images via the scraper. The prerequisite is that at least a screenshot exists for each game. If there is no screenshot, or if the screenshot is unreadable for some reason, the generation for that specific game will fail. There is statistics shown in the tool displaying the number of generated, overwritten, skipped and failed images. Any error message is shown on screen as well as being saved to the es_log.txt file. Note that although the system selections are the same as for the scraper, the Scrape these games filter is ignored and the generator always attempts to generate miximages for all games in a system.

Other settings

Various scraping settings.

Region (ScreenScraper only)

The region to scrape for. This affects game names, game media and release dates. Possible options are Europe, Japan, USA and World.

Preferred language (ScreenScraper only)

Multiple languages are supported by ScreenScraper, and this affects translations of game genres and game descriptions. As the option name implies this is the preferred language only as not all games have had their metadata translated. Unfortunately some less used languages have quite few games translated, but hopefully this will improve over time as there's an ongoing community effort to make more translations. If the preferred language is not available for a game, ES-DE will fall back to using the English metadata.

Automatic retries on error

How many times to automatically retry scraping if an error is encountered, from 0 to 10. Note that this is only applied when running in automatic or semi-automatic mode and not when for instance using the single-game scraper. It also doesn't apply to non-recoverable errors such as insufficient permissions or if the disk is full.

Retry attempt timer

How long to wait between each scraper retry, from 1 to 30 seconds.

Hash searches max file size (ScreenScraper only)

If file hash searching is enabled, then this specifies the maximum allowed file size, from 32 to 800 MiB. If a game file being scraped is larger than the defined value for this setting, then a fallback will be made to the regular name search functionality. Note that increasing this too high while keeping your games on slow storage may increase scraping times significantly as the entire game file will need to be read and processed to calculate its hash value.

Overwrite files and data

Affects both overwriting of metadata as well as actual game media files on the filesystem. Even with this option disabled, metadata entries which are set to their default values will be populated by the scraper. In other words, this option only affects overwriting of previously scraped data, or data manually entered via the metadata editor. Game names are considered as set to their default values if either corresponding to the physical game file on disk minus the extension (e.g. the entry Commando if the file is named Commando.zip), or for arcade games if corresponding to the MAME names as defined in the bundled mamenames.xml. Note that this setting does not affect generated miximages, that is instead controlled by the setting Overwrite miximages (scraper/offline generator) found in the miximage settings menu.

Search using file hashes (non-interactive mode) (ScreenScraper only)

When running the non-interactive scraper it's possible to search using a hash value calculated from the actual game file. Assuming ScreenScraper has a match for your file in their database, this will lead to 100% accuracy as the game name will be completely ignored. If there is no match for the hash value, then a fallback will be made to the game name and the normal search logic applies. The maximum allowed file size to apply this type of search to can be set using the Hash searches max file size slider. Note that file hash searching can increase scraping times significantly if applied to large game files as the entire file needs to be read and processed to calculate its hash value. And obviously file hash searching will not work for directories, scripts, shortcuts, .m3u files and so on which will have no matching entries in the ScreenScraper database.

Search using metadata names

By default ES-DE will perform scraper searches based on the game name that has been manually set in the metadata editor, or that has been previously scraped. If you prefer to search using the physical filename regardless of such data being available, then disable this option. Note that when using TheGamesDB as scraper service for arcade games, the MAME software list name will always be expanded to the full game name as this scraper service does not support searches using software list names. In general it's recommended to disable this option if scraping arcade games using ScreenScraper as the MAME software list names are much more reliable than using the metadata names.

Scrape actual folders (Multi-scraper only)

Enabling this option causes folders themselves to be included by the scraper. This is useful for DOS or ScummVM games or for multi-disc games where there is a folder for each individual game and you have decided to not use the Directories interpreted as files functionality.

Interactive mode (Multi-scraper only)

If turned off, the scraping will be fully automatic and will not stop on multiple results or when no matching game was found.

Auto-accept single game matches (Multi-scraper only)

Used in conjunction with interactive mode, to not having to confirm searches when a single result is returned from the scraper service.

Respect per-file scraper exclusions (Multi-scraper only)

It's possible to set a flag per game file or folder using the metadata editor to indicate that it should be excluded from the multi-scraper. This setting makes it possible to override that restriction and scrape all entries anyway.

Exclude folders recursively (Multi-scraper only)

If this setting is enabled and a folder has its flag set to be excluded from the scraper, then the entire folder contents are skipped when running the multi-scraper.

Convert underscores to spaces when searching

With this option enabled underscores _ in game names are converted to spaces when performing scraper searches. This affects both the single-game scraper and the multi-scraper and it will also be applied automatically to the Refine search dialog.

Remove dots from searches when auto-scraping (ScreenScraper only)

ScreenScraper has issues with some game names containing dots, such as Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 2 which will both be identified as Super Mario Bros. during automatic scraping. By enabling this option all dots are stripped from game names when searching which will result in higher accuracy in such instances. It may however cause unforeseen problems for some other games so experiment with disabling this option as needed. Note that this setting only affects the fully automatic multi-scraper, if running the multi-scraper in interactive mode or if using the single-game scraper via the metadata editor, then the dots will always be retained.

Enable fallback to additional regions (ScreenScraper only)

When a certain game media file does not exist for the selected region, ES-DE automatically performs a fallback to the regions world, USA, Japan, EU, and custom in this specific order. If this setting is enabled then an additional fallback is performed to all other country-specific regions. This makes it possible to scrape media for some games only released in specific countries like Brazil or South Korea. It may also make it possible to scrape some game media that have been uploaded to ScreenScraper using the wrong region. The special ss/ScreenScraper region is also enabled via this option, and among other things it contains media for games that never had official releases. This is relevant for instance for OpenBOR and PICO-8 games where 3D boxes and other images may become available. The drawback for this setting is that you may get inaccurate data such as box art in the wrong language or unofficial box art for arcade games, so you may want to experiment with this option on a per-system basis.

UI settings

Various settings that affect the user interface.

Theme downloader

Starts the theme downloader, which is documented in detail elsewhere in this document.

Theme

The theme to use. Defaults to Linear which is bundled with the application.

Theme variant

Themes optionally support variants which are a type of theme profiles defined by the theme author. This could be things like different designs or whether videos are enabled or not.

Theme color scheme

If the theme author has included multiple color schemes, then these can be selected between using this menu option.

Theme font size

If the theme author has included support for multiple font/text sizes, then these can be selected between using this menu option. Possible choices are medium, large, small, extra large and extra small. What layout changes these font size options actually make is completely up to the theme author.

Theme aspect ratio

Themes could optionally be optimized for different screen aspect ratios. ES-DE supports 16:9, 16:10, 3:2, 4:3, 5:4, 21:9 and 32:9 in both horizontal and vertical orientation, but it's completely up to the theme author which of these are actually supported by the theme. It's normally best to leave this setting at Automatic in which case ES-DE will automatically select the aspect ratio that most closely matches the screen resolution. The Automatic option is however only available if the theme supports at least two aspect ratios.

Theme transitions

Transition animations to play when navigating between different gamelists, between systems in the system view and between the system and gamelist views. It's up to the theme author to define what to include for this option. Technically these can be any combination of instant, slide or fade transitions. If there are no user-selectable transitions avaialable the setting will be grayed out.

Theme language

If the selected theme has multilingual support then you can select between its supported languages here. This setting is primarily intended for testing purposes and for theme developers, and should as such usually be left at automatic which will select the same theme language as the overall application language (see the next setting below). Note that not all themes may support all languages that the ES-DE application supports. Also note that a portion of the theme translations are contained within the base application itself and as such will not switch language unless you also change the Application language setting accordingly.

Application language

Sets the language for the application user interface. If this option is set to automatic then the language will be auto-detected, which means ES-DE will attempt to use whatever language has been selected in the operating system language settings. If there are no translations available in ES-DE for this precise language then a fallback will be done to the closest match, such as Svenska instead of Svenska (Finland). If no close match is available then ES-DE will revert to the default language which is English (United States). It's also possible to explicitly select a supported language, which will override whatever has been set by the operating system. Note that the onboarding configurator for the Android release is unaffected by this setting. Also note that language auto-detection does not work on the Steam Deck when running in game mode, so there it's necessary to select a language explicitly. If you accidentally select a language you didn't intend to, then you can access the application language setting via the second menu entry from the top after opening the main menu, and then after entering this sub-menu by pressing the down button seven times.

Quick system select

The buttons to use to jump between systems in the gamelist view. The options are Left/right or shoulders, Left/right or triggers, Shoulders, Triggers, Left/right or Disabled. The first two options will apply either left/right or shoulder/trigger buttons depending on the type of primary element used for the gamelist. For example a textlist or a vertical carousel will allow the use of the left and right buttons, but for horizontal carousels and grids these buttons are reserved for navigating the entries so instead the secondary buttons will be used, i.e. the shoulder or trigger buttons. Using these two options therefore leads to a slight inconsistency as different buttons will be used depending on the theme configuration. If instead using any of the single button pair options, i.e. Shoulders, Triggers or Left/right, the navigation will be consistent regardless of theme configuration but you'll sacrifice the ability to use the selected buttons if the gamelist supports it, such as the ability to jump rows in a textlist using the shoulder and trigger buttons.

Gamelist on startup

If set to None, the system view will be displayed on startup. Any other value will automatically jump to that system's gamelist on startup.

Systems sorting

The order in which to sort the game systems. The default option is Full names or custom which will sort by full system names, unless there is a ~/ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems_sorting.xml file present which will then be used instead. The other options are using the bundled sorting configuration files for Release year or Manufacturer, release year or HW type, release year or Manufacturer, HW type, release year. If using any of these bundled sorting files, then any ~/ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems_sorting.xml will be ignored. When changing this setting ES-DE will automatically reload.

Game default sort order

The order in which to sort your gamelists. This can be overriden per game system using the gamelist options menu, but that override will only be persistent during the application session. The System, ascending and System, descending sort orders can not be selected here as those are only applicable to collection systems.

Menu color scheme

Provides a selection between the Dark, Dark with red and Light color schemes. This will affect the entire menu system as well as the game launch screen.

Menu opening animation

Animation to play when opening the main menu or the gamelist options menu. Also sets the animation for the game launch screen. Can be set to Scale-up or None.

Launch screen duration

This configures for how long to display the game launch screen when starting a game. The options are Normal, Brief, Long and Disabled. If set to Disabled, a simple notification popup will be displayed instead.

UI mode

Sets the user interface mode for the application to Full, Kiosk or Kid. See the description above in this document for additional information.

Random entry button

Whether to enable the selection of a random entry in the system or gamelist view via a button press, by default mapped to the click button of either thumbstick. The options are Games only, Games and systems or Disabled. The help system will also visually indicate the status of this setting.

Media viewer settings

Submenu containing all the settings for the media viewer. These are described in detail below.

Screensaver settings

Submenu containing all the settings for the screensaver. These are described in detailed below.

Enable theme variant triggers

Themes can optionally contain variant trigger configuration which changes the layout on a per-gamelist basis if there is no game media available, or if there is no game videos available. This option makes it possible to disable that functionality and always apply the default configuration for the selected variant. Disabling this option may speed up the application slightly.

Blur background when menu is open Always applied if screen is rotated 90 or 270 degrees

This option will blur the background behind the menu slightly. Normally this can be left enabled, but if you have a really slow GPU, disabling this option may make the application feel a bit more responsive. For technical reasons this setting is always enabled if the screen is rotated 90 or 270 degrees, and in this case the menu option will also be grayed out.

Sort folders on top of gamelists

Whether to place all folders on top of the gamelists. If enabled the folders will not be part of the quick selector index, meaning they can no longer be quick-jumped to. That is, unless there are only folders in the gamelist in which case the folders will be handled like files.

Sort favorite games above non-favorites

Whether to sort your favorite games above your other games in the gamelists.

Add star markings to favorite games

With this setting enabled and if a textlist is in use, there is a star symbol added at the beginning of the game name in the gamelist view. If you're not using a theme which support badges, it's strongly recommended to keep this setting enabled. Especially so if the option to sort favorite games above non-favorites has been enabled. Otherwise favorite games would be sorted on top of the gamelist with no clear visual indication that they are favorites which would be quite confusing.

Enable textlist quick scrolling overlay

With this option enabled, there will be an overlay displayed when quickly scrolling textlist-based gamelists, i.e. when holding down the Up, Down, Left shoulder or Right shoulder buttons for some time. The overlay will darken the background slightly and display the first two characters of the game names. If the game is a favorite and the setting to sort favorites above non-favorites has been enabled, a star symbol will be shown instead.

Enable virtual keyboard

This enables a virtual (on-screen) keyboard that can be used at various places throughout the application to input text and numbers using a controller. The Shift and Alt keys can be toggled individually or combined to access many special characters. The general use of the virtual keyboard should hopefully be self-explanatory. On Android the virtual keyboard from the operating system will be used if this setting has been disabled.

Enable toggle favorites button

This setting enables the Y button for quickly toggling a game as favorite. Although this may be convenient at times, it's also quite easy to accidentally remove a favorite tagging of a game when using the application more casually. As such it could sometimes make sense to disable this functionality. It's of course still possible to mark a game as favorite using the metadata editor when this setting is disabled. The option does not affect the use of the Y button to add or remove games when editing custom collections.

Enable gamelist filters

Activating or deactivating the ability to filter your gamelists. This can normally be left enabled.

Display on-screen help

Activates or deactivates the built-in help system that provides contextual information regarding button usage.

Media viewer settings

Settings for the media viewer that is accessible from the gamelist views.

Help prompts

Controls positioning of the navigation help prompts. The available options are top, bottom or disabled.

Display media types

Whether the help prompts should include the media type for the current entry, i.e. video, box cover, box back cover, title screen, screenshot, fan art, miximage or custom.

Keep videos running when viewing images

With this option enabled, the video will continue to run when viewing the images for the game. If disabling this setting, the video will stop immediately when browsing to the first image, and it will restart when navigating back to the video.

Stretch videos to screen resolution

This will fill the entire screen surface but will probably break the aspect ratio of the video.

Render scanlines for videos

Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the videos.

Render blur for videos

Whether to use a shader to render a slight horizontal blur which somewhat simulates a well-used CRT monitor. Be aware that this is quite demanding for the GPU.

Render scanlines for screenshots and titles

Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the screenshot and title screen images.

Screensaver settings

Settings for the built-in screensaver.

Start screensaver after (minutes)

After how many minutes to start the screensaver. If set to 0 minutes, the timer will be deactivated and the screensaver will never start automatically. It's however still possible to start the screensaver manually in this case, assuming the Enable screensaver controls setting is enabled. While any menu is open, the screensaver will not start regardless of how this timer setting is configured.

Screensaver type

The screensaven type to use; Dim, Black, Slideshow or Video.

Enable screensaver controls

This enables the ability to start the screensaver manually using the X button from the system view, but also while the screensaver is running to jump to a new random game using the Left and Right buttons, to launch the game currently shown using the A button or to jump to the game in its gamelist using the Y button. If this setting is disabled, any key or button press will stop the screensaver.

Slideshow screensaver settings

Options specific to the slideshow screensaver.

Swap images after (seconds)

For how long to display images before changing to the next game. Allowed range is between 2 and 120 seconds in 2-second increments.

Only include favorite games

Whether to only include games marked as favorites.

Stretch images to screen resolution

This will fill the entire screen surface but will probably break the aspect ratio of the image.

Display game info overlay

This will display an overlay in the upper left corner, showing the game name and the game system name. A star symbol following the game name indicates that it's flagged as a favorite, unless the Only include favorite games setting is enabled in which case the star will never be shown.

Render scanlines

Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the images.

Use custom images

Using this option it's possible to use custom images instead of random images from the game library. As is the case with the rest of ES-DE, the supported file formats are JPG and PNG.

Custom image directory recursive search

Whether to search the custom image directory recursively.

Custom image directory

The directory for custom images. The tilde ~ symbol can be used which will expand to the user home directory. It's also possible to use the %ESPATH% and %ROMPATH% variables which will set the directory relative to the ES-DE binary directory or the ROM directory. Images in the .jpg, .png, .webp, .svg and unanimated .gif formats are supported.

Video screensaver settings

Options specific to the video screensaver.

Swap videos after (seconds)

For how long to play videos before changing to the next game. Allowed range is between 0 and 120 seconds in 2-second increments. If set to 0 (which is the default value), the next game will be selected after the entire video has finished playing. If set to a higher value than the length of a game video, it will loop until reaching the swap time.

Only include favorite games

Whether to only include games marked as favorites.

Stretch videos to screen resolution

This will fill the entire screen surface but will probably break the aspect ratio of the video.

Display game info overlay

Render scanlines

Whether to use a shader to render scanlines for the videos.

Render blur

Whether to use a shader to render a slight horizontal blur which somewhat simulates a well-used CRT monitor.

Sound settings

Various sound settings.

System volume (Linux and Windows only)

As the name implies, this sets the overall system volume and not the volume specifically for ES-DE. The volume change is applied when leaving the sound settings menu and not immediately when moving the slider.

Navigation sounds volume

Sets the volume for the navigation sounds.

Video player volume

Sets the volume for the video player. This applies to the system and gamelist views, the media viewer and the video screensaver.

Play audio for gamelist and system view videos

With this turned off, audio won't play for videos in the gamelist or system views. Note that even with this option enabled videos may be muted as the audio can be disabled per video element from the theme configuration.

Play audio for media viewer videos

With this turned off, audio won't play for videos displayed using the media viewer.

Play audio for screensaver videos

With this turned off, audio won't play for videos when using the video screensaver.

Enable navigation sounds

Enables or disables navigation sounds throughout the application. Sounds are played when browsing systems and lists, starting games, adding and removing games as favorites etc. The sounds can be customized per theme, and if the theme does not support navigation sounds, ES-DE will fall back to its built-in samples.

Input device settings

Settings related to the input devices, i.e. the keyboard and controllers.

Controller type

This setting gives the ability to choose between the controller types Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 1/2/3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch Pro and SNES. Doing so alters the help icons and help text as well as the icons and text for the input device configurator. The setting is only cosmetic and does not change the controller behavior or the controller button mappings.

Touch overlay size (Android only)

If the touch input overlay has been enabled, then this setting makes it possible to select between a medium, large, small or extra small overlay size.

Touch overlay opacity (Android only)

Sets the opacity of the input overlay to normal, low or very low.

Touch overlay fade-out time (Android only)

How long, in seconds, to display the overlay before fading it. Tapping anywhere on the screen will bring back the overlay if it's been faded out.

Enable touch overlay (Android only)

The touch overlay applies a layer of virtual buttons on top of the ES-DE window. This makes it possible to use the application on devices that lack physical buttons, such as a mobile phone or tablet. Be careful to not accidentally disable this setting as you may lock yourself out of the application. If you do that, you'll need to temporarily plug in a controller or keyboard to enable the setting again, or you could clear the ES-DE storage in the Android App settings which will force the configurator to run on next startup.

Only accept input from first controller

If enabling this option, only the first controller detected during startup will send its input to ES-DE (the keyboard input is unaffected by this setting and will be enabled regardless). This is a good way to limit potential chaos with multiple persons fighting over which games to play. Note that disconnecting and reconnecting controllers while ES-DE is running may change what is considered the first controller. This setting does not affect the emulators in any way, it's only applied to ES-DE. Another issue is that some wireless controllers have buggy drivers and will register as two devices, meaning all button presses will be registered twice inside ES-DE. Using this option is one solution to the problem, although it's also possible to blacklist the extra controller entry, as described here.

Swap the A/B and X/Y buttons

When enabling this setting the functions for the A/B and X/Y buttons will be swapped and the helpsystem will be updated accordingly. The primary purpose of this setting is for using controllers like Nintendo Switch Pro and some handhelds which have swapped the physical positions of these buttons. With this setting enabled you'll be able to rely on your muscle memory from using any other controller type with a normal button layout. Note that the button swap does not apply to the keyboard which leads to a slight inconsistency as the helpsystem will only match the controller and not the keyboard.

Ignore keyboard input

If this setting is enabled then all keyboard input will be ignored, except the quit shortcut used to shut down the application. The main reason for ignoring keyboard input is if running Steam in parallel to ES-DE and you need to use the Steam Input's Desktop Layout functionality to send keyboard input using the controller. In this case double or conflicting input will be sent to ES-DE as both the controller and keyboard events are read by the application. It's however generally a better idea to disable this functionality altogether in Steam and leave the ES-DE setting untouched. If you accidentally enable this setting when using a keyboard as input device, then you'll either need to plug in a controller to disable it again, or you'll need to modify the InputIgnoreKeyboard entry in the ~/ES-DE/settings/es_settings.xml configuration file.

Configure keyboard and controllers

This tool provides configuration of button mappings for the keyboard and controllers, as explained here. Normally this is not required as ES-DE automatically configures all input devices, but button customizations may be useful in some special situations. You may also need to run this tool if you have an unusual controller which could not be automatically configured. Be aware that custom button mappings will not change the icons or text for the helpsystem.

Game collection settings

Handles collections, which are assembled using games present in the game systems. See the collections section below in this document for more information.

Finish editing 'COLLECTION NAME' collection (Entry only visible when editing a custom collection)

Self explanatory.

Automatic game collections

This lets you enable or disable the automatic game collections All games, Favorites and Last played.

Custom game collections

This lets you enable or disable your own custom game collections. If there are no custom collections available, then this menu entry will be grayed out.

Create new custom collection from theme (Entry only visible if this ability is provided by the theme)

If the theme in use provides support for discrete custom collection systems, then this entry can be selected. For example, there could be support for systems like Fighting or Racing etc. The bundled Linear, Modern and Slate themes do not provide such discrete custom collection systems and in general it's not recommended to use this approach, as is explained elsewhere in this guide.

Create new custom collection

This lets you create a completely custom collection with a name of your choice. If the selected name collides with an existing name, a sequence number inside brackets will be appended to the collection name, such as fighting (1) if a fighting collection already existed. Note that the following characters can not be used and will be automatically removed from the collection name: *",./:;<>\|

Delete custom collection

This permanently deletes a custom collection, including its configuration file on the file system. A list of available collections is shown, and a confirmation dialog is displayed before performing the actual deletion. Only one collection at a time can be deleted.

Group custom collections

This setting controls where to place custom collections and the available options are If unthemed, Always or Never. If the If unthemed option is selected then only collections which don't have explicit support from the theme will be moved to the grouped custom collections system. If Always is selected then every collection will be placed in the grouped custom collections system regardless of whether the theme has support for the collection or not. This is generally recommended as it leads to a less cluttered experience and it's also consistent as all custom collections will be located in one place regardless of how they've been named. The Never option is mostly useful for testing purposes and for theme development as it will move all custom collections into discrete systems which will likely lead to some of them being unthemed.

Sort favorites on top for custom collections

Whether to sort your favorite games above your other games. This is disabled by default, as for collections you probably want to be able to mix all games regardless of whether they are favorites or not.

Display star markings for custom collections

With this option enabled, there is a star symbol added to each favorite game name if a textlist is in use. It works identically to the setting Add star markings to favorite games under the UI settings menu but is applied specifically to custom collections.

Other settings

These are mostly technical settings.

Alternative emulators

Using this interface it's possible to select alternative emulators to use per game system, which requires that these alternatives have been defined in the es_systems.xml file. Note that only systems that you have currently populated will be listed. To change to an alternative emulator, you simply select a system from the list and choose which alternative to use from the presented options. If you select an alternative emulator and later remove its corresponding entry from the es_systems.xml file, an error message will be shown on application startup telling you to review your invalid emulator selection. Games will still launch, but the default emulator will be used in this case. How to clear an invalid entry should be self-explanatory once you access the interface. It's also possible to set alternative emulators per game using the metadata editor. If this is done, it will take precedence and override the system-wide emulator selection for the specific game. The alternative emulator badges and the corresponding gamelist filter are controlled by these per-game alternative emulator values and not by the system-wide option.

The system-wide alternative emulators interface. An entry in bold and with a gear symbol indicates that an alternative emulator has been selected.

Game media directory

This setting defines the directory for game media, i.e. images, videos and PDF manuals that have normally been downloaded by the scraper. The default location is ~/ES-DE/downloaded_media

VRAM limit

The amount of video RAM to use for the application. Defaults to 512 MiB (192 MiB on the Raspberry Pi) which works fine most of the time when using moderately demanding themes with medium-sized collections at up to 4K display resolution. For large collections (as in many different systems rather than many games per system) in combination with demanding themes which use lots of full-screen images and similar it's recommended to increase this number to 1024 MiB or possibly higher to avoid stuttering and texture pop-in. Enabling the GPU statistics overlay gives some indications regarding the amount of texture memory currently used, which is helpful to determine a reasonable value for this setting. The allowed range for the settings is 128 to 2048 MiB. If you try to set it lower or higher than this by passing such values as command line parameters or by editing the es_settings.xml file manually, ES-DE will log a warning and automatically adjust to a value within the allowable range.

Anti-aliasing (MSAA) (requires restart) (All operating systems except Android)

Sets the level of anti-aliasing for the application. You can select between disabled, 2x or 4x. Note that this is a potentially dangerous option which may prevent the application from starting altogether with some GPU drivers. If you're unable to run the application after changing this option then you can reset it via the --anti-aliasing 0 command line option. Be aware that enabling anti-aliasing has a slight to moderate performance impact.

Display/monitor index (requires restart)

This option sets the display to use for ES-DE for multi-monitor setups. The possible values are the monitor index numbers 1, 2, 3 or 4. If a value is set here for a display that does not actually exist, then ES-DE will set it to 1 upon startup. Index 1 is the primary display for the computer. It's also possible to override the setting by passing the --display command line argument. Doing so will also overwrite the display index setting in es_settings.xml. The Display/monitor index option only changes the display used by ES-DE, emulators need to be configured separately.

Rotate screen (requires restart)

Rotates the application screen within the application window, i.e. it will not affect the actual window size but rather the contents within the window. Applied clockwise in 90 degree steps. Intended for Tate mode (vertical orientation) setups where you do not want to rotate the display on the operating system level. If you want to also rotate the entire application window you'll need to supply a resolution manually using the --resolution command line option.

Keyboard quit shortcut

This gives the choice of which key combination to use to quit the application. The default value is Alt + F4 on Windows and Linux and Command + Q on macOS. Other possible values are Ctrl + Q, Alt + Q and F4 but selecting either of these alternatives will not disable the operating system's default quit shortcut.

When to save game metadata

The metadata for a game is updated by scraping or by manual editing it using the metadata editor, but also when launching it as this updates the Times played counter and the Last played timestamp. This setting enables you to define when to write such metadata changes to the gamelist.xml files. Setting the option to Never will disable writing to these files altogether, except for some special conditions such as when a game is manually deleted using the metadata editor, when scraping using the multi-scraper (the multi-scraper will always save any updates immediately to the gamelist.xml files) or when changing the system-wide alternative emulator. In theory On exit will give some small performance gains, but it's normally recommended to leave the setting at its default value which is Always. Note that with the option set to Never, any updates such as the Last played date will still be shown on screen, but during the next application startup any values previously saved to the gamelist.xml files will be read in again. As well, when changing this setting to Always from either of the two other options, any pending changes will be immediately written to the gamelist.xml files.

Check for application updates Not available for some builds

By default a check for new ES-DE versions will be done on every application startup and a notification will be displayed if there is a new release available for download. Using this option the frequency of these checks can be set to Always, Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Never. This setting is not available on some platforms and package formats such as the Linux AUR release and the semi-official FreeBSD and Raspberry Pi releases where pre-built packages are not provided.

Include prereleases in update checks Always enabled for prereleases

For platforms and package formats where the previous setting above is available there is also the option of whether to include prereleases when checking for application updates. Note that this is always enabled when running an ES-DE prerelease so in this case the setting will be grayed out.

Hide taskbar (requires restart) (Windows only)

With this setting enabled, the taskbar will be hidden when launching ES-DE, and it will be restored when the application exits. This can make for a more seamless experience as the taskbar could otherwise flash by briefly when launching and returning from games.

Run in background (while game is launched) (All operating systems except Android)

Enabling this option makes ES-DE continue to run while a game is launched. This is normally not recommended as it leads to a slightly strange application behavior and it also removes the ability to capture return codes and log output from the emulators. Generally this option should only be enabled if there are issues with launching games while suspending ES-DE. Note however that some systems like Valve Steam will always keep ES-DE running in the background because they require it for technical reasons (i.e. those systems will override this menu option).

Upscale video frame rate to 60 FPS

With this option enabled, videos with lower frame rates than 60 FPS, such as 24 and 30 will get upscaled to 60 FPS. This results in slightly smoother playback for some videos. There is a small performance hit from this option, so on weaker machines it may be necessary to keep it disabled for fluent video playback.

Enable alternative emulators per game

If enabled, you will be able to select alternative emulators per game using the metadata editor, which will be used when launching the game. If disabled, the corresponding entry in the metadata editor will be hidden, the alternative emulator badges will not be displayed and it will not be possible to filter the gamelist based on these values. As well, the game will be launched using the default emulator, or using the system-wide alternative emulator if this has been configured for the game system. It's only recommended to disable this option for testing purposes.

Show hidden files and folders

If this option is disabled, hidden files and folders within the ROM directory tree are excluded from ES-DE. On Linux and macOS this means those starting with a dot, and on Windows it's those set as hidden by using an NTFS attribute. This setting is only intended for special situations and is not to be confused with the next option below which hides files based on metadata configuration within ES-DE. When changing this setting ES-DE will automatically reload.

Show hidden games

You can mark games as hidden in the metadata editor, which is useful for instance for DOS games where you may not want to see some batch files and executables inside ES-DE, or for multi-disc games where you may only want to show the .m3u playlists and not the individual game files. By disabling this option these files will not be processed at all when ES-DE starts up. If you enable the option you will see the files, but their name entries will be almost transparent in the gamelist view to visually indicate that they are hidden. When changing this setting ES-DE will automatically reload.

Enable custom event scripts

It's possible to trigger custom scripts for a number of actions in ES-DE, as is discussed below, and this setting decides whether this functionality is enabled.

Only show games from gamelist.xml files

If enabled, only games that have metadata saved to the gamelist.xml files will be shown in ES-DE. This option is intended primarily for testing and debugging purposes so it should normally not be enabled. When changing this setting ES-DE will automatically reload.

Strip extra MAME name info (requires restart)

MAME software list names for all arcade systems are automatically expanded to their full game names using a bundled MAME name translation file. By default any extra information from this file that is located inside brackets is removed. This includes information like region, version/revision, license, release date and more. By setting this option to disabled that information is retained. Note that this is only applicable for any game names which have not been scraped as the scaper will overwrite the expanded information with whatever value the scraper service returns. It's however possible to disable scraping of game names altogether as covered elsewhere in this guide.

Disable desktop composition (requires restart) (Linux and X11/Xorg only)

The window manager desktop composition can adversely affect the framerate of ES-DE, especially on weaker graphics cards and when running at higher resolution. As such the desktop compositor can be disabled when running ES-DE, although the window manager has to be configured to allow applications to do this for the option to have any effect. Note that enabling this setting can cause problems with some graphics drivers so if you experience strange flickering and similar, then make sure to keep this setting disabled. In case of such issues, make sure that the emulator is also not blocking the composition (e.g. RetroArch has a corresponding option). This setting has no effect if using Wayland, it only applies to X11/Xorg.

Back button/back swipe exits app (Android only)

Whether to exit the application when swiping back or pressing the back button.

Debug mode

Enabling this option will output detailed debug messages to es_log.txt and it also makes it possible to use the debug overlays and shortcuts which are documented in more depth in INSTALL-DEV.md. Enabling this setting is equivalent to passing the --debug command line option. Make sure to only enable this setting when you really need it as it will slow down the application and cause the es_log.txt file to grow substantially. When passing the --debug command line option this setting will be grayed out in the menu.

Display GPU statistics overlay

Displays the framerate and VRAM statistics as an overlay. This can be useful to find out whether you have enough VRAM allocated to cover for what a theme needs. It's also helpful for debugging performance problems and similar.

Enable menu in kid mode

Enabling or disabling the menu when the UI mode is set to Kid. Mostly intended for testing purposes as it's not recommended to enable the menu in this restricted mode.

Show quit menu (reboot and power off entries) (All operating systems except macOS and Android)

With this setting enabled, there is a Quit menu shown as the last entry on the main menu which provides options to quit ES-DE, to reboot the computer or to power off the computer. With this setting disabled, there will simply be an entry to quit the application instead of the complete quit menu.

Utilities

This menu contains various utilities.

Orphaned data cleanup

This utility makes it possible to remove media files, gamelist.xml entries and custom collection entries that are orphaned, i.e. their corresponding game files no longer exist. How to use this utility is explained in more detail elsewhere in this document.

Create/update system directories

This utility will create all game system directories inside your ROM directory tree and it will also update all systeminfo.txt files. It works exactly as the Create directories entry in the "no games" dialog shown on startup if no game files were found. It also works exactly as the --create-system-dirs command line option. To decrease application startup times it's recommended to delete the system directories you don't need after running this utility.

Rescan ROM directory

This utility will rescan the ROM directory for any changes such as added or removed games and systems without having to restart the application. But don't use this utility to reload changes to gamelist.xml files that you have made outside ES-DE as this can lead to data corruption. If you need to manually edit your gamelist.xml files then do this while ES-DE is shut down.

Quit / Quit ES-DE

The Quit menu or Quit ES-DE entry as described by the Show quit menu (reboot and power off entries) option above.

If the menu is enabled, these are its entries:

Quit ES-DE

If the option When to save game metadata has been set to On exit, the gamelist.xml files will be updated at this point. This applies also if the Quit menu is disabled and replaced by the Quit ES-DE entry.

Reboot system (All operating systems except macOS and Android)

Self explanatory.

Power off system (All operating systems except macOS and Android)

Self explanatory.

This menu is opened from the gamelist view, and can't be accessed from the system view. The menu changes slightly depending on the context, for example if a game file or a folder is selected, or whether the current system is a collection or a normal game system.

You open the menu using the Back button, and by pressing B or selecting the Apply button any settings such as letter jumping using the quick selector or sorting changes are applied. If you instead press the Back button again or select the Cancel button, the menu is closed without applying any changes.

The gamelist options menu as laid out when opening it from within a custom collection, which adds the menu entry to add or remove games from the collection.

Here's a summary of the menu entries:

Jump to..

This provides a quick selector for jumping to a certain letter. If the setting to sort favorite games above non-favorites has been enabled, then it's also possible to jump to the favorites games by choosing the star symbol. Similarly if there is a mix of folders and game files in the system and folders are configured to be sorted on top, then it's possible to jump to the folders using the folder icon. If there are only folders or only favorite games for the system, these games and folders will be indexed by their first letters and the star and folder symbols will not be disabled in the quick selector.

Sort games by

This is the sort order for the gamelist. The default sorting shown here is taken from the setting Games default sort order under UI settings in the main menu. Any sorting that is applied via the gamelist options menu will be persistent throughout the program session, and it can be set individually per game system and per collection.

Sorting can be applied using the following metadata, in either ascending or descending order:

Name
Rating
Release date
Developer
Publisher
Genre
Players
Last played
Times played
System (Only for collections)

The secondary sorting is always in ascending name order.

Filter gamelist

Choosing this entry opens a separate screen where it's possible to apply a filter to the gamelist. The filter is persistent throughout the program session, or until it's manually reset. The option to reset all filters is shown on the same screen.

The gamelist filter screen, accessed from the gamelist options menu.

The following filters can be applied:

Game name

Rating

Developer

Publisher

Genre

Players

Favorite

Completed

Kidgame

Hidden If the "Show hidden games" option is enabled

Broken

Controller

Alternative emulator If the "Enable alternative emulators per game" option is enabled

With the exception of the game name text filter, all available filter values are assembled from metadata from the actual gamelist, so if there is no data to filter for the specific field, the text Nothing to filter will be displayed. This for example happens for the Completed filter if there are no games marked as having been completed in the current gamelist. The same happens if a metadata setting is identical for all games, such as all games being flagged as favorites.

Note that the Alternative emulator filter only includes game-specific values that have been set using the metadata editor, the system-wide alternative emulators setting has no effect on this filter.

Be aware that although folders can have most of the metadata values set, the filters are only applied to files (this is also true for the game name text filter). So if you for example set a filter to only display your favorite games, any folder that contains a favorite game will be displayed, and other folders which are themselves marked as favorites but that do not contain any favorite games will be hidden.

The filters are always applied for the complete game system, including all folder content.

Note that the game name filter is case insensitive.

Add/remove games to this collection

This entry is only shown if the system is a custom collection. The way this works is described in more detail below.

Finish editing 'COLLECTION NAME' collection

This entry is only visible if the system is a custom collection and it's currently being edited.

Edit this game's metadata / Edit this folder's metadata

This opens the metadata editor for the currently selected game file or folder.

Enter folder (override folder link)

If the current game is a folder which has a folder link configured (meaning it points to a file inside the folder structure that will be launched when pressing the A button), then this entry will appear in the menu. It simply overrides the link and enters the folder just as if no link would have been configured. The folder link functionality is described in more detail below.

Metadata editor

In the metadata editor you can modify game metadata, scrape metadata and media, clear the entry which will delete all metadata and game media files, or delete the entire game which also removes its file on the filesystem. When manually modifying a value, it will change color from gray to blue, and if the scraper has changed a value, it will change to red. When leaving the metadata editor you will be asked whether you want to save any settings done manually or by the scraper.

The metadata editor.

Metadata entries

The following entries can be modified (note that some of these are not available for folders, only for game files):

Name

This is the name that will be shown when browsing the gamelist. If no sortname has been defined, the games are sorted using this field. If the scraper option Search using metadata names has been enabled, then this name will be used for scraper searches.

Sortname (files only)

This entry makes it possible to change the sorting of a game without having to change its name. For instance it can be used to sort Mille Miglia as 1000 Miglia or The Punisher as Punisher, The. Note that the Jump to... quick selector on the gamelist options menu will base its index on the first character of the sortname if it exists for a game, which could be slightly confusing in some instances when quick jumping in the gamelist. The sortname entry also affects custom collections, although for these it's possible to override the value as described below. This entry only applies if the sort order has been set to Name, ascending or Name, descending. All sorting is in lexicographic order.

Custom collections sortname (only visible when editing a game from within a custom collection)

This entry works exactly like sortname but will only affect the sorting for custom collections, meaning the normal system gamelists and the automatic collections (All games, Favorites and Last played) will not be affected by this value. If there is both a sortname and a custom collections sortname defined, the latter will take precedence. This also means that the Jump to... quick selector will use the custom collections sortname for its letter index even if there is a different value defined for the regular sortname field. Note that custom collections sortname is completely optional and is only intended for overriding the regular sortname field. Also note that it will affect all custom collections where the game is present; it's not possible to set a different value per collection. All sorting is in lexicographic order.

Description

Usually provided by the scraper although it's possible to update this manually or write your own game description.

Rating

Rating in half-star increments. This can be set as such manually or it can be scraped, assuming the scraper service provides ratings (currently only ScreenScraper does). If an external scraper application such as Skyscraper has been used that may set the ratings in fractional values such as three-quarter stars, then ES-DE will round them to the nearest half-star. When this happens, the rating stars will be colored green to notify that a rounding has taken place and a question will be asked whether to save the changes even if no other manual changes were performed.

Release date

Release date in ISO 8601 format (YYYY-MM-DD).

Developer

Developer of the game.

Publisher

Publisher of the game.

Genre

One or multiple genres for the game.

Players

The amount of players the game supports. This could be an absolute number such as 1 or 3, or it could be a range, such as 2-4.

Favorite

A flag to indicate whether this is a favorite game. This flag can also be set directly from the gamelist view by using the Y button (assuming the Enable toggle favorites buttom option is enabled).

Completed

A flag to indicate whether you have completed the game.

Kidgame

A flag to mark whether the game is suitable for children. This will be applied as a filter when starting ES-DE in Kid mode. Although it's possible to also set this flag for folders, this will not affect the actual files inside those folders. It will instead only be used to display the Kidgame badge for the folders themselves.

Hidden

A flag to indicate that the entry is hidden. If the Show hidden games option has been disabled in the Other settings menu, then the game or folder will not be shown. Useful for example for DOS games to hide batch files and unnecessary binaries or to hide the actual game files for multi-disc games. If a file or folder is flagged as hidden but the Show hidden games is enabled, then the opacity for the entry will be lowered significantly to make it clear that it's a hidden entry.

Broken/not working

A flag to indicate whether the game is broken. Useful for MAME games for instance where future releases may make the game functional.

Exclude from game counter (files only)

A flag to indicate whether the game should be excluded from being counted. If this is set for a game, then it will not be included in the game counter shown per system in the system view, and it will not be included in the gamelistinfo element in the gamelist view. As well, it will be excluded from all automatic and custom collections. This option is for example useful for DOS games where you may want to exclude setup programs and similar but still need them available in ES-DE and therefore can't hide them. Files that have this flag set will have a lower opacity in the gamelists, making them easy to spot.

Exclude from multi-scraper

Whether to exclude the file from the multi-scraper. There is an option in the scraper settings to ignore this flag, but by default the multi-scraper will respect it.

Hide metadata fields

This option will hide most metadata fields as well as any badges. The intention is to be able to hide the fields for situations such as general folders (Multi-disc, Cartridges etc.) and for setup programs and similar (e.g. SETUP.EXE or INSTALL.BAT for DOS games). The only fields shown with this option enabled are the game name and description. So using the description it's possible to write some comments regarding the file or folder, should you want to. Game images and videos will also still be displayed if this setting is enabled.

Times played (files only)

A statistics counter that tracks how many times you have played the game. You normally don't need to touch this, but if you want to, the possibility is there.

Controller

This entry provides a selection of controller icons that are built into ES-DE (although the theme can override the actual graphics files). The selected icon will be displayed as a badge if the theme supports badges. The gamelist can also be filtered based on the controllers, but apart from this the functionality is cosmetic and will not affect the actual emulators.

Alternative emulator (files only)

If the option Enable alternative emulators per game has been enabled, there will be an entry shown where you can select between alternative emulators for the specific game. There is a similar Alternative emulators entry under the Other settings menu, but that will apply the selection to the entire game system. If you select an alternative for a specific game using the metadata editor, that will take precedence and override any system-wide emulator selection (the currently selected system-wide emulator will be clearly marked in the selection screen). The alternative emulators need to be defined in the es_systems.xml file, and if there are no alternatives available for the current system, this row in the metadata editor will be grayed out. If you select an alternative emulator and later remove its corresponding entry from the es_systems.xml file, an error notice will be shown on this row. In this case you have the option to remove the invalid entry. But even if there is an invalid entry, games will still launch using the default emulator while logging a warning message to the es_log.txt file. Apart from this, the emulator selection should hopefully be self-explanatory.

Folder link (folders only)

Using this option it's possible to link a specific file inside the game's folder structure that will be launched directly instead of entering the folder when pressing the A button. This is for example useful for games with a separate game file and setup utility, where you want to be able to every now and then use the latter but would prefer to launch the game directly from the root of the gamelist without having to go inside the folder. It's also useful for launching games directly from the root of the gamelist when the actual file is multiple levels down in the filesystem hierarchy. As the name implies this is only a link, and as folders can't be part of collections (the automatic collections All games, Favorites and Last played as well as any custom collections) it's the linked file inside the folder that is included in such collections. So for instance, launching a game via a linked folder will have the linked file show up in the Last played collection rather than the folder itself. This also means that you should scrape the linked file in addition to the folder to be able to see game media and metadata throughout the application. To override the folder link and enter the directory, there is an entry available in the gamelist options menu.

Buttons

For game files, there will be five buttons displayed at the bottom of the metadata editor window, and for folders there will be four. These are their functions:

Scrape

Opens the single-game scraper. The Y button can also be used as a shortcut to start the scraper without having to navigate to this button.

Save

Saves any changes and closes the window.

Cancel

Cancels any changes and closes the window.

Clear

This will remove any media files for the file or folder and also remove its entry from the gamelist.xml file, effectively deleting all metadata. The actual game file or folder will however not be deleted. A prompt will be shown asking for confirmation.

Delete (files only, and not for directories interpreted as files)

This will remove the actual game file, its gamelist.xml entry, its entry in any custom collections and its media files. A prompt will be shown asking for confirmation. The deletion of folders is not supported as that would potentially be dangerous, instead use the appropriate operating system tools to handle deletion of directories. Likewise, for directories that are interpreted as files (this functionality is described earlier in this document) the Delete button is disabled.

Game media viewer

The game media viewer displays videos, images and PDF manuals in fullscreen mode and is launched from the gamelist view by pressing the X button.

If a game video is available, then this will be played automatically when launching the viewer. The left and right buttons are used to navigate betweeen media files one at a time, and the trigger buttons can be used to jump to the first and last entries. By default the video will continue to play when browsing the images, but this can be changed with a setting as described elsewhere in this document.

The following media can be displayed: video, box cover, box back cover, title screen, screenshot, fan art, miximage and custom.

The custom image is not scraped, but can be manually added to the downloaded_media directory. This is useful for diagrams of game controller mappings and similar.

If the game has a downloaded PDF manual then you can view it by pressing the up button which will change the media viewer to PDF viewing mode. To get back to displaying videos and images when in this mode, press the down button. Pages are navigated using the left and right buttons, and the trigger buttons can additionally be used to jump to the first and last page. When in PDF viewing mode it's possible to zoom in and out using the shoulder buttons. When zoomed in, the left, right, up and down buttons will pan the view. To re-enable page navigation either zoom out completely or reset the view by pressing the left or right trigger button.

There is also a video on the official ES-DE YouTube channel on how to download and view PDF manuals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH_gTWv4ZUM

Pressing any other button than those mentioned closes the media viewer.

The settings for the media viewer are similar to what is available for the screensavers; the audio can be enabled or disabled, the video can be stretched to fill the entire screen and scanlines and blur can be rendered on top of it. For screenshots and title screens, scanline rendering can be enabled or disabled. It's also possible to change the positioning of the help prompts to the top or bottom, or to disable them entirely. All these options are configurable via the UI Settings menu and are described in more detail elsewhere in this document.

Screensaver

There are four types of screensavers built into ES-DE: Dim, Black, Slideshow and Video.

Numerous options can be set for these screensavers, as detailed here.

The Dim screensaver simply dims and desaturates the current view and Black will show a black screen. The Slideshow and Video screensavers are more interesting as they can display images and videos from your game collection. In addition to this, the Slideshow screensaver can be configured to only show images from a specified directory.

If the option Enable screensaver controls has been activated, you can manually toggle the screensaver from the system view by pressing the X button. In addition to this, for the Slideshow and Video screensavers, the controls will allow you to jump to a new random image or video by using the Left and Right buttons on your keyboard or controller. It's also possible to launch the game currently displayed using the A button, and the Y button will jump to the game in its gamelist without starting it.

For the video and slideshow screensavers, an overlay can be enabled via the screensaver options that displays the game name and the game system as well as a star symbol if the game is marked as a favorite.

If the Video screensaver has been selected and there are no videos available, a fallback to the Dim screensaver will take place. The same is true for the Slideshow screensaver if no game images are available.

An example of what the video screensaver looks like.

Game collections

ES-DE provides two types of collections, Automatic collections and Custom collections, the latter being defined by the user. Collections are as the name implies only collections of games already present in your actual game systems, so they're basically playlists. As such the use of collections is entirely optional, but especially the custom collection support is a very nice feature which is worth some effort to setup.

The numerous collection settings available are covered here.

Automatic collections

The automatic collections are named All games, Favorites and Last played. The All games collection simply groups all your game systems into one big list, Favorites combines all your games marked as favorites from all your game systems, and Last played is a list of the 50 last games you have launched.

These automatic collections can be individually enabled or disabled by going to the main menu, selecting Game collection settings and then Automatic game collections.

Custom collections

These are collections that you create yourself. Examples could be grouping in genres like Shoot 'em up, Fighting games etc. or perhaps a time period like 1980s, 1990s and so on.

If the theme in use supports it you can create a custom collection directly from a system provided by the theme. However, Linear, Modern and Slate do not provide such systems as it's believed that grouping them together in a dedicated Collections system is a more elegant solution. Especially since the theme would need to ship with an almost endless amount of collection systems for whatever categories all ES-DE users combined would like to use for their libraries.

So if you have set the option Group custom collections to If unthemed or Always, any collections you add will show up in the special Collections system. Here you can access them just as you would access folders inside a regular gamelist. The amount of games per collection is shown in the description, and a random game is displayed each time you browse through the list. You can also quick jump to this random game by pressing the Y button.

To create a custom collection, go to Game collection settings from the main menu and choose Create new custom collection.

Choose a name and press enter, let's use the name Platform for this example.

The following characters can not be used and will be automatically removed from the collection name: *",./:;<>\|

The collection will now be created and the collection edit mode will be entered. You can now add games to the collection by navigating to any gamelist and pressing the Y button. Any number of games from any of your game systems can be added. A game can also be part of multiple collections, there is no real limit for this.

Removing a game works the same way, just press Y to remove it if it's already present in your collection. You can do this either from the gamelist where the game was added, or from the collection itself.

Only files can be part of collections, not folders. Games marked as hidden or to not be counted as games can't be added either.

During the time that the collection is being edited, any game that is part of the collection is marked with a leading tick symbol in the game name if a textlist is used, and a collection badge is displayed for the currently selected game as well (assuming the theme support badges).

When editing custom collections the folder link functionality is disabled, making it possible to enter folders with such configuration just as if there were no folder links configured.

When you are done adding games, you can either open the main menu and go to Game collection settings and select the Finish editing 'Platform' collection or you can open the gamelist options menu and select the same option there. The latter works from within any gamelist, so you don't need to first navigate back to the collection that you're editing.

You can later add additional games to the collection by navigating to it, bringing up the gamelist options menu and choosing Add/remove games to this game collection.

Example of custom collections, here configured as genres.

When editing a custom collection and the theme uses a textlist, then a tick symbol will be displayed for any game that is part of the collection.

The way that custom collections are implemented is very simple. There is a single configuration file per collection inside the folder ~/ES-DE/collections

For this example a file will have been created named ~/ES-DE/collections/custom-Platform.cfg

The file contents is simply a list of ROM files, such as the following:

%ROMPATH%/amiga/Flashback_v3.2_1163.hdf
%ROMPATH%/amiga/JamesPond2_v1.1_AGA_1354.hdf
%ROMPATH%/amiga/Nebulus_v1.3_0361.hdf
%ROMPATH%/c64/Bionic Commando.d64
%ROMPATH%/c64/Great Giana Sisters, The.d64
%ROMPATH%/c64/Trantor.d64
%ROMPATH%/c64/Zorro.d64

Any changes to custom collections, for example adding or removing a game, will be immediately written to the corresponding collection configuration file.

If you copy or migrate a collection from a previous version of EmulationStation or if you're setting up ES-DE on a new computer, the collection will not be enabled by just copying its configuration file to the ~/ES-DE/collections directory. You always need to explicitly enable each collection via the menu.

If you're migrating from a previous version of EmulationStation that has absolute paths in the collection files, then these will be rewritten with the %ROMPATH% variable the first time you make a change to the collection.

Custom event scripts

There are numerous locations throughout ES-DE where custom scripts will be executed if the option to do so has been enabled in the settings. By default it's deactivated so be sure to enable it to use this feature.

The setup for event scripts is a bit technical, so refer to the INSTALL-DEV.md document to see how it's configured.

Command line options

See the INSTALL-DEV.md document for a list of the command line options per operating system.

Supported game systems

The System name column corresponds to the directory where you should put your game files, e.g. ~/ROMs/c64 or ~/ROMs/megadrive. Regional differences are handled by simply using the system name corresponding to your region, for example megadrive or genesis. Sometimes the name is identical for multiple regions, and in those cases specific regions have been added as a suffix, for instance appending na for North America to snes (Super Nintendo) resulting in snesna.

For the Full name column, text inside square brackets [] are comments and not part of the actual system name.

The Default emulator column lists the primary emulator as configured in es_systems.xml. If this differs between Linux, macOS and Windows then it's specified in square brackets, such as [LW] for Linux and Windows and [M] for macOS.

The Alternative emulators column lists additional emulators configured in es_systems.xml that can be selected per system and per game. In the same manner as the Default emulator column, differences between Linux, macOS and Windows are marked using square brackets.

The Needs BIOS column indicates if any BIOS/system ROMs are required. Additional details should be covered by the emulator documentation.

As for file extensions, normally those configured in ES-DE should cover everything that all emulators combined support for a given system.

In general .zip or .7z files are recommended for smaller-sized games like those from older systems (assuming the emulator supports it). But for disc-based systems it's not a good approach as decompression of these large files lead to delayed game launches. For such systems it's instead generally recommended to use CHD files as this format offers effective compression while providing decompression on the fly. The CHD format is supported by many emulators.

The following standalone emulators can't accept full paths to ROM files so you'll need to configure each ROM directory via the emulator GUI or configuration file, otherwise ES-DE will not be able to launch the games:

Demul (not required for Dreamcast games)
FinalBurn Neo
Model 2 Emulator

On Windows the following emulators provide a way to inform ES-DE where they have been installed, meaning you don't need to add them to your Path environment variable as described elsewhere in this guide (this is only relevant for the installer release of ES-DE, not the portable release):

BlueStacks
CPCemu
DOSBox-X
mGBA
PPSSPP
RetroArch
Rosalie's Mupen GUI
ScummVM
SimCoupé

Default emulator/Alternative emulators columns:
[L]: Linux, [M]: macOS, [W]: Windows

All emulators are RetroArch cores unless marked as (Standalone), (Wine) or (Proton)

The @ symbol indicates that the emulator is deprecated and will be removed in a future ES-DE release.

System name	Full name	Default emulator	Alternative emulators	Needs BIOS	Recommended game setup
3do	3DO Interactive Multiplayer	Opera		Yes
adam	Coleco Adam	MAME [Diskette] (Standalone)	MAME [Tape] (Standalone), MAME [Cartridge] (Standalone), MAME [Software list] (Standalone), ColEm (Standalone) [LW]	Yes
ags	Adventure Game Studio Game Engine	Shortcut or script		No
amiga	Commodore Amiga	PUAE	PUAE 2021, FS-UAE (Standalone), Amiberry (Standalone) [LM]	Yes	See the specific Commodore Amiga and CDTV section elsewhere in this guide
amiga1200	Commodore Amiga 1200	PUAE	PUAE 2021, FS-UAE (Standalone), Amiberry (Standalone) [LM]	Yes	See the specific Commodore Amiga and CDTV section elsewhere in this guide
amiga600	Commodore Amiga 600	PUAE	PUAE 2021, FS-UAE (Standalone), Amiberry (Standalone) [LM]	Yes	See the specific Commodore Amiga and CDTV section elsewhere in this guide
amigacd32	Commodore Amiga CD32	PUAE	PUAE 2021, FS-UAE (Standalone), Amiberry (Standalone) [LM]	Yes	See the specific Commodore Amiga and CDTV section elsewhere in this guide
amstradcpc	Amstrad CPC	Caprice32	CrocoDS, CPCemu (Standalone), ACE-DL (Standalone), MAME (Standalone)	Yes for MAME	Single archive or disk file
android	Google Android	BlueStacks (Standalone) [W]		No	Shortcut (.lnk) file
androidapps	Android Apps	Placeholder
androidgames	Android Games	Placeholder
apple2	Apple II	LinApple (Standalone) [L], Mednafen (Standalone) [M], AppleWin (Standalone) [W]	Mednafen (Standalone) [LW], MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes for Mednafen and MAME	See the specific Apple II section elsewhere in this guide
apple2gs	Apple IIGS	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Apple IIGS section elsewhere in this guide
arcade	Arcade	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, Geolith, Flycast, Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Kronos [LW], Model 2 Emulator (Standalone) [W], Model 2 Emulator [Suspend ES-DE] (Standalone) [W], Supermodel (Standalone) [LW], Shortcut or script	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
arcadia	Emerson Arcadia 2001	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone), WinArcadia (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
archimedes	Acorn Archimedes	MAME [Model A440/1] (Standalone)	MAME [Model A3000] (Standalone), MAME [Model A310] (Standalone), MAME [Model A540] (Standalone)	Yes
arduboy	Arduboy Miniature Game System	Arduous	Ardens	No	Single archive or .hex file
astrocde	Bally Astrocade	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
atari2600	Atari 2600	Stella	Stella 2014, Stella (Standalone), Gopher2600 (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
atari5200	Atari 5200	a5200	Atari800, Atari800 (Standalone), Altirra (Standalone) [W]	Yes except for Altirra	Single archive or ROM file
atari7800	Atari 7800 ProSystem	ProSystem	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
atari800	Atari 800	Atari800	Atari800 (Standalone), Altirra (Standalone) [W]	Yes except for Altirra
atarijaguar	Atari Jaguar	Virtual Jaguar	BigPEmu (Standalone) [LW], BigPEmu (Wine) [L], BigPEmu (Proton) [L], MAME (Standalone)	Yes for MAME	See the specific Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD section elsewhere in this guide
atarijaguarcd	Atari Jaguar CD	BigPEmu (Standalone) [LW]	BigPEmu (Wine) [L], BigPEmu (Proton) [L]	No	See the specific Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD section elsewhere in this guide
atarilynx	Atari Lynx	Handy	Beetle Lynx, Mednafen (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
atarist	Atari ST [also STE and Falcon]	Hatari	Hatari (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or image file for single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
atarixe	Atari XE	Atari800	Atari800 (Standalone), Altirra (Standalone) [W]	Yes except for Altirra
atomiswave	Sammy Corporation Atomiswave	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Demul (Standalone) [W]	Depends	Single archive file
bbcmicro	Acorn Computers BBC Micro	MAME (Standalone)		Yes	Single archive or diskette image file
c64	Commodore 64	VICE x64sc Accurate	VICE x64sc Accurate (Standalone), VICE x64 Fast, VICE x64 SuperCPU, VICE x128, Frodo	No	Single archive or image file for tape, cartridge or single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
cdimono1	Philips CD-i	SAME CDi	CDi 2015 @, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single .bin/.cue pair
cdtv	Commodore CDTV	PUAE	PUAE 2021, FS-UAE (Standalone), Amiberry (Standalone) [LM]	Yes	See the specific Commodore Amiga and CDTV section elsewhere in this guide
chailove	ChaiLove Game Engine	ChaiLove
channelf	Fairchild Channel F	FreeChaF	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
coco	Tandy Color Computer	XRoar CoCo 2 NTSC (Standalone)	XRoar CoCo 2 PAL (Standalone), MAME [Cartridge] (Standalone), MAME [Tape] (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Tandy Color Computer section elsewhere in this guide
colecovision	Coleco ColecoVision	blueMSX	Gearcoleco, openMSX (Standalone), ares (Standalone), ColEm (Standalone) [LW]	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
consolearcade	Console Arcade Systems	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone), Flycast, Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Kronos [LW], Mednafen [Sega Saturn] (Standalone), Play! (Standalone), RPCS3 Shortcut (Standalone), Triforce (Standalone) [LW], xemu (Standalone), Cxbx-Reloaded (Standalone) [W], Shortcut or script	Depends	See the specific Console Arcade Systems section elsewhere in this guide
cps	Capcom Play System	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
cps1	Capcom Play System I	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
cps2	Capcom Play System II	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
cps3	Capcom Play System III	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
crvision	VTech CreatiVision	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
daphne	Daphne Arcade LaserDisc Emulator	Hypseus [Daphne] (Standalone)	Hypseus [Singe] (Standalone), MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone), DirkSimple	Depends	See the specific LaserDisc Games section elsewhere in this guide
desktop	Desktop Applications	Suspend ES-DE	Keep ES-DE running, AppImage (Suspend ES-DE) [L], AppImage (Keep ES-DE running) [L]	No	See the specific Ports and desktop applications section elsewhere in this guide
doom	Doom	PrBoom	PrBoom+ (Standalone), Boom 3 [LW], Boom 3 xp [LW], Shortcut or script	No
dos	DOS (PC)	DOSBox-Pure	DOSBox-Core, DOSBox-SVN, DOSBox-X (Standalone), DOSBox Staging (Standalone)	No	See the specific DOS / PC section elsewhere in this guide
dragon32	Dragon Data Dragon 32	MAME Dragon 32 [Tape] (Standalone)	MAME Dragon 32 [Cartridge] (Standalone), MAME Dragon 64 [Tape] (Standalone), MAME Dragon 64 [Cartridge] (Standalone), XRoar Dragon 32 (Standalone), XRoar Dragon 64 (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Dragon 32 and Tano Dragon section elsewhere in this guide
dreamcast	Sega Dreamcast	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Redream (Standalone), Demul (Standalone) [W]	No	In separate folder interpreted as a file, with .m3u playlist if multi-disc game
easyrpg	EasyRPG Game Engine	EasyRPG	EasyRPG Player (Standalone)	No	See the specific EasyRPG Game Engine section elsewhere in this guide
electron	Acorn Electron	MAME [Tape] (Standalone)	MAME [Diskette DFS] (Standalone), MAME [Diskette ADFS] (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive, or single tape or diskette image file
emulators	Emulators	Suspend ES-DE	Keep ES-DE running, AppImage (Suspend ES-DE) [L], AppImage (Keep ES-DE running) [L]	No	See the specific Ports and desktop applications section elsewhere in this guide
epic	Epic Games Store	Epic Games Store (Standalone)		No	Shortcut (.desktop/.app/.lnk) file
famicom	Nintendo Family Computer	Mesen	Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Nestopia UE, Nestopia UE (Standalone) [L], FCEUmm, QuickNES, puNES (Standalone) [LW], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), ares FDS (Standalone), 3dSen (Wine) [L], 3dSen (Proton) [L], 3dSen (Standalone) [W]	No	Single archive or ROM file. For Famicom games in 3D see the specific Nintendo NES and Famicom in 3D section elsewhere in this guide
fba	FinalBurn Alpha	FB Alpha 2012	FB Alpha 2012 Neo Geo, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Yes	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
fbneo	FinalBurn Neo	FinalBurn Neo	FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW]	Yes	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
fds	Nintendo Famicom Disk System	Mesen	Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Nestopia UE, Nestopia UE (Standalone) [L], FCEUmm, Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
flash	Adobe Flash	Ruffle (Standalone)	Lightspark (Standalone) [L], ArcadeFlashWeb (Standalone) [W]	No	Single .swf file
fm7	Fujitsu FM-7	MAME [FM-7 Diskette] (Standalone)	MAME [FM-7 Tape] (Standalone), MAME [FM-7 Software list] (Standalone), MAME [FM77AV Diskette] (Standalone), MAME [FM77AV Tape] (Standalone), MAME [FM77AV Software list] (Standalone)	Yes	For tape files you need to manually start the cassette player from the MAME menu after the "load" command, as well as entering the "run" command after loading is complete
fmtowns	Fujitsu FM Towns	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone), Tsugaru (Standalone) [LW]	Yes	See the specific Fujitsu FM Towns section elsewhere in this guide
fpinball	Future Pinball	Future Pinball (Standalone) [W]		No
gamate	Bit Corporation Gamate	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
gameandwatch	Nintendo Game and Watch	MAME - Current	MAME Local Artwork (Standalone), MAME (Standalone), Handheld Electronic (GW)	No	See the specific LCD handheld games section elsewhere in this guide
gamecom	Tiger Electronics Game.com	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
gamegear	Sega Game Gear	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, Gearsystem, SMS Plus GX, PicoDrive, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gb	Nintendo Game Boy	Gambatte	SameBoy, SameBoy (Standalone), Gearboy, Gearboy (Standalone) [LW], TGB Dual, DoubleCherryGB [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], bsnes, mGBA, mGBA (Standalone), VBA-M, VBA-M (Standalone), Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), SkyEmu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gba	Nintendo Game Boy Advance	mGBA	mGBA (Standalone), VBA-M, VBA-M (Standalone), VBA Next, gpSP, Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), SkyEmu (Standalone), NooDS (Standalone) [LW]	Yes for ares	Single archive or ROM file
gbc	Nintendo Game Boy Color	Gambatte	SameBoy, SameBoy (Standalone), Gearboy, Gearboy (Standalone) [LW], TGB Dual, DoubleCherryGB [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], bsnes, mGBA, mGBA (Standalone), VBA-M, VBA-M (Standalone), Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), SkyEmu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gc	Nintendo GameCube	Dolphin	Dolphin (Standalone), PrimeHack (Standalone) [LW], Triforce (Standalone) [LW]	No	Disc image file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
genesis	Sega Genesis	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, BlastEm, BlastEm (Standalone) [L], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gmaster	Hartung Game Master	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
gx4000	Amstrad GX4000	Caprice32	CrocoDS, MAME (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
intellivision	Mattel Electronics Intellivision	FreeIntv	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
j2me	Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME)	SquirrelJME	KEmulator (Standalone) [W]	No	Single .jar file
kodi	Kodi Home Theatre Software	Kodi (Standalone)		No	Shortcut (.desktop/.app/.lnk) file
laserdisc	LaserDisc Games	Hypseus [Daphne] (Standalone)	Hypseus [Singe] (Standalone), MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone), DirkSimple	Depends	See the specific LaserDisc Games section elsewhere in this guide
lcdgames	LCD Handheld Games	MAME - Current	MAME Local Artwork (Standalone), MAME (Standalone), Handheld Electronic (GW)	No	See the specific LCD handheld games section elsewhere in this guide
lowresnx	LowRes NX Fantasy Console	LowRes NX		No	Single ROM file
lutris	Lutris Open Gaming Platform	Lutris (Standalone) [L]		No	See the specific Lutris section elsewhere in this guide
lutro	Lutro Game Engine	Lutro
macintosh	Apple Macintosh	MAME Mac SE Bootable (Standalone)	MAME Mac SE Boot Disk (Standalone), MAME Mac Plus Bootable (Standalone), MAME Mac Plus Boot Disk (Standalone), Basilisk II (Standalone), SheepShaver (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Apple Macintosh section elsewhere in this guide
mame	Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2003, MAME 2000, MAME (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], FB Alpha 2012, Geolith, Flycast, Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Kronos [LW], Model 2 Emulator (Standalone) [W], Model 2 Emulator [Suspend ES-DE] (Standalone) [W], Supermodel (Standalone) [LW], Shortcut or script	Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
mame-advmame	AdvanceMAME	AdvanceMAME (Standalone) [LW]		Depends	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
mastersystem	Sega Master System	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, SMS Plus GX, Gearsystem, PicoDrive, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megacd	Sega Mega-CD	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, ares (Standalone)	Yes
megacdjp	Sega Mega-CD [Japan]	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, ares (Standalone)	Yes
megadrive	Sega Mega Drive	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, BlastEm, BlastEm (Standalone) [L], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megadrivejp	Sega Mega Drive [Japan]	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, BlastEm, BlastEm (Standalone) [L], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megaduck	Creatronic Mega Duck	SameDuck	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
mess	Multi Emulator Super System	MESS 2015
model2	Sega Model 2	Model 2 Emulator (Standalone) [W], MAME - Current [LM]	Model 2 Emulator [Suspend ES-DE] (Standalone) [W], MAME - Current [W], MAME (Standalone), Model 2 Emulator (Wine) [L], Model 2 Emulator (Proton) [L]	Yes for MAME	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
model3	Sega Model 3	Supermodel (Standalone) [LW]		No	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
moto	Thomson MO/TO Series	Theodore
msx	MSX	blueMSX	fMSX, openMSX (Standalone), openMSX No Machine (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	Yes
msx1	MSX1	blueMSX	fMSX, openMSX (Standalone), openMSX No Machine (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	Yes
msx2	MSX2	blueMSX	fMSX, openMSX (Standalone), openMSX No Machine (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	Yes
msxturbor	MSX Turbo R	blueMSX	openMSX (Standalone), openMSX No Machine (Standalone)	Yes
mugen	M.U.G.E.N Game Engine	Ikemen GO (Standalone)		No	See the specific M.U.G.E.N Game Engine section elsewhere in this guide
multivision	Othello Multivision	Gearsystem	Mesen (Standalone) [LW]	No	Single archive or ROM file
n3ds	Nintendo 3DS	Citra [LW], Citra (Standalone) [M]	Citra 2018 [LW], Citra (Standalone) [LW], Lime3DS (Standalone), Panda3DS (Standalone)	No	Single ROM file
n64	Nintendo 64	Mupen64Plus-Next	Mupen64Plus (Standalone), ParaLLEl N64, simple64 (Standalone) [LW], Rosalie's Mupen GUI (Standalone) [LW], Project64 (Standalone) [W], ares (Standalone), sixtyforce (Standalone) [M]	No	Single archive or ROM file
n64dd	Nintendo 64DD	ParaLLEl N64 [LW], Mupen64Plus-Next [M]	Mupen64Plus-Next [LW], ParaLLEl N64 [M], Rosalie's Mupen GUI (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Nintendo 64DD section elsewhere in this guide
naomi	Sega NAOMI	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Demul (Standalone) [W]	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
naomi2	Sega NAOMI 2	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone), Demul (Standalone) [W]	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
naomigd	Sega NAOMI GD-ROM	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Flycast Dojo (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
nds	Nintendo DS	melonDS DS	melonDS @, melonDS (Standalone), DeSmuME, DeSmuME 2015, DeSmuME (Standalone) [L], SkyEmu (Standalone), NooDS (Standalone) [LW]	No	Single archive or ROM file
neogeo	SNK Neo Geo	FinalBurn Neo	FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [LW], Geolith, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Arcade and Neo Geo section elsewhere in this guide
neogeocd	SNK Neo Geo CD	NeoCD	FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [L], MAME (Standalone)	Yes	.chd (NeoCD and MAME only) or .cue file
neogeocdjp	SNK Neo Geo CD [Japan]	NeoCD	FinalBurn Neo, FinalBurn Neo (Standalone) [L], MAME (Standalone)	Yes	.chd (NeoCD and MAME only) or .cue file
nes	Nintendo Entertainment System	Mesen	Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Nestopia UE, Nestopia UE (Standalone) [L], FCEUmm, QuickNES, puNES (Standalone) [LW], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), ares FDS (Standalone), 3dSen (Wine) [L], 3dSen (Proton) [L], 3dSen (Standalone) [W]	No	Single archive or ROM file. For NES games in 3D see the specific Nintendo NES and Famicom in 3D section elsewhere in this guide
ngage	Nokia N-Gage	EKA2L1 [Mounted] (Standalone)	EKA2L1 [Installed] (Standalone), EKA2L1 [Mounted] (Wine) [L], EKA2L1 [Installed] (Wine) [L]	Yes	See the specific Symbian and Nokia N-Gage section elsewhere in this guide
ngp	SNK Neo Geo Pocket	Beetle NeoPop	RACE, Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
ngpc	SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color	Beetle NeoPop	RACE, Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
odyssey2	Magnavox Odyssey 2	O2EM	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
openbor	OpenBOR Game Engine	OpenBOR (Standalone) [LW]		No	See the specific OpenBOR section elsewhere in this guide
oric	Tangerine Computer Systems Oric	MAME (Standalone)	Oricutron (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Tangerine Computer Systems Oric section elsewhere in this guide
palm	Palm OS	Mu
pc	IBM PC	DOSBox-Pure	DOSBox-Core, DOSBox-SVN, DOSBox-X (Standalone), DOSBox Staging (Standalone)	No	See the specific DOS / PC section elsewhere in this guide
pc88	NEC PC-8800 Series	QUASI88	QUASI88 (Standalone)	Yes
pc98	NEC PC-9800 Series	Neko Project II Kai	Neko Project II
pcarcade	PC Arcade Systems	Wine (Standalone) [L], Shortcut or script [MW]	Proton (Standalone) [L], AppImage [L], Shortcut or script [L]	No
pcengine	NEC PC Engine	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
pcenginecd	NEC PC Engine CD	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	Yes
pcfx	NEC PC-FX	Beetle PC-FX	Mednafen (Standalone)	Yes
pico8	PICO-8 Fantasy Console	PICO-8 (Standalone)	PICO-8 Splore (Standalone), Retro8	No	See the specific PICO-8 section elsewhere in this guide
plus4	Commodore Plus/4	VICE xplus4	VICE xplus4 (Standalone)	No	Single archive or image file for tape, cartridge or single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
pokemini	Nintendo Pokémon Mini	PokeMini		No
ports	Ports	Shortcut or script	AppImage [L], ECWolf (Wolfenstein 3D), NXEngine (Cave Story), OpenLara (Tomb Raider) [LW], Super Bros War	Yes for ECWolf	See the specific Ports and desktop applications section elsewhere in this guide
ps2	Sony PlayStation 2	LRPS2 [LW], PCSX2 (Standalone) [M]	PCSX2 [LW] @, PCSX2 (Standalone) [LW], PCSX2 Legacy (Standalone) @, Play! (Standalone), AetherSX2 (Standalone) [M]	Yes except for Play!
ps3	Sony PlayStation 3	RPCS3 Shortcut (Standalone)	RPCS3 Directory (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Sony PlayStation 3 section elsewhere in this guide
ps4	Sony PlayStation 4	Placeholder
psp	Sony PlayStation Portable	PPSSPP	PPSSPP (Standalone)	No	Single disc image file
psvita	Sony PlayStation Vita	Vita3K (Standalone) [LW]		Yes	See the specific Sony PlayStation Vita section elsewhere in this guide
psx	Sony PlayStation	Beetle PSX	Beetle PSX HW, PCSX ReARMed, SwanStation, DuckStation (Standalone), Mednafen (Standalone)	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
pv1000	Casio PV-1000	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
quake	Quake	TyrQuake	vitaQuake 2, vitaQuake 2 [Rogue], vitaQuake 2 [Xatrix], vitaQuake 2 [Zaero], vitaQuake 3 [LW], Shortcut or script	No
samcoupe	MGT SAM Coupé	SimCoupé (Standalone)		No	Single archive or ROM file
satellaview	Nintendo Satellaview	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, bsnes (Standalone) [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)
saturn	Sega Saturn	Beetle Saturn	Kronos [LW], YabaSanshiro [LW], Yabause, Mednafen (Standalone), SSF (Standalone) [W]	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
saturnjp	Sega Saturn [Japan]	Beetle Saturn	Kronos [LW], YabaSanshiro [LW], Yabause, Mednafen (Standalone), SSF (Standalone) [W]	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
scummvm	ScummVM Game Engine	ScummVM	ScummVM (Standalone)	No	See the specific ScummVM section elsewhere in this guide
scv	Epoch Super Cassette Vision	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
sega32x	Sega Mega Drive 32X	PicoDrive	ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
sega32xjp	Sega Super 32X [Japan]	PicoDrive	ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
sega32xna	Sega Genesis 32X [North America]	PicoDrive	ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
segacd	Sega CD	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, ares (Standalone)	Yes
sfc	Nintendo SFC (Super Famicom)	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, bsnes (Standalone) [LW], Beetle Supafaust [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
sg-1000	Sega SG-1000	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, Gearsystem, blueMSX, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
sgb	Nintendo Super Game Boy	Mesen-S	Mesen (Standalone) [LW], SameBoy, mGBA, mGBA (Standalone)		Single archive or ROM file
snes	Nintendo SNES (Super Nintendo)	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, bsnes (Standalone) [LW], Beetle Supafaust [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
snesna	Nintendo SNES (Super Nintendo) [North America]	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, bsnes (Standalone) [LW], Beetle Supafaust [LW], Mesen-S, Mesen (Standalone) [LW], Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
solarus	Solarus Game Engine	Solarus (Standalone)		No	Single .solarus game file
spectravideo	Spectravideo	blueMSX
steam	Valve Steam	Steam (Standalone)		No	See the specific Steam section elsewhere in this guide
stv	Sega Titan Video Game System	Kronos [LW], MAME - Current [M]	MAME - Current [LW], MAME (Standalone), Mednafen (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file
sufami	Bandai SuFami Turbo	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, bsnes (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)
supergrafx	NEC SuperGrafx	Beetle SuperGrafx	Beetle PCE, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
supervision	Watara Supervision	Potator	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
supracan	Funtech Super A'Can	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file. You need a supracan.zip archive that contains a valid internal_68k.bin file and an empty file named umc6650.bin
switch	Nintendo Switch	Ryujinx (Standalone)		Yes
symbian	Symbian	EKA2L1 [Nokia N-Gage] (Standalone)	EKA2L1 [Nokia N70] (Standalone), EKA2L1 [Nokia N97] (Standalone), EKA2L1 [Custom device] (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Symbian and Nokia N-Gage section elsewhere in this guide
tanodragon	Tano Dragon	MAME [Tape] (Standalone)	MAME [Cartridge] (Standalone), XRoar (Standalone)	Yes	See the specific Dragon 32 and Tano Dragon section elsewhere in this guide
tg16	NEC TurboGrafx-16	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
tg-cd	NEC TurboGrafx-CD	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, Mednafen (Standalone), Mesen (Standalone) [LW], ares (Standalone)	Yes
ti99	Texas Instruments TI-99	MAME (Standalone)		Yes	See the specific Texas Instruments TI-99 section elsewhere in this guide
tic80	TIC-80 Fantasy Computer	TIC-80	TIC-80 (Standalone)	No	Single .tic file
to8	Thomson TO8	Theodore
triforce	Namco-Sega-Nintendo Triforce	Triforce (Standalone) [LW]		No
trs-80	Tandy TRS-80	sdl2trs DOS Diskette (Standalone) [LW]	sdl2trs Bootable Diskette (Standalone) [LW], sdl2trs CMD File (Standalone) [LW]	Yes	See the specific Tandy TRS-80 section elsewhere in this guide
type-x	Taito Type X	Wine (Standalone) [L], Shortcut or script [MW]	Proton (Standalone) [L], AppImage [L], Shortcut or script [L]	No
uzebox	Uzebox Open Source Console	Uzem
vectrex	GCE Vectrex	vecx	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes for MAME	Single archive or ROM file
vic20	Commodore VIC-20	VICE xvic	VICE xvic (Standalone)	No	Single archive or tape, cartridge or diskette image file
videopac	Philips Videopac G7000	O2EM	MAME - Current, MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
virtualboy	Nintendo Virtual Boy	Beetle VB	Mednafen (Standalone)	No
vpinball	Visual Pinball	Visual Pinball (Standalone)		No	See the specific Visual Pinball section elsewhere in this guide
vsmile	VTech V.Smile	MAME - Current	MAME (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
wasm4	WASM-4 Fantasy Console	WASM-4		No	Single .wasm file
wii	Nintendo Wii	Dolphin	Dolphin (Standalone), PrimeHack (Standalone) [LW]	No
wiiu	Nintendo Wii U	Cemu (Standalone)		No	See the specific Nintendo Wii U section elsewhere in this guide
windows	Microsoft Windows	Suspend ES-DE	Keep ES-DE running, AppImage (Suspend ES-DE) [L], AppImage (Keep ES-DE running) [L]	No	Shortcut (.desktop/.app/.lnk) file, script or AppImage
windows3x	Microsoft Windows 3.x	DOSBox-X (Standalone)	DOSBox-Pure, Shortcut or script (Suspend ES-DE), Shortcut or script (Keep ES-DE running), AppImage (Suspend ES-DE) [L], AppImage (Keep ES-DE running) [L]	No	See the specific Microsoft Windows 3.x and 9x section elsewhere in this guide
windows9x	Microsoft Windows 9x	DOSBox-X (Standalone)	DOSBox-Pure, Shortcut or script (Suspend ES-DE), Shortcut or script (Keep ES-DE running), AppImage (Suspend ES-DE) [L], AppImage (Keep ES-DE running) [L]	No	See the specific Microsoft Windows 3.x and 9x section elsewhere in this guide
wonderswan	Bandai WonderSwan	Beetle Cygne	Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone), ares [Benesse Pocket Challenge V2] (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
wonderswancolor	Bandai WonderSwan Color	Beetle Cygne	Mednafen (Standalone), ares (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
x1	Sharp X1	X Millennium	MAME [Diskette] (Standalone), MAME [Tape] (Standalone)	Yes for MAME	Single archive or diskette/tape file
x68000	Sharp X68000	PX68k	MAME (Standalone), XM6 Pro-68k (Standalone) [W], XM6 Pro-68k (Wine) [L], XM6 Pro-68k (Proton) [L]	Yes except for XM6 Pro-68k
xbox	Microsoft Xbox	xemu (Standalone)	Cxbx-Reloaded (Standalone) [W]	Yes for xemu	Single .iso file for xemu or unpacked .iso directory for Cxbx-Reloaded
xbox360	Microsoft Xbox 360	xenia (Standalone) [W], xenia (Wine) [L]	xenia (Proton) [L], Shortcut or script [L]	No	See the specific Microsoft Xbox 360 section elsewhere in this guide
zmachine	Infocom Z-machine	MojoZork	Gargoyle (Standalone)	No
zx81	Sinclair ZX81	EightyOne		No
zxnext	Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next	#CSpect (Standalone) [LW], ZEsarUX (Standalone) [M]	ZEsarUX (Standalone) [LW]	No	In separate folder interpreted as a file
zxspectrum	Sinclair ZX Spectrum	Fuse	Fuse (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file

364 KiB Raw Blame History

ES-DE Frontend (development version) - User guide

Quick start guide

Installation and first startup

Upgrading to a newer release

Placing games into non-standard directories

Disabling game systems

Skip loading of individual subdirectories

Placing games and other resources on network shares

Specific notes for Windows

Specific notes for macOS

Specific notes for Steam Deck

Specific notes for Android

Specific notes for Haiku

Specific notes for Raspberry Pi

Game system customizations

Migrating from EmulationStation

Removing orphaned data

Running on high resolution displays

Advanced display configuration

Input device configuration

System view (main screen)

Gamelist view

UI modes

Help system

General navigation

Themes

Theme downloader

Emulator setup

Using the Steam release of RetroArch

Using emulators in AppImage format on Linux

Using AppImageLauncher on Linux

AppImage vs Flatpak search order on Linux

Using manually downloaded emulators on Linux

Running Windows emulators on Linux using Wine or Proton

Running emulators in fullscreen mode

Getting your games into ES-DE

Single game file installation

Multiple game files installation

Directories interpreted as files

Folder flattening

Platform-specific setup

Apple II

Apple IIGS

Apple Macintosh

Arcade and Neo Geo

Atari Jaguar and Atari Jaguar CD

Commodore Amiga and CDTV

Console Arcade Systems

DOS / PC

Dragon 32 and Tano Dragon

EasyRPG Game Engine

Fujitsu FM Towns

LaserDisc Games

LCD handheld games

Lutris

Microsoft Windows 3.x and 9x

Microsoft Xbox 360

M.U.G.E.N Game Engine

Nintendo 64DD

Nintendo NES and Famicom in 3D

Nintendo Wii U

OpenBOR

PICO-8

Ports and desktop applications

ScummVM

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony PlayStation Vita

Steam

Symbian and Nokia N-Gage

Tandy Color Computer

Tandy TRS-80

Tangerine Computer Systems Oric

Texas Instruments TI-99

Visual Pinball

Scraping

Single-game scraper

Multi-scraper

Scraping process

Manually copying game media files

364 KiB

Raw Blame History