FCEUX is an open-source Nintendo Entertainment System and

Family Computer Disk System The commonly shortened to the Famicom Disk System or just Disk System, is a peripheral for Nintendo's Family Computer home video game console, released only in Japan on February 21, 1986. It uses proprietary floppy disks called "Disk Cards" f ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use pe ...

. It is a merger of various

forks In cutlery or kitchenware, a fork (from la, furca 'pitchfork') is a utensil, now usually made of metal, whose long handle terminates in a head that branches into several narrow and often slightly curved tines with which one can spear foods ei ...

of FCE Ultra.

Multiplayer support

The Win32 and SDL versions of FCEUX do not currently support TCP/IP network play functionality, as they do not support controllers.

Ports

An integrated

GTK2 GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprie ...

GUI was added to the SDL port of FCEUX in version 2.1.3. This GTK GUI deprecated the previous python frontend, gfceux. As of version 2.3.0, the SDL port migrated from GTK2 to a cross platform Qt5 GUI front end. The 2.4.0 version was the first release in which the SDL port is runnable on Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. It has been

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

(with either SVGAlib or X),

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

(its SDL port should also work on other

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

platforms such as FreeBSD, Solaris and IRIX),

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

GP2X The GP2X is a Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only. The GP2X is designed for homebrew developers as wel ...

, PlayStation Portable, the Nintendo GameCube, Wii, PlayStation 2 and

Pepper Pad The Pepper Pad was a family of Linux-based mobile computers with Internet capability and which doubled as a handheld game console. They also served as a portable multimedia device. The devices used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technologies for Internet c ...

History

FCE Ultra was forked from FCE (Family Computer Emulator). Its last full release was version 0.98.12 in August 2004, while a pre-release version 0.98.13-pre was released in September 2004 as source code only. After that, development appeared to stop and the homepage and forums for the emulator were taken down. In the absence of official development, many forks of FCE Ultra were created. Most notable are ''FCEU-MM'', which supports many new and unusual mappers, ''FCEU Rerecording'', which incorporates many useful features for

tool-assisted speedrun A tool-assisted speedrun, or tool-assisted superplay (TAS ), is generally defined as speedrunning an Emulator, emulated game. During development of the speedrun, the framerate is slowed down to allow precise inputs to be done with ease. Splicing, ...

s, and ''FCEUXD SP'', which adds a number of debugging utilities. In March 2006 it was reactivated and shortly thereafter a project was initiated to combine all the forks into one new application called ''FCEUX'', which attracted collaboration from many authors of the various forks of FCE Ultra. FCEUX was first publicly released on August 2, 2008. This fork of the emulator has continued steady development since then, allowing the other forks to become deprecated, and now has features the original FCE Ultra does not, such as native movie recording support and the ability to extend, enhance, or alter gameplay with

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

scripts. Thus it has become far more advanced than its predecessors.

Contributors

FCE was written by Bero. FCE Ultra was written by Xodnizel. It was reactivated by Anthony Giorgio and Mark Doliner. The FCEUX project was initiated by Zeromus and Sebastian Porst. Additional authors joined the group prior to its first release, including mz, Andrés Delikat, nitsujrehtona, maximus, CaH4e3, qFox and Lukas Sabota (punkrockguy318). Other contributors have included Aaron O'Neal, Joe Nahmias, Paul Kuliniewicz, Quietust, Parasyte, bbitmaster, blip, nitsuja, Luke Gustafson, UncombedCoconut, Jay Lanagan, Acmlm, DWEdit, Soules, radsaq, qeed, Shinydoofy, ugetab and Ugly Joe.

Reception

Brandon Widdler of ''

Digital Trends Digital Trends is a Portland, Oregon-based tech news, lifestyle, and information website that publishes news, reviews, guides, how-to articles, descriptive videos and podcasts about technology and consumer electronics products. With offices i ...

'' considers FCEUX the go to emulator for the NES because of its multiple advanced features including debugging, ROM hacking, and video recording.

References

External links

* * * * {{Portal bar, Free and open-source software, Video games Nintendo Entertainment System emulators DOS emulation software GP2X emulation software Linux emulation software Lua (programming language)-scriptable software MacOS emulation software Windows emulation software Portable software Free video game console emulators