A free, retro videogame emulation live CD - simply download, burn and boot!
Puppy Arcade 9 features lots of emulators, custom emulation tools, easy system setup, a BIOS installer and frontend downloaders and a great all-in-one, cabinet-friendly, multi-emulator rom-loader, which supports fullscreen and joypad navigation.
Puppy Arcade works great as a live CD, but can be installed to hard drives, USB sticks, etc. Go to 'Menu->Setup->Puppy Universal Installer'. Or for a Puppy Arcade USB installer in Windows, you can go here: http://tinyurl.com/pa8installer
System requirements: Pentium 166mhz, 128MB RAM, CD-ROM drive. Based on TurboPup Xtreme, Puppy 4.2, kernel 2.6.25.16
Important Changes:
"Puppy Arcade 9 fixed" features even more improvements and bugfixes than the previous one, and is very reliable, particularly in the custom Puppy Arcade apps and the background setup. The new, fixed ISO file is smaller, MSX and VGB emulation has been added, system setup is a little easier, and it's even more reliable than the last version (Puppy Arcade 8).
To give feedback, report bugs or give any
suggestions, please post them at the Puppy Arcade 9 forum, or on this site.
Thanks:
Thanks to all the lovely people who helped me make and share this.. You know who you
are! (It's a huge list)
The Puppy Arcade desktop is not a normal Puppy Linux desktop.
There are no normal desktop icons, only Wbar, and when you
click on the desktop, a small apps menu
will appear, with links to the most important stuff, such as file
manager, browser, control panel and so on.
Click on the desktop for a small Apps Menu, containing:
Quickstart - easy setup and quick links to the most useful Puppy Arcade apps Browse Files - Opens the file explorer in your home directory Connect - use a network tool to setup your internet connection, if required Internet - Your web browser, or a browser installer menu, if none found Mount Drives - Load and access your hard drvies, DVD drive, USB drives and so on Media Player - VLC-GTK, a custom made media player, built just for Puppy Arcade Terminal - The linux terminal, where you can enter commands and so on Text Editor - a powerful text editor called geany Find Files - search your drives for specific files or search terms Task Manager - view all the running process, highlight a process, press F9 to kill it View Trash - your recycle bin, where you can temporarily delete files Disk Space - view the total and free diskspace on any mounted drives Control Panel - configure Puppy Arcade and its emulators Save Settings - create a save file, store your settings, even on a live CD Shutdown - shutdown your PC, you'll be asked to save your session or not
More Details:
left-click on the deskop for the apps menu (see above)
right-click on the desktop for the full puppy menu
you'll see an animated icon bar at the bottom (called Wbar),
showing all the
emulators
left-click on the emulator you want to load, then browse for a
rom file.
right-click on the emulator icons to reset/refresh the menu
go to 'Menu->Desktop->Wbar configuration centre' to edit
your desktop icons
in wbarcc, click on 'profiles', choose the one for your
resolution and click 'apply'
the main taskbar at the very bottom of the screen is set to
auto-hide
the wallpaper can be changed by right clicking on any image any
choosing 'Set as wallpaper'
the file manager has all the most important bookmarks added
already, in the toolbar
Saving your settings:
Click on "Save Settings" in the apps menu, to create your
save file before you shutdown, so you don't lose any changes
when you shutdown for the first time, you should be asked to save
your session
after creating a savefile, you will be asked whether to save to
it or not, at each shutdown
Once you've created a save file, you can use Start Mount to
automatically load your drives and apps at boot up!
Some emulators require not only roms, but BIOS files too. These can
now be installed easily using the BIOS-Checker
- Amiga: needs a kickstart file (kick13, kick20, kick31) in
'/usr/lib/uae'. - Atari 800: needs '/usr/bin/atarixl.rom' to be installed - Atari ST: needs '/usr/share/hatari/tos.img' to be installed - MSX: needs a set of small BIOS files in '/usr/local/uMSX/roms' - NES: needs disksys.rom to enable Famicom Disk System emulation, which
is optional! - NeoCD: needs 'neocd.bin' in '/usr/local/neocd' - PupDoom: needs prboom in '/usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad' - Spectrum: needs many (tiny) BIOS files, installed to various
locations! - VICE: needs a pack of system roms, in the relevant folders in
'/usr/lib/vice'
NOTES: You are not allowed to own or download the BIOS files of any systems that you've never purchased!
Setting up Joypads
- Plug in any joypads before the desktop has loaded and Puppy
Arcade should get it working.
- To make FCEU and Dega support joypads you must use Rejoystick
Control Centre
- Load RejoystickCC, choose a profile and click 'edit'
- Edit the 'romloader' profile to enable joypad navigation of Rom-Browser!
- A window will load showing your joypad buttons, click on them to edit
- Use Rejoystick to map keyboard keys to your preferred joypad buttons
- type 'killall -9 rejoystick' in the terminal if you need to close
rejoystick
- More information on setting up a joypad-only system can be found here
- Puppy Arcade now supports Wacom drawing tablets. See more
wacom info
- I cannot include roms with this release, but here are some great
links where you can get them
- Rom-World.com, Romhustler.net, Emuparadise.org, Snes-O-Rama.us,
Doperoms.com and so on
NOTE: You are not allowed to own the ROMs of any games released
commercially, that you have never purchased.
- left-click on the desktop and choose 'Drives' to see all your
drives, using Pmount
- all your storage drives can be found at '/mnt/' - but not until you
'mount' them
- hard drives are listed as sda1, sda2, sda3, sdb1, sdc1 and so
- after saving your settings (see below), you can use 'startmount' you
mount your automatically drives at boot
- To create a custom Puppy Arcade with all your roms and BIOS files included, go to 'Menu->Setup->Remaster Puppy live cd' and follow the on screen instructions.
- Even easier, after booting, you can simply replace your Puppy Arcade live-CD
with a CD/DVD full of roms.
- Mount the DVD/CD drive with Pmount and your roms will be available at /mnt/sr0/
or
- Put your savefile on the same drive as your roms, and your roms will
be available at '/mnt/home/path/to/your/roms'
- You also symlink your roms folder to /roms/ - so it's nice and
fast to reach them
- To do this, type 'ln -s /path/to/your/roms /roms' in the terminal, or
drag and drop in the file manager (called 'ROX')
- For more, random tips, look in the folder /root/quick-tips
Emulator help files can all be found through the emulator frontends that have been built just for Puppy Arcade, or you can reach them through the main Puppy Arcade help file, in /usr/share/doc/arcade.html
You'll simply need to download and install the correct dot pet file for
your graphics card.
Then (optionally) follow the softwares' instructions and restart X.
PETS FOR GENERIC CARDS: You can simply choose one of these PET files - Xorg DRI, or Xorg DRI Full
PETS FOR NVIDIA CARDS:
The 'nvidia-7186.pet' is for ancient nvidia graphics cards (riva TNT to
Geforce 1).
The 'nvidia-9643.pet' is for most nvidia cards (officially Gf2 to Gf4
but tested on Gf7 OK).
The 'nvidia-100.14.19.pet' is for latest cards (Gf5 to Gf8).
dudadas - "Excellent work. Seriously, I was looking
something like that."
Puppyt - "sc0ttman - you're a Champ!
Thank you so much for your selection and compilation of games here and
for your fabulous effort."
lagbusguy - "Holy shit, that’s badass."
Trip[ABK] - "fuckin nice...noyce..and NIIIICE!"
Jonathan Frederickson - "N64? PSX? Damn that’s cool. I’ve played around with Puppy Linux in
the past, but this is just… awesome."
skinnie - "gr8 work on this ... I have been searching for something like this a long time ago! The "look" of the distro is very,
very good"
kandkyo - "This is great!, VBAM very works well.."
deniros - "To sc0ttman, big thanks for Arcade :p
Tried your 'Arcade' and it works just great! No
dependencies to hunt for, it just works. great stuff!"
Click the add comment button to give me feedback, suggestions or abuse!
Rob, commented at 26/08/2010
Hi Scott
Spotted this on the Puppylinux irc.
This looks great and will give it try sometime soon.I'm currently running lucid 510 amongst several others
Great informative site too.
From Eastbourne too I noticed.
I spent most of my life in around those parts but live abroad now but sure miss the 'Big E'
Anyway thanks again for this,I'm getting excited already...lol
Regards
Rob
Camilo Martin, commented at 27/08/2010
Awesome! PSX! N64! :D
Admin, commented at 30/08/2010
Thanks Rob, glad you're keen! About the 'Big E' - I'll swap places anytime! :D
Ace Lite, commented at 05/09/2010
this is awesome :) iv been looking for a distro like this for a while and it makes it even better you used puppy
