How to play SNES games on Lubuntu

SNES (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) is a 16 bit video game console from 1990, which also have a very large collections of games. In this article i will show you how to play SNES games on lubuntu.

To play SNES games on lubuntu, you can use program called ZSNES, it's one of the best emulator for playing SNES games on linux.

Since SNES is a 16 bit machine, you don't need to have the greatest hardware to run the emulator, so running ZSNES should be fine for old computers.

ZSNES is available on the lubuntu repository, so you can use apt-get install command to install ZSNES on your computer.

sudo apt-get install zsnes

kernelpanic@kernelpanic:~$ sudo apt-get install zsnes
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gcc-5-base:i386 libasound2:i386 libasyncns0:i386 libbsd0:i386 libc6:i386 libcaca0:i386
  libdbus-1-3:i386 libdrm-amdgpu1:i386 libdrm-intel1:i386 libdrm-nouveau2:i386 libdrm-radeon1:i386
  libdrm2:i386 libedit2:i386 libelf1:i386 libexpat1:i386 libffi6:i386 libflac8:i386 libgcc1:i386
  libgcrypt20:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libglapi-mesa:i386 libgpg-error0:i386
  libgpm2:i386 libjson-c2:i386 libllvm3.6v5:i386 liblzma5:i386 libncurses5:i386 libncursesw5:i386
  libogg0:i386 libpciaccess0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libpulse0:i386 libsdl1.2debian:i386 libslang2:i386
  libsndfile1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libsystemd0:i386 libtinfo5:i386 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 libudev1:i386
  libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libwrap0:i386 libx11-6:i386 libx11-xcb1:i386 libxau6:i386
  libxcb-dri2-0:i386 libxcb-dri3-0:i386 libxcb-glx0:i386 libxcb-present0:i386 libxcb-sync1:i386
  libxcb1:i386 libxdamage1:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxfixes3:i386 libxshmfence1:i386
  libxxf86vm1:i386 tcpd zlib1g:i386
Suggested packages:
  libasound2-plugins:i386 glibc-doc:i386 locales:i386 rng-tools:i386 gpm:i386 pulseaudio:i386
Recommended packages:
  tcpd:i386
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gcc-5-base:i386 libasound2:i386 libasyncns0:i386 libbsd0:i386 libc6:i386 libcaca0:i386
  libdbus-1-3:i386 libdrm-amdgpu1:i386 libdrm-intel1:i386 libdrm-nouveau2:i386 libdrm-radeon1:i386
  libdrm2:i386 libedit2:i386 libelf1:i386 libexpat1:i386 libffi6:i386 libflac8:i386 libgcc1:i386
  libgcrypt20:i386 libgl1-mesa-dri:i386 libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 libglapi-mesa:i386 libgpg-error0:i386
  libgpm2:i386 libjson-c2:i386 libllvm3.6v5:i386 liblzma5:i386 libncurses5:i386 libncursesw5:i386
  libogg0:i386 libpciaccess0:i386 libpng12-0:i386 libpulse0:i386 libsdl1.2debian:i386 libslang2:i386
  libsndfile1:i386 libstdc++6:i386 libsystemd0:i386 libtinfo5:i386 libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 libudev1:i386
  libvorbis0a:i386 libvorbisenc2:i386 libwrap0:i386 libx11-6:i386 libx11-xcb1:i386 libxau6:i386
  libxcb-dri2-0:i386 libxcb-dri3-0:i386 libxcb-glx0:i386 libxcb-present0:i386 libxcb-sync1:i386
  libxcb1:i386 libxdamage1:i386 libxdmcp6:i386 libxext6:i386 libxfixes3:i386 libxshmfence1:i386
  libxxf86vm1:i386 tcpd zlib1g:i386 zsnes:i386
0 upgraded, 62 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 23,6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 167 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

For some reasons, ZSNES is a lot bigger in terms of package size compared with other emulator such as PCSX or DESMUME.

And i found that ZSNES is much more stable for playing games than the other two emulator, even though they are emulating different machine.

I can guarantee that most SNES games will works perfectly on ZSNES, yeah because it's just emulating a 16 bit video game machine, so should be no problem.

The game image for SNES is on .sfc file format, you can download SNES games by searching on google with keyword 'SNES ROM download', you will get plenty results.

Here's screenshots of me playing super mario kart, it's a 1992 racing game by nintendo and still fun to play until now, such a good game.