Welcome to FUGE, the free, ultimate guide to emulation! If you are blind or visually impaired, FUGE, pronounced like ‘huge’ with an F, or like the first syllable of the word ‘fugitive’, is your one-stop shop for guides, tips, tricks, how-tos, and a whole lot more, designed to provide you with all the knowledge and tools you need to experience the wonderful and fascinating world of retro video game emulation. When we say FUGE is free, we really mean free! Free of charge, free of ads, free of spying cookies, free to use, free to modify, and even free of license. FUGE is entirely open source, meaning anyone is allowed to freely download, modify, and host the site if they wish. In this introductory page, we will explain a bit about what emulation is, and cover a few common terms you will hear in the emulation scene and what they mean.
FUGE is inspired by the Accessible Retro Games project from Devin Prater, who is totally blind himself. Sadly, however, this project has been inactive for around 4 years.
In its simplest form, emulation is the act of using software (a computer program) to mimic the behaviour of hardware (an electronic device). The most common use of emulation is to experience vintage video game consoles and computers, such as those from Atari, Sega, Nintendo, Commodore, Sony, and many others. It is important to note that, though emulation technology has advanced a lot in recent decades, emulation is still not perfect. Some systems are a lot harder to emulate than others, and the components inside your actual computer can have an effect on the performance of the emulator(s) you use.
Here are a few common words and terms you might come across in the emulation and vintage gaming world.
An emulator, sometimes shortened to emu, is what does all the emulation work. There are many emulators out there for many different consoles and operating system platforms. Some popular emulators include:
ROM stands for read-only memory. In the context of emulation, a ROM is a file, or group of files, that are a dump of a physical video game. You load a ROM into an emulator, and the emulator sees it as a physical game disk, cartridge etc.
Put simply, a BIOS, pronounced by-oss or by-ose, or basic input/output system, contains the very basic instructions that a computer or game console should follow to power on and work. Most emulated systems will work just fine without a BIOS, but some disk-based systems, such as the PS1 and PS2, require a BIOS file to be available, otherwise they will refuse to power on. Furthermore, BIOS files are often needed if you want to get the full console experience of a startup sound, boot animation and other features. This is especially true for consoles like the Nintendo GameCube and the Sega Dreamcast. Something to watch out for is that consoles often have different BIOS systems for different regions. Trying to load a Japanese game into PCSX2 when you only have a US and/or European BIOS, for instance, won’t work because the PS2 doesn’t know how to read a Japanese game disk with European or US BIOS instructions, and the game will refuse to play.
A launcher, or frontend, allows you to install and configure multiple emulators and launch them from within a single program. The aforementioned RetroArch is an example of a launcher. Emulators are written specifically to run within RetroArch and can be searched for, downloaded, installed, and managed through a central interface. These are known as RetroArch cores. Other examples of emulator launchers include Emulation Station, Retrobat, and LaunchBox.
A standalone emulator is one that runs on its own. It can run as a separate program on your computer, and is not included as part of a launcher. PCSX2 and Dolphin are 2 examples of standalone emulators.
If you wish to make a contribution to FUGE, you can do so at the official GitHub repository.