Well, I've had my RPi for a couple of days now. Half of the past four days have been spent obtaining software. Had to hook up my laptop to the RPi to do a network install of Slackware (took 3 hours) and then I compiled Mednafen from source (took 6+ hours o_O). Now my RPi is a gaming machine, almost.
I can't get Mednafen to work on the console. My laptop does it just fine, but I've wasted an entire day trying to do the same with my RPi. So I'm running X, even though I said I wouldn't whatever. Mednafen runs with X, but it's just like others have reported, i.e. slow for some things. Here's what I've tested so far. I used SDL to do the rendering; haven't tried sound at all yet, so if I mention that something is perfect, I'm talking speed-wise. Frame-skipping was disabled as well, just to see how well the RPi could play.
NES - Played a bit of SMB3. On stock clocks, the game is acceptable. Plays perfectly once OC'ed to 900MHz.
GB/GBC - Perfect at stock clocks, runs smoother at 900MHz. Played with Metroid II and Star Ocean: Blue Sphere.
GameGear - Perfect at stock clocks, tried Sonic The Hedgehog and it was very fast.
Genesis - Got less than half speed with Sonic The Hedgehog, OCing the CPU made no difference.
SNES - I was able to enjoy a nice slideshow of Super Metroid. Not playable.
Wonderswan - Yes, there are a couple of games for this handheld that I want to emulate Rockman and Forte was kinda slow at stock speeds. At 900MHz, it's still slower than fullspeed, but not by too much, so it was quite playable.
The speeds will probably improve once drivers come out to accelerate X. It took up as much as 25% of CPU usage when I OCed. So, the RPi doesn't do so hot for emulation right now. That'll change in a bit, I'm sure. Still, I'm pretty happy having come this far. Just learned a bit more about ARM CPUs. Apparently, the CPU is pretty weak as far as ARM chips go. Given that I feel pretty good. I'll post screenshots in the morning.
I can't get Mednafen to work on the console. My laptop does it just fine, but I've wasted an entire day trying to do the same with my RPi. So I'm running X, even though I said I wouldn't whatever. Mednafen runs with X, but it's just like others have reported, i.e. slow for some things. Here's what I've tested so far. I used SDL to do the rendering; haven't tried sound at all yet, so if I mention that something is perfect, I'm talking speed-wise. Frame-skipping was disabled as well, just to see how well the RPi could play.
NES - Played a bit of SMB3. On stock clocks, the game is acceptable. Plays perfectly once OC'ed to 900MHz.
GB/GBC - Perfect at stock clocks, runs smoother at 900MHz. Played with Metroid II and Star Ocean: Blue Sphere.
GameGear - Perfect at stock clocks, tried Sonic The Hedgehog and it was very fast.
Genesis - Got less than half speed with Sonic The Hedgehog, OCing the CPU made no difference.
SNES - I was able to enjoy a nice slideshow of Super Metroid. Not playable.
Wonderswan - Yes, there are a couple of games for this handheld that I want to emulate Rockman and Forte was kinda slow at stock speeds. At 900MHz, it's still slower than fullspeed, but not by too much, so it was quite playable.
The speeds will probably improve once drivers come out to accelerate X. It took up as much as 25% of CPU usage when I OCed. So, the RPi doesn't do so hot for emulation right now. That'll change in a bit, I'm sure. Still, I'm pretty happy having come this far. Just learned a bit more about ARM CPUs. Apparently, the CPU is pretty weak as far as ARM chips go. Given that I feel pretty good. I'll post screenshots in the morning.