So – I’ve got a number of 8-bit nintendo NES ROMs out there I’ve recently started obsessing over again, and I wanted a way to make choosing a game to play easier. So I wrote a simple zenity-based front-end to the fceu emulator. Here’s a quick run-through, in the context of my Debian Etch workstation.

Stuff to install

zenity

zenity is a dirt-simple way to create GTK dialog boxes that return values to shell scripts. It’s a pretty neat little tool, though not particularly useful in my capacity as a sysadmin. But it’s perfect for this. :-)

One of the dialog choices is the “file selection box”, which pops-up a standard GTK file selector and returns the path to the chosen file.

fceu

fceu is a fabulous 8-bit NES emulator that works beautifully on my debian box. Once I configured the input device via

fceu -inputcfg gamepad1 path/to/a/Rom_file.zip

I figured out the other options I wanted – fullscreen and opengl, giving us a command line of:

ROMs

All my ROMs live in ~/nes/.

The shell script

Here’s the shell script:

#!/bin/sh

# Dan Collis-Puro, 2007.
DIR="$HOME/nes/"
FILE=`zenity --file-selection --title='Choose an NES game' --filename=$DIR`
if [ "$FILE" != $DIR ]
then
        echo $FILE
        fceu -fs 1 -opengl "$FILE"
fi

Put it somewhere ( ~/bin/ makes sense ) and make it executable. Test it out. It’s Magic! (not so much).

The icing

Right click on your gnome panel. Add a “custom application launcher” and browse to the script you just created.

Assuming it’s executable, the paths are correct and you’ve got some ROMs in there, you’ve now got a gnome panel launcher that’ll let you choose NES roms to play.

Bonus Points

Nerd humor, served cold.