sprocketnes is an emulator for the Nintendo Entertainment System written in
the Rust programming language.
Its purpose is to serve as a technology demonstration to show how the Rust
programming language is suitable for systems software such as emulators. It
has many shortcomings and is not intended to be a production-quality emulator.
sprocketnes is also designed to be a relatively clean example codebase,
showing off various Rust idioms.
The NES was chosen for this project because:
-
It's familiar to most hackers.
-
It's a reasonably simple system to emulate.
-
Because of its popularity, its workings are relatively well-documented.
-
It's CPU-bound, so it can serve as a benchmark to help optimize Rust code.
-
The audio requires some measure of real-time operation, which tests Rust's real-time capabilities.
The main controls are as follows:
-
A: Z
-
B: X
-
Start: Enter
-
Select: Right shift
-
D-Pad: Arrows
Other keys:
-
Save state: S
-
Load state: L
-
Quit: Escape
If you want to build sprocketnes, you will first need the Speex codec library
installed; on the Mac you can install it with brew install speex.
To build (add --release if you actually want playable speed):
cargo build
There are numerous demos and games available for free for use with this emulator at http://nesdev.com/.
Enjoy!