afska/emudevz: 🕹️ A game about building emulators! (opens in new tab)

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EmuDevz

🕹️ A game about building emulators! Check it out!

Created by [r]labs.

Key features

Full 🕹️ NEEES emulation guide from scratch
Interactive 🔨 6502 Assembly tutorial
Implement 🧠 CPU, 🖥️ PPU, and 🔊 APU in any order
Play 👾 homebrew games to unlock ROMs
🧪 Unit tests, video tests, and audio tests are provided
💻 Unix-style shell and code editor
🎶 Original retro-synthwave soundtrack
📃 Included documentation and in-game dictionary
🗣️ Fully localized into English and Spanish
🐞 Powerful debugger with:
🐏 Memory viewer
🔢 Instruction log
🏞️ Name tables, CHR, Sprites, Palettes
♒ Individual APU channel views
🎮 Controllers
🗃️ Emulator logging
🔭 Free mode to use the IDE to develop emulators for other systems!

Where’s the save file?

Portable: .devz files (import/export from Settings menu)
Web: IndexedDB and LocalStorage
Steam/Windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/Roaming/EmuDevz
Steam/Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/EmuDevz
Steam/macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/EmuDevz

Development

Install and run

# install nvm & node
npm install
npm start

Scripts

Package levels: npm run package
Sort locales: node scripts/sort-locales.js
Sort dictionary entries: node scripts/sort-dictionary.js
Build: npm run build
Deploy to GitHub Pages: npm run deploy <GH_USERNAME> <GH_TOKEN>

Generate licenses

cp pre-licenses.txt public/licenses.txt
yarn licenses generate-disclaimer --prod >> public/licenses.txt

Known issues

These are notes from the January 2026 release on Steam. I hope these issues can be resolved in the future.

Windows

On Windows 11, when using a full-screen Electron app with the Steam overlay, ghost Alt-Tab windows are created. As a workaround, fullscreen mode is disabled on Windows.

macOS

The Steam overlay doesn’t seem to work.

Linux

The app doesn’t boot in sandbox mode when launched via Steam. As a workaround, Steam launches the app with --no-sandbox.
The app doesn’t boot on Arch Linux with the latest Electron when using the Steam Linux Runtime 3.0. As a workaround, Electron 36.9.5 was used and forced to launch using X11 with --enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=x11.