So many games, so little time...
So far I have tried:
Snes9x
It was good to see the classic Mario game running once again! And Legend of Zelda, DK Country, Prince of Persia, etc. I had to wrestle the controller away from 6 yr old dd she liked playing Mario and DK so much.
For some reason the square button on the PS3 controller does not work in the games although it maps properly in the config screen. The Logitech cordless Wingmnan Rumblepad 2 works great. I normally run at 1280x1024 but the game window is so small I find it is faster to play in 720p or 480p instead of scaling it to larger window.
MAME
This was the first emulator I tried, and of course it works great. In my opinion, Gauntlet plays just as well here as it does in the Playstation Store version I purchased. It looks more "authentic" when you add scanlines.
The SDL version is faster than the x version. I didn't try playing anything newer than the original Mortal Kombat, but it appeared to run at full speed with no problems.
VICE
The Commodore 64 was my first computer and there are a number of games I was fond of ... Jumpman, Archon, Adventure Construction Set, Mail Order Monsters, Temple of Apshai, Racing Destruction Set, Below the Root, Questron, the Phantasie series, etc.
VICE / X64 works well. I didn't try joystick support. I couldn't get Frodo to work, and I haven't messed with running anything in xmess.
E-UAE
I eventually moved from the C64 to the Amiga 500 and the first game I played was an improved version of Adventure Construction Set. Turrican 2, Stunt Car Racer, Defender of the Crown, Faery Tale, The Bard's Tale, and many others were favorites.
The E-UAE Amiga emulator works great with the default settings (provided you set the location of the ROM and disk images in the GUI) ... you can find the PPC binary here:
http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/
DOSBox
Many DOS games work fine in this emulator. Ragnarok / Valhalla is an excellent "Roguelike" game that runs perfectly here. I also tried Roadwar 2000 and Wizard's Crown from SSI and they worked fine as well, although the C64 versions were better. Even the Apple II versions were better.
I tried to run Duke Nukem 3D and the screen froze once I tried to play, although I could still here the sounds of the game in the background. I haven't tried any other action or 3D games on it, yet.
All of the above are emulators, but I have tried a couple of "native" games:
Ur-Quan Masters
A port of Star Control II, an excellent game that works great in YDL on the PS3. "Launch fighters ... Launch fighters ... Launch fighters ..."
Doom / PrBoom
Looks good, runs good.
Being a newbie to Linux is the main thing holding me back from trying more native Linux games. When compiling from source files and things don't go perfectly I'm pretty much lost at this point.
What games or emulators have you tried?
Bill