binjnes vs FCEUX

binjnes is a free NES emulator written in C, available in a browser or through source builds for Linux and macOS. Its cycle-accurate emulation passes many timing tests and supports numerous cartridge mappers using a built-in cartridge database. Mappers 19, 24, and 26 receive additional audio channels. Playback controls include pausing, advancing one frame, rewinding, and seeking to a specific cycle. Users can save and load battery backup data and emulator state files. The browser version is built as WebAssembly and lets users upload a file to play. Desktop build instructions use make or CMake; building requires CMake and sokol, and the WebAssembly instructions also require Emscripten. The project includes a Python test harness that validates tests with hashes, and the source code is distributed under the MIT License. The GitHub releases page lists no packaged downloads, so desktop users need to build from source.

FCEUX is a free, open-source emulator for NES, Famicom, Famicom Disk System, and Dendy systems. It supports NTSC, PAL, and NTSC-PAL Hybrid video modes and offers tools for casual play as well as advanced work such as debugging, ROM hacking, map making, tool-assisted movies, and Lua scripting. The project maintains Win32 and Qt/SDL ports. The Qt/SDL version runs across Windows and UNIX-like systems, including Linux, Solaris, BSD, and OSX. Its tools include debug utilities, movie recording, a TAS Editor, sprite viewer, NES Palette Editor, AVI RIFF Tree viewer, and frame timing tool. Network play in both Win32 and SDL ports is not functional, and the project says it has no plans to fix it. Building Qt/SDL requires Qt5, SDL2, minizip, zlib, and OpenGL; CMake is needed to build from source. FFmpeg libraries are optional for AVI recording, and libx264 is optional for H.264 AVI encoding. The project dates to 2006, and its home page lists version 2.6.6, released on 26 August 2023, as the latest release.