Nearcade vs RomForge

Nearcade is a free, open-source, self-hosted platform for playing local co-op games over the internet with friends. A host runs the game, while viewers join from a desktop or mobile web browser without installing a client. Streaming uses WebCodecs or WebRTC and peer-to-peer connections. Hosts can allow gamepad input, raw keyboard and mouse, or keyboard and mouse mapped to a virtual gamepad; mobile viewers get touch controls and a virtual joystick. Sessions can use private Cloudflare or Zrok tunnels, or appear in the public Nearcade Arcade lobby. Public Arcade sessions are limited to 80 minutes and require a verified tunneling provider. A host needs Node.js 18 or newer and Python 3. Linux also requires PipeWire and the uinput module, while Windows gamepad support requires ViGEmBus. Linux is listed as production-stable; Windows and macOS are experimental, and macOS lacks gamepad support. The project is published under GPL-3.0 and provides setup, usage, API, and VPS server documentation.

RomForge is free, open-source desktop software for managing ROM collections in the OfflineList DAT ecosystem. It scans ROM folders and matches files to DAT entries using CRC32, then reports statuses such as Verified, Missing, Incorrectly Named, Wrong Archive Type and Untrimmed. Users can rename ROMs to DAT-expected filenames, re-archive between ZIP and 7z, and remove GBA or NDS padding. The application supports multiple DAT files and can update them from configured URLs. Its cache re-hashes only files that changed, while game-list status persists across restarts. RomForge is a modern rewrite of OfflineList and remains compatible with community DAT files. It reads OfflineList XML DAT files, which users supply, but does not currently read the No-Intro/Logiqx format. Supported systems are macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel, Windows x64 and Linux x64. The macOS app is signed and notarized; Windows downloads are ZIP archives and Linux downloads are TAR.GZ archives. The project uses the MIT license.