Games overview
Credenza can hold your retro game collection beside your films and shows, and play it. Each games library is one console’s ROMs; the server scans them, looks up box art and details, and runs them in your browser with a built-in emulator (EmulatorJS). There is nothing to install on the device you play on.
How it fits together
Section titled “How it fits together”- One library per console. When you add a library with the type Games, you also pick its System. The system decides which files the scan picks up, which emulator runs them, and how the metadata sources look them up.
- Games are kept apart from films and shows. They have their own shelf, and they never appear in the film grid or in the dashboard’s recently added rows. Two places do show them: search, which lists matching games in their own section, and the dashboard’s continue-watching area, which shows Recently played games for your account.
- A game has its own page. Selecting a tile opens the game’s page — box art, year, publisher, number of players, rating, genres and a synopsis, when a metadata source knows the game — with a Play button that starts it.
- Saves live on the server, per account. Battery saves and save states follow you to any browser you sign in from. See Saves and save states.
Anyone who has been given access to a games library can browse and play it. Adding, editing and scanning the library is done at Settings → Server → Libraries, the same as any other library (see Adding libraries).
Supported consoles
Section titled “Supported consoles”| System | Accepted files | Emulator core |
|---|---|---|
| NES | .nes, .fds, .unf, .unif |
FCEUmm or Nestopia |
| SNES | .sfc, .smc, .swc, .fig |
Snes9x |
| Nintendo 64 | .z64, .v64, .n64 |
Mupen64Plus-Next or ParaLLEl N64 |
| Game Boy | .gb |
Gambatte |
| Game Boy Color | .gbc |
Gambatte |
| Game Boy Advance | .gba |
mGBA |
Every library also accepts .zip, .7z and .rar archives holding one of those files — see
Organising ROMs.
A library only picks up its own console’s extensions: a .nes file sitting in a folder that a SNES
library scans is ignored. Archives are the exception, since their names don’t say which console they
are for — keep each console’s archives in a folder of its own.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color are separate systems even though the same emulator runs both, because
the metadata sources catalogue them separately. Put .gb files in a Game Boy library and .gbc
files in a Game Boy Color library.
No other consoles are supported yet, and every supported console is cartridge-based — there is no support for disc images.
Playing a game
Section titled “Playing a game”- Open the games library from the sidebar (or the Libraries tab on a phone), or search for the game by name.
- Select the game to open its page, and press Play.
- The emulator loads in the page. Press Start Game to boot it.
Leaving the play page stops the game completely — emulation, sound and all. Use ← Back to the game to return to the game’s page.
If Play is greyed out, the game’s file is missing from disk; the page says why. Reconnect the drive it lives on, or rescan the library.
Devices
Section titled “Devices”Games run in any current desktop or mobile browser, and in the Android app. The server only sends the ROM file; all the emulation happens on the device you play on, so how smoothly a game runs depends on that device rather than on the server.
On a touch screen — a phone or tablet — pressing Start Game also takes the game full screen, and the emulator draws an on-screen gamepad. iPhone Safari does not allow a page to go full screen, so there the game plays in its box on the page.
Controls
Section titled “Controls”The emulator has its own menu bar along the bottom of the game, with buttons including Save State, Load State, Settings, Control Settings and full screen.
- Keyboard works out of the box: the arrow keys are the D-pad, Enter is Start and V is Select. The full mapping for every button, and the place to change it, is Control Settings.
- Game controllers connected to the device are picked up by the browser and can be mapped in Control Settings too.
- Touch uses the on-screen gamepad, which can be switched off in the emulator’s Settings.
Three keys handle save states without opening a menu: 1 saves to the current slot, 2 loads from it, and 3 moves to the next slot. See Saves and save states.
Switching emulator core
Section titled “Switching emulator core”NES and Nintendo 64 games can each run on two different emulator cores. If a game misbehaves on one, open the emulator’s Settings and change Core — the change needs the game to be restarted, so leave the play page and open it again. Save states belong to the core that made them — see Save states and cores.
Box art and details
Section titled “Box art and details”Games are identified by ScreenScraper and IGDB, whichever you switch on and in the order you rank them. Without either, games still scan and play — they just keep a generated cover and no details. A game matched by ScreenScraper also gets its logo, fanart behind its page, and screenshots of its title screen, gameplay and box back. Setting up the sources is covered in Organising ROMs.