GNOME Games is now ready and available for Ubuntu 17.04

As the entire Linux community should already know, next Thursday, if there is no setback, Ubuntu 17.04 Zesty Zapus will be officially released, the next version of Canonical's operating system whose main novelty is an advance in Unity 8, a graphical environment that the CEO of the company has already been in charge of announcing that they will stop developing. But practically all the software available in previous versions will be in Zesty Zapus, like Gnome Games.

GNOME Games is an application that reminds us a bit of other programs that act like a music library like AmaroK, Rythmbox or Clementine, but whose content is video games instead of music. With GNOME Games we can play classic console titles, such as SEGA and Nintendo, or also retro games for PC, like the Doom or Quake I spent so many hours with now about 20 years ago.

GNOME Games, retro games on Linux

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Ubuntu 17.04 will officially arrive next Thursday And it is likely that users already testing their betas were relatively nervous that this library of video games was not yet available. Well, it already is and it is in the official Zesty Zapus repositories, so there is no need to add any repository manually.

There are two ways to install GNOME Games:

• As "gnome-games" is already in use, the package for Zesty Zapus has received another name and we can install it by opening a terminal and typing the command "sudo apt install gnome-games-app»(Without the quotes).
• Another option is to do it directly from Ubuntu Software or by clicking THIS LINK.

The best thing about the Zesty Zapus version is that it also includes what is necessary (libretro-gambatte or libreto-nestopia) to play, for example, GameBoy / GameBoy Color or NES games. It is not ruled out that more of these cores or BIOS will be added to the application itself in future versions, but for now it will be necessary to install some packages manually to play some titles:

• nestopia (NES. Now available in Ubuntu version 17.04.)
• gambatte (Game Boy & Game Boy Color. Now available in Ubuntu 17.04 version.)
• Beetle / Mednafen PCE FAST (NEC PC and TurboGrafx-16)
• bsnes (Super nintendo)
• Beetle / Mednafen NGP (Neo Geo Pocket and NGP Color)
• PCSX ReARMed (PlayStation)

Have you already tried GNOME Games on Ubuntu 17.04? What do you think?