EmulationStation History

es-history.md

EmulationStation is a graphical and themeable emulator front-end created by Aloshi around 2012. Their original work has been the foundation for the UX of many of our favorite gaming focused projects over the last decade and this document aims to capture a small bit of that history. If you see any errors please let me know in the comments below and I will gladly update this document.

History:

References:

• Aloshi's first public commit: https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation/commit/c0e9683f4537fd3e7fea69ec01ba88c1d3039408
• Retropie's first Readme change (approximate moment when their fork occured): https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation/commit/3d215a1f2f83e0a45f9fa08000584e46ae9a5d60
• Recalbox's first Readme change (approximate moment when their fork occured): https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-emulationstation/commit/b5c99454f6f3ea9f14b54d30d7700153f1205694
• FCAMOD first Readme change (approximate moment when their fork occured): https://github.com/fabricecaruso/old-EmulationStation-fork---see-batocera-emulationstation-instead/commit/f3e51f2ff30849371b31d89921e5938115853df8
• "The Big Merge" (approximate start of Batocera's fork): https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera-emulationstation/commit/8d7fb7b3e843bfc9218833ec01e8f74da6537219
• ES-DE's first public commit: https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de/-/commit/fcfbbd3f2bf9fbaf2f61e8ef0023c675df6cc4a2

Projects:

Note

Below are links to the projects referenced above. All use a variant of EmulationStation as the foundation for their UX.

• Original source by Aloshi ARCHIVED (NOT ACTIVE)
  • Website: https://emulationstation.org/
  • Git: https://github.com/Aloshi/EmulationStation
• RetroPie
  • Website: https://retropie.org.uk/
  • Git: https://github.com/RetroPie/EmulationStation
• RecalBox
  • Website: https://www.recalbox.com/
  • Git: https://gitlab.com/recalbox/recalbox-emulationstation
• FCAMOD ARCHIVED (NOT ACTIVE)
  • Git: https://github.com/fabricecaruso/old-EmulationStation-fork---see-batocera-emulationstation-instead
  • Notable Forks
    • ArkOS: https://github.com/christianhaitian/EmulationStation-fcamod
• Batocera
  • Website: https://batocera.org/
  • Git: https://github.com/batocera-linux/batocera-emulationstation
  • Notable Forks
    • RetroBat: https://github.com/RetroBat-Official/emulationstation
    • AmberELEC: https://github.com/AmberELEC/emulationstation
    • JELOS: https://github.com/JustEnoughLinuxOS/emulationstation
    • RockNIX: https://github.com/ROCKNIX/emulationstation
• ES-DE
  • Website: https://es-de.org/
  • Git: https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de

I'd like to thank @anthonycaccese for this great background information and @shantigilbert for the clarifications and the excellent EmuELEC!

I'm just a curious layman!I'm thinking of publishing an amateur video on YouTube in Portuguese talking about ES-DE and testing it on PC and Android (on two handhelds and a TV Box!). In the videos, I usually mention some details about the origin of what I show, and if I publish the video, I will include this background information about ES-DE!