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What is GameLord?

GameLord is a modern emulation frontend built as a spiritual successor to OpenEmu, featuring superior UI/UX polish and advanced features. Built with Electron, React, TypeScript, and shadcn/ui, GameLord provides a beautiful, native-feeling interface for managing and playing your favorite retro games.

Quickstart

Get GameLord running on your machine in under 5 minutes

Installation

Complete setup guide with prerequisites and configuration

Architecture

Learn about GameLord’s technical design and structure

Library Management

Learn how to manage your game library

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Key features

GameLord is currently in active development. Features and APIs may change.

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Multi-system support

Powered by libretro cores, GameLord supports multiple gaming systems including:
  • Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)
  • Game Boy / Game Boy Color / Game Boy Advance
  • Nintendo 64, Nintendo DS
  • Sega Genesis / Mega Drive, Sega Saturn
  • Sony PlayStation, PlayStation Portable
  • Arcade systems
  • And more…

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Beautiful native UI

Built with shadcn/ui for a polished, macOS-native appearance. Every interaction is designed to feel intentional and delightful, with:
  • Elegant game library grid with cover art
  • Smooth transitions and animations
  • Dark mode with system theme support
  • Customizable visual shaders (CRT, LCD, scanlines)

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High performance emulation

GameLord uses a native Node.js addon to load libretro cores directly, with a dedicated utility process for the emulation loop:
  • WebGL rendering with shader effects
  • Optimized frame timing and vsync-aligned rendering
  • Zero-copy frame transfer via SharedArrayBuffer
  • Lock-free audio buffer for minimal latency

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Library management

Automatic ROM scanning with intelligent features:
  • Multi-system detection
  • Metadata and cover art from ScreenScraper
  • Incremental scanning with mtime-based caching
  • ZIP archive extraction for non-arcade systems
  • Search, filter, and sort by multiple criteria
  • Favorites and custom collections

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Save state management

Quick save/load functionality:
  • Multiple save state slots
  • Autosave on close
  • Save state serialization via libretro API
  • Resume game dialog on launch

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Visual effects

Retro visual enhancements via WebGL2:
  • CRT shaders with scanlines and aperture grille
  • LCD shaders with subpixel grid (perfect for Game Boy Advance)
  • Sharp bilinear filtering
  • Per-system shader preferences

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Architecture overview

GameLord uses a modern Electron architecture:
  1. Native addon (gamelord_libretro.node) loads libretro cores directly via dlopen, implementing the full libretro frontend API
  2. Utility process runs the emulation loop with hybrid sleep+spin frame pacing
  3. Main process manages windows, IPC handlers, and core coordination
  4. Renderer process displays frames on canvas and plays audio via Web Audio API
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                  Renderer Process                    │
│  (React UI, Canvas rendering, Web Audio playback)   │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                   │ IPC
┌──────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────┐
│                   Main Process                       │
│     (Window management, IPC handlers, Library)      │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                   │ Message Protocol
┌──────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────┐
│                 Utility Process                      │
│         (Emulation loop, Native addon)              │
└──────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────┘
                   │ N-API
┌──────────────────▼──────────────────────────────────┐
│              Native Addon (C++)                      │
│  (dlopen libretro cores, implement environment API) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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Next steps

Get started

Follow the quickstart guide to run GameLord locally

Read the docs

Dive deep into installation and configuration

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