How to play multiplayer arcade games on Linux

Fightcade is an emulator that allows PC gamers to enjoy fighting arcade video games with their friends over the internet. If you’re a Linux gamer who loves playing old arcade games, this guide is for you. Follow along as we go over how to set up Fightcade on Linux!

Installing Fightcade on Linux

Before we can go over how to play fighting arcade games online with friends on Linux, the Fightcade client must be installed. Thankfully, the developers behind the app make it super easy to install on a multitude of Linux distributions.

To start installing Fightcade on your Linux PC, open up a terminal window on the Linux desktop. Once the terminal window is open on your computer, follow along with the installation instructions below to get Fightcade set up on your computer.

Flatpak

Flatpak is the preferred method of installation for the Fightcade client on Linux. The reason? There’s no involved, tedious source-code compilation process required to get it working. Instead, users need to run two terminal commands to get the client working.

To start the installation of Fightcade on Linux via Flatpak, ensure you have the Flatpak runtime set up on your computer. If you don’t, follow along with our guide here. Once you’ve gotten the Flatpak runtime working, execute the remote-add command to add the Flathub app store to your PC.

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists flathub https://flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo

When the Flathub app store is set up on your computer, execute the following flatpak install command to get Fightcade up and running on your Linux PC.

flatpak install flathub com.fightcade.Fightcade

If you do not like the terminal, you can go to the Fightcade page on Flathub.org and click on the “INSTALL” button to get the app working via Gnome Software or KDE Discover.

Arch Linux AUR

The Fightcade client is available to Arch Linux users via the Arch Linux AUR. To start the installation process on your Arch PC, use the following Pacman command to install both the “Git” and “Base-devel” packages on your computer.

sudo pacman -S git base-devel

After setting up the two packages on your Arch Linux PC, use the commands below to install the Trizen AUR helper tool. Trizen will automate the installation of Fightcade so that you do not need to deal with the source code files manually.

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git

cd trizen

makepkg -sri

Once the Trizen app is set up on your Arch Linux computer, you can use the trizen -S command to pull down the Fightcade AUR package and install it on your computer.

trizen -S fightcade-windows

Generic Linux

There’s a generic release of Fightcade on the developer’s website that any Linux user can download and install, but we don’t recommend it. The reason? The files are confusing for new users to understand, and it isn’t exactly easy to set up.

If you cannot use Flatpak or the Arch Linux AUR, click here to download the generic Linux release. Otherwise, please follow the Flatpak installation instructions or AUR instructions instead.

Setting up a Fightcade account

To be able to play Fightcade on Linux, you need to set up an account. To set up an account, head over to the Fightcade website. Once on the website, click on the “Register” button at the top to start setting up your account.

After creating your account on the Fightcade website, the browser will display a message. This message will say, “User YOUR_USERNAME created!” From here, launch the Fightcade app installed on your Linux PC and use your username to log into your newly created account.

Playing Fightcade

Now that you’re logged into Fightcade, it is time to configure the app. To start, click on the “ROMs” menu. Once inside of the “ROMs” menu, select the button “Open ROMs folder” to open up the Fightcade game ROM folder in the file manager.

Using the file manager, add your favorite fighting game ROMs you wish to play. Keep in mind, Fightcade supports MAME Arcade games (via the fbneo folder and ggpofba folders), as well as Super Nintendo (via the snes9x folder). It can also handle other games too.

Note: unsure what these folders mean? For more information, click here to go to the Fightcade help page.

After adding your favorite fighting game ROMs, click on the Fightcade icon in the top left to view available channels. Sort through and find a channel that corresponds with the game you’d like to play and select the “Join” button to join the channel.

Once in the game’s Fightcade channel, look through the sidebar for others in the “looking to play” area and select “Challenge” to play the game against others.