Octane's CHIP-8/SUPER-CHIP Emulator: A safe, compatible and efficient cross-platform CHIP-8/SUPER-CHIP emulator (interpreter) written in C. Runs on computers (with SDL3), browsers (with WebAssembly) and microcontrollers (Raspberry Pi Pico).
Note
For Raspberry Pi Pico, see README for octemu pico
Requirements: CMake, SDL3 (libsdl3-dev):
cmake -B build cmake --build build
Clone the SDL repository:
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL.git vendor/SDL
Set OCTEMU_SDL_PATH option in cmake:
cmake -B build -DOCTEMU_SDL_PATH=vendor/SDL/ cmake --build build
Additional requirement: Emscripten:
git submodule update --init chip8Archive emcmake cmake -B build-web -DOCTEMU_SDL_PATH=vendor/SDL/ cmake --build build-web emrun build-web/index.html
Start the emulator with a ROM file:
./octemu ./rom.ch8
Adjust tickrate (instructions per frame) with the -t option:
./octemu -t 20 ./rom.ch8
By default octemu uses Octo's quirks ("octo mode") for compatibility with modern ROMs.
To run ROMs that need original SUPER-CHIP 1.1 or CHIP-8 quirks, set -m option:
./octemu -m schip ./rom.ch8 ./octemu -m chip8 ./rom.ch8
This only affects quirks behaviors. It does not prevent ROMs from using SUPER-CHIP instructions.
| 1 (1) | 2 (2) | 3 (3) | C (4) |
| 4 (Q) | 5 (W) | 6 (E) | D (R) |
| 7 (A) | 8 (S) | 9 (D) | E (F) |
| A (Z) | 0 (X) | B (C) | F (V) |
Space: Pause/ResumeEsc: QuitF5: Reset the emulator and reload ROMF12: Save BMP screenshot to current directory
Tetoris (chip8 mode):
Space Invaders (schip mode):
Horsey Jump (octo mode):
Knight (octo mode):
