Emulator Operating System: Is there such a thing?

I recently set up Retropie on the raspberry Pi. This has an Operating System called Retropie that packages all of the Emulators and has a nice "Emulation Station" interface that I can select which system and which game I would like to play with my controller.

Is there something similar to this on the computer? i am looking for an operating system to give a nice visual interface where I can select to play Nintendo, SNES, Mame, Etc.

Or is the only alternative the fact that I need a mouse to click and open the emulator application I want to use? Mame, Nestopia, etc.

So far, the only thing we have are front ends but give it time. You could do emulation station on a PC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLlWfgLvG64

mulliganx said:

I recently set up Retropie on the raspberry Pi. This has an Operating System called Retropie that packages all of the Emulators and has a nice "Emulation Station" interface that I can select which system and which game I would like to play with my controller.

Is there something similar to this on the computer? i am looking for an operating system to give a nice visual interface where I can select to play Nintendo, SNES, Mame, Etc.

Or is the only alternative the fact that I need a mouse to click and open the emulator application I want to use? Mame, Nestopia, etc.

Click to expand...

What you need is a frontend. Retropie appears to be exactly that, not specifically an OS but a front end that supplies the various commandlines to launch different emulators from one UI. This provides a single interface from which you can launch your emulators and games. Popular variants on the PC are Maximus, GameEx, Mala and Mamewah.

There are certain multi platform emulators like MESS, that emulate a number of different systems in one emulator. There is also the excellent GameBase which provides a common interface for a number of computer emulators like the Amiga, AtariST, Commodore64 and Amstrad CPC