¶ Technical data
- Developer: the FinalBurn Neo team (fork of FinalBurn Alpha)
- First release: January 2019
- Type: multi-machine arcade emulator
- Emulated media: arcade boards (PCB), romsets
- Controller: mandatory
- Light gun: recommended
- RetroAchievements: supported
¶ Presentation
FinalBurn Neo (often shortened to FBNeo) is the direct heir of a long line of arcade emulators: FinalBurn, then FinalBurn Alpha, of which it has been the official fork since 2019, when most of the development team carried the project on under this new name.
Where MAME aims at documentary accuracy and the preservation of thousands of machines, FBNeo focuses on a smaller but very popular catalogue, with priority given to playability and performance. It is the natural choice for the great arcade families: Capcom CPS-1, CPS-2 and CPS-3, Neo-Geo, Sega System 16, Konami, Toaplan, Cave, PGM… On modest machines it runs games that a recent MAME would struggle to display at full speed.
FBNeo also emulates several home consoles and computers (Mega Drive, PC Engine, Master System, MSX, ZX Spectrum, ColecoVision…), which is why the core shows up on other Recalbox systems as well. The fbneo system documented here is dedicated to its arcade side.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro fbneo | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Libretro fbneo is the only emulator for this system and it is available on every board, so there is no emulator to choose. It supports netplay, CRT output and RetroAchievements. A light gun is recommended on this system; softpatching is not supported.
To plug Recalbox straight into an arcade cabinet, have a look at the Recalbox RGB JAMMA 2 complete kit.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/fbneo/
Supported extensions: .zip .7z
Just like MAME, FBNeo expects a romset matching the emulator version shipped with Recalbox. An FBNeo romset that is too old or too recent will lead to missing roms and games refusing to start. Check your set against the DAT file published by the FinalBurn Neo project.
A few rules for a healthy FBNeo folder:
- Do not unzip your games and do not rename them: the
.zipfile name is the game identifier (sfa3.zip,mslug.zip…). - The BIOS romsets required by some game families (Neo-Geo, PGM…) go in the same folder as the games, not in
/recalbox/share/bios/. - Neo-Geo games can also be launched from the dedicated Neo-Geo system, which uses the same core but its own roms folder and its own BIOS files.
Also have a look at the FinalBurn Neo guide, its FAQ and the Cheat codes page.