Are there any emulators that run on the Pi without X?
If not, is there a specifically light-weight window manager that would be good with video game emulator?
Are there any emulators that run on the Pi without X?
If not, is there a specifically light-weight window manager that would be good with video game emulator?
You can install Retroarch on your Raspberry Pi to emulate some video game systems. I've tried NES and SNES and they work fine, except for the sound, which is terrible. According to the installation instructions GameBoy, MAME and DOOM also work, but I haven't tested them.
Most emulators use the SDL library for graphics and sound, which happens to be able to use directfb or fbcon as a backend, skipping X11 altogether.
As far as how to do this specifically, I am not sure. This post may help, and googling for directfb on raspberrypi does produce some interesting results that may be of help. If not, as mentioned in another answer, Fluxbox is a great lightweight window manager; I would recommend it over most others.
As far as light WM go you can try Fluxbox ( http://fluxbox.org/ ).
In my gamming years one thing I would do was startx with a no window mangaer, and the game would be the only thing in my .xinitrc. Either start the game or XQF ( http://www.linuxgames.com/xqf/index.shtml ) and then XQF would start the game in full screen mode.