Running The Sonic Kiosk image in QEMU

First obtain the image from here (This guide uses Sonic1.img.gz, but any others can be used.) and decompress it.

Install QEMU

Arch: sudo pacman -S qemu-full

Debian: sudo apt install qemu-utils qemu-system-x86 qemu-system-gui -y

Running the image

qemu-system-i386 -hda sonic1.img -m 2G -boot c -vga std -cpu host -accel kvm -M q35 -vga std -usb -device usb-tablet -rtc base=localtime -net nic,model=rtl8139 -net user -monitor stdio

The image might take a bit to boot up. If you need to press ctrl-alt-delete then enter sendkey ctrl-alt-delete in QEMU Monitor then click logoff and login to the admin account (passwords if needed).

This uses qemu-system-i386 because the image is 32-bit and 2GB can be substituted with any amount you want.

Notes: no version will launch because QEMU doesn't provide 3D acceleration in windows, however you can explore the operating system. The shell (HKCU) is set to stall_bootstrapper.exe, change this to explorer.exe to get a normal system experience. Also there seems to be some issues with AMD cpus.