4 free open source game emulators for Windows PC, Linux and macOS

The emulator is 100% legal, just like torrenting, it's also a client download. Emulators are no different from other programs you can download like word processing software or music players. However, downloading and uploading ROMs is illegal, so make sure you use your own game files. You are only allowed to use the emulator provided you have a legal copy of the game, be it soft copy or CD format.

These emulators work pretty well. However, if you have a mid-range computer, you may experience some lag when playing continuously. These emulators also come with control handle mappings. All games work on keyboard and mouse, ideal for those with lots of old Playstation discs. Of course, things can change depending on the game you're playing.

1. RetroArch

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RetroArch is a modular multi-system emulator designed to be fast, lightweight and portable. RetroArch has features not found in some emulator frontends, such as real-time rewind and Game-Aware Shading. RetroArch lets you run classic games on a variety of computers and consoles through its smooth graphical interface. The settings are also unified so that the configuration only needs to be done once.

Alternatively, you can play the original game disc (CD) from RetroArch. RetroArch has advanced features like shaders, netplay, rewind, next frame response time, runahead, machine translation, accessibility features, etc.

RetroArch can work on the following systems:

1. Arcade (Final Burn Alpha/iMAME4All/MAME emulator)
2. Atari 2600 (Stellar emulator)
3. Atari Lynx (Handy emulator)
4. Nintendo Entertainment System - NES (FCEUmm/NEStopia/QuickNES emulator)
5. Super Nintendo (bSNES/Higan/PocketSNES/SNES9x/SNES9x Next emulator)
6. Nintendo 64 (Mupen64Plus emulator)
7. Nintendo GameBoy/GameBoy Color (gambatte emulator)
8. Nintendo GameBoy Advance (Mednafen GBA/Meteor/VBA-M/VBA Next emulator)
9. Nintendo DS (DeSmuME emulator)
10. Nintendo Virtual Boy (Mednafen VB emulator)
11. Neo Geo Pocket Color (Mednafen NGP emulator)
12. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive (Genesis Plus GX/Picodrive emulator)
13. Sega Master System/Sega Game Gear (Genesis Plus GX emulator)
14. Sega CD/Mega CD (Genesis Plus GX/Picodrive emulator)
15. Sega 32X (Picodrive emulator)
16. Sony PlayStation 1 (PCSX ReARMed/Mednafen PSX emulator)
17. PC Engine/PC Engine CD (Mednafen PCE Fast emulator)
18. WonderSwan Color/Crystal (Mednafen Wonderswan emulator)
19. Cave Story (game engine: NX Engine)
20. Doom 1/Doom 2/Ultimate Doom/Final Doom (game engine: prBoom)
21. Quake (game engine: TyrQuake)
22. ScummVM (game engine) [in progress]
23. MS-DOS (DosBox emulator) [in progress]
24. Nintendo 64 (Mupen64 emulator on ARM) [in progress]
25. Nintendo Entertainment System - NES (QuickNES emulator) [in progress]
26. Sega Saturn (Yabause emulator) [in progress]

2. DuckStation

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DuckStation is an emulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation(TM) console, focused on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability. The goal is to be as precise as possible while maintaining performance consistent with low-end devices. The 'hack' options are discouraged, the default configuration only supports all playable games with some improvements that have compatibility issues.

'BIOS' ROM image is required to start the emulator and play the game. You can use images from any hardware version or region, although a game region and BIOS region mismatch can cause compatibility issues. Image ROM is not provided with the emulator for legal reasons, you should render this image from your own console using Caetla or other means. Other features include:

1. CPU /JIT Compiler (x86-64, armv7/AArch32 and AArch64)
2. Hardware (D3D11, D3D12, OpenGL, Vulkan) and software rendering
3. Upscaling, texture filtering, and true color (24-bit) in hardware renderers
4. PGXP for geometry accuracy, texture correction, and depth buffer simulation
5. Supports image bin/cue, bin/img raw files, MAME CHD, 1-track ECM, MDS/MDF and unencrypted PBP formats.
6. Directly booting homebrew executables
7. Direct loading of Portable Sound Format (psf) files
8. Digital and analog controller for input (rumble is forwarded to host)
9. Namco GunCon pistol support (mouse simulation)
10. NeGcon Support

3. OpenEmu

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Open Emu is an open-source project to bring emulators to OS X, leveraging modern OS X technologies like Cocoa, Core Animation, and Quartz, and 3rd-party libraries like Sparkle for automatic updates. . OpenEmu is based on a modular, game-engine plugin-enabled architecture, which means OpenEmu can support a wide range of different backends and emulator engines while retaining the native OS X user interface. familiar.

OpenEmu is modular and thanks to the work of other great open source projects, it can emulate many different video game systems (called 'cores'). OpenEmu emulates the following systems:

1. Atari 2600, 5200, 7800 and Lynx
2. ColecoVision
3. Famicom Disk System - Famicom Disk System
4. Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance
5. Game Gear
6. Intellivision
7. NeoGeo Pocket
8. Nintendo (NES)/Famicom
9. Nintendo 64
10. Nintendo DS
11. Nintendo GameCube
12. Odyssey²/Videopac+
13. PC-FX
14. SG-1000
15. Sega 32X
16. Sega CD/Mega CD
17. Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
18. Sega Master System
19. Sega Saturn
20. Sony PlayStation
21. Sony PSP
22. Super Nintendo (SNES)
23. TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine/SuperGrafx
24. TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD
25. Vectrex
26. Virtual Boy
27. WonderSwan

4. Dolphin Emulator

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Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy these two console games in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: Compatibility with all PC gamepads, turbo speed, mode networked multiplayer, etc…

Kareem Winters

Update 08 June 2022