gamer-imtiaz / awesome-emulators

A curated list of awesome open source emulators.

Awesome Open Source Emulators

A curated list of awesome open source emulators.

How To Contribute

Please read CONTRIBUTING.

Content

• Atari
  • Atari 2600
  • Atari 5200
  • Atari 800
  • Atari 7800
  • Atari Lynx
  • Atari Jaguar
• Mattel
  • Mattel Intellivision
• Microsoft
  • Xbox
  • Xbox 360
• Multiemulators
• Nintendo
  • Gameboy / Gameboy Color
  • Gameboy Advance
  • GameCube / Wii
  • Nintendo 64
  • Nintendo DS
  • Nintendo 3DS
  • NES
  • SNES
  • Switch
  • Wii U
• SEGA
  • Dreamcast
  • Genesis / Megadrive
  • MasterSystem/GameGear
  • Model3
  • Saturn
• Sony
  • PSX
  • PS2
  • PS3
  • PS4
  • PSP
  • PSVita
• ZX Spectrum

Atari

Atari 2600

• stella - A multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator which allows you to play all of your favourite Atari 2600 games on your PC.

Atari 800

• atari800 - Atari 8-bit computer and 5200 console emulator.
• Altirra - Very accurate Atari 8-bit computer (All models) and 5200 console emulator.

Atari 5200

• kat5200 - An emulator for the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computers

Atari 7800

• ProSystem - ProSystem Emulator Version 1.3 by Greg Stanton

Atari Lynx

• Handy - "Handy" is an Atari Lynx Emulator

Atari Jaguar

• Virtual Jaguar - Virtual Jaguar is an open-source Atari Jaguar emulator.

Mattel

Mattel Intellivision

• jzIntv - Mattel Intellivision emulator and development environment.

Microsoft

Xbox

• XQemu - Open-source emulator to play original Xbox games on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
• CXBX-Reloaded - An emulator for running Microsoft Xbox (and eventually, Chihiro) games on Microsoft Windows.

Xbox 360

• Xenia - An open source research project for emulating Xbox 360 games on modern PCs.

Multiemulators

• FinalBurn Neo - An emulator for arcade games & select consoles.
• Higan - Emulates a number of classic video-game consoles of the 1980s and 1990s, allowing you to play classic games on a modern general-purpose computer.
• MAME - A multi-purpose emulation framework.
• Mednafen - portable, utilizing OpenGL and SDL, argument(command-line)-driven multi-system emulator.
• Genesis-Plus-GX - An enhanced port of Genesis Plus - accurate & portable Sega 8/16 bit emulator. Emulates the all SEGA 8-bit and 16-bit consoles.
• Xe - A emulator for many system such as Nintendo, SEGA, SNK, NEC, etc.

Nintendo

Gameboy / Gameboy Color

• Gambatte - Is a work-in-progress and portable Game Boy Color emulator.
• GearBoy - Game Boy / Gameboy Color emulator for iOS, Mac, Raspberry Pi, Windows, Linux and RetroArch.
• SameBoy - Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator written in C.
• TGBDual - A Japanese Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator. It was the first to support link cable emulation (through TCP/IP), later followed by VBA Link and then modern emulators.
• TGBDual-L - A rebase of changes in libertyernie/tgbdual on top of tgbdual_kai

Gameboy Advance

• mGBA - Aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators.

GameCube / Wii

• Dolphin - A GameCube and Wii emulator, allowing you to play games for these two platforms on PC with improvements.

Nintendo 64

• 1964js - Nintendo64 emulator in JavaScript.
• daedalus - Nintendo 64 emulator for Linux and PSP, with plans to port to Windows, Mac, PS Vita among other platforms.
• mupen64plus - A cross-platform plugin-based N64 emulator which is capable of accurately playing many games.
• project64 - Can play games reading ROM images, either dumped from the read-only memory of a N64 ROM cartridge or created directly on the computer as homebrew.
• ryu64 - This emulator aims to emulate the Nintendo 64, don't expect much right now, no commercial games work.

Nintendo DS

• DeSmuME - It sports tools designed for hackers, speedrunners, youtubers, and casual gamers.
• Dualis - A plugin-based DS emulator for x86/Win32 computers. It is written in x86 assembly and C++.
• melonDS - Aims at providing fast and accurate Nintendo DS emulation (still work in progress).

Nintendo 3DS

• 3dmoo - 3DS Emulator Prototype.
• Citra - An experimental open-source Nintendo 3DS emulator/debugger written in C++.
• Corgi3DS - Corgi3DS is a dog-themed LLE 3DS emulator.

NES

• fakeNES - A highly portable NES and Famicom emulator.
• FCEUX - A Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Famicom, Famicom Disk System (FDS), and Dendy emulator.
• Nestopia - An emulator designed to emulate the NES hardware as accurately as possible.
• Nintaco - A cycle-accurate NES/Famicom emulator and NES Sound Format (NSF) player written in Java, ostensibly making it cross-platform.
• Nitendulator - A Win32 NES emulator written in C++.
• Mesen - A cross-platform (Windows & Linux) NES/Famicom emulator built in C++ and C#.
• puNES - Nintendo Entertaiment System emulator and NSF/NSFe Music Player (Linux, OpenBSD and Windows).
• SimpleNES - An NES emulator written in C++ for nothing but fun.

SNES

• Bsnes - A subset project of higan, and focuses on performance, features, and ease of use.
• Mesen-S - A cross-platform (Windows & Linux) SNES emulator built in C++ and C#.
• Snes9x - A portable Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator.
• ZSNES - A free software Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator written mostly in x86 assembly. Most ROM Hacks require this emulator due to its poor inaccuracies.

Switch

• Ryujinx - Experimental Switch emulator written in C#.
• Yuzu - Experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.

Wii U

• Decaf - Researching Wii U emulation.

SEGA

Dreamcast

• flycast - Flycast is a multiplatform Sega Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave emulator
• lxdream - An emulator for the Sega Dreamcast system, running on Linux and macOS.
• nullDC - nullDC is an open source Dreamcast emulator
• reicast - A multi-platform Sega Dreamcast emulator.

Genesis / Megadrive

• blastem - Higly accurate emulator for the Genesis/Megadrive that runs on modest hardware.
• DGen - Portable Sega Genesis/Mega Drive emulator.

MasterSystem / GameGear

• Gearsystem - Sega Master System / Game Gear emulator for iOS, Mac, Raspberry Pi, Windows, Linux and RetroArch.

Model3

• Supermodel - Aim of the Supermodel project is to develop an emulator that is both accurate and playable.

Saturn

• Kronos - Supercharged fork of Yabause that supports upscaling and tons more
• Yabause - Sega Saturn emulator under GNU GPL. It currently runs on FreeBSD, GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Dreamcast.
• Yaba Sanshiro - Fork of the original Yabause Sega Saturn emulator.

Sony

PSX

• Avocado - A Modern Playstation 1 emulator.
• hpsx64 - Highly-Experimental Playstation Simulator x64.
• pcsxr - A forked version of the dead PCSX emulator, with a nicer interface and several improvements to stability and functionality.
• pcsx-redux - Yet another fork of the Playstation Emulator, PCSX.
• ProjectPSX - Experimental C# Playstation Emulator.
• Rustation-ng - PlayStation emulator in the Rust programing language.

PS2

• DobieStation - A young PS2 emulator with plans for an optimized Android port, as well as a fast, accurate, and easy-to-use PC port.
• pcsx2 - Emulate the PS2's hardware, using a combination of MIPS CPU Interpreters, Recompilers and a Virtual Machine which manages hardware states and PS2 system memory.
• Play! - An attempt to create a PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android & iOS platforms.

PS3

• RPCS3 - The world's first free and open-source PlayStation 3 emulator/debugger, written in C++ for Windows and Linux.

PS4

• orbital - Virtualization-based PlayStation 4 emulator.
• ps4delta - PS4Delta is a very early high level PlayStation 4 emulator, written in c++.
• GPCS4 - A Playstation 4 emulator which was just started.

PSP

• ppsspp - A fast and portable PSP emulator.

PSVita

• Vita3K - An experimental PlayStation Vita emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS.

ZX Spectrum

• ZX-Poly - Free cross-platfom ZX-Spectrum 128 emulator for Windows, Linux and macOS written in Java. ZX-Poly, ZX-Spectrum 128 and Spec256 configurations have been supported.