Awesome Open Source Emulators
A curated list of awesome open source emulators.
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Content
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.