Video game emulators are copy of a real video game console but on the basis of software, not the physical device. Emulators are used to run software of a system on another system without rebuilding the whole application as new.
A History of Video Game Emulators
With the beginning of the internet that made the world a global village from 1990 to 2000. This was the golden era for emulators. when developers start making the emulator for consoles. In this era, many gaming consoles built and replaced with consoles.
The main reason of developing emulators was to provide a support to play old games on modern devices. Because most of the companies have stopped the support of their old consoles. Therefore it’s difficult to find and purchase them from the market. To play the console games on an emulator there is a need for ROMs.
What Are Video Game ROMs?
Video game ROMs are a copy of the original game file that runs on an emulator. The ROM stands for Read-Only Memory. With the help of special software, these ROMs can be copied from special hardware’s cartridge to computers. There are many websites that provide these ROMs freely. After downloading an emulator and ROM we can play the old classic games on our desired platform.
List of Video Game Emulators
Video game emulators are available almost for every platform. here I have mention them.
| Platform | Consoles | Emulators |
|---|---|---|
| Amiga | UAE | |
| Arcade | 1. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) 2. Visual Pinball | |
| Atari | Atari 2600 | Stella |
| Nintendo | Nintendo Entertainment System | 1. FCEUX 2. NESticle 3. Nestopia |
| Super NES | 1. Snes9x 2. ZSNES | |
| Nintendo 64 | 1. Mupen64Plus 2. Project64 3. Project Unreality 4. UltraHLE | |
| GameCube/Wii | Dolphin | |
| Wii U | Cemu | |
| Handhelds | Game Boy | Wzonka-Lad |
| Game Boy Advance | VisualBoyAdvance (Also supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color) | |
| Nintendo 3DS | Citra | |
| Hybrid | Nintendo Switch | Yuzu |
| SNK | Neo Geo CD | NeoCD |
| Sony | PlayStation | 1. AdriPSX 2. bleem! 3. bleemcast! 4. Connectix Virtual Game Station 5. ePSXe 6. PCSX-Reloaded |
| PlayStation 2 | PCSX2 | |
| PlayStation 3 | RPCS3 | |
| PlayStation Portable | PPSSPP | |
| PlayStation 4 | Not available now | |
| Multi-system emulators | 1. higan 2. Mednafen 3. MESS (Multi Emulator Super System), formerly a stand-alone application and now part of MAME 4. OpenEmu |
These emulators are available for android, windows, MAC, and IOS platform.
F.A.Q
Emulators are totally legal to share, download, and even modify some of them. Because their source codes are even available on GitHub
Emulators are free and there is no law on them. so we can say it will not make any trouble by using them.
Emulators use ROMs to play games. These ROMs are totally free and even available on some websites.
