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Video Game Emulators

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.

Video Game Emulators

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.

PlatformConsolesEmulators
AmigaUAE
Arcade1. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)
2. Visual Pinball
AtariAtari 2600Stella
NintendoNintendo Entertainment System1. FCEUX
2. NESticle
3. Nestopia
Super NES1. Snes9x
2. ZSNES
Nintendo 641. Mupen64Plus
2. Project64
3. Project Unreality
4. UltraHLE
GameCube/WiiDolphin
Wii UCemu
HandheldsGame BoyWzonka-Lad
Game Boy AdvanceVisualBoyAdvance (Also supports Game Boy and Game Boy Color)
Nintendo 3DSCitra
HybridNintendo SwitchYuzu
SNKNeo Geo CDNeoCD
SonyPlayStation1. AdriPSX
2. bleem!
3. bleemcast!
4. Connectix Virtual Game Station
5. ePSXe
6. PCSX-Reloaded
PlayStation 2PCSX2
PlayStation 3RPCS3
PlayStation PortablePPSSPP
PlayStation 4Not available now
Multi-system emulators1. 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

Is videogame emulation legal?

Emulators are totally legal to share, download, and even modify some of them. Because their source codes are even available on GitHub

Can you get in trouble for using emulators?

Emulators are free and there is no law on them. so we can say it will not make any trouble by using them.

Are games on emulators free?

Emulators use ROMs to play games. These ROMs are totally free and even available on some websites.