Video game platform emulators

An emulator is a program which serves to replicate the functions of another platform or system so as to allow applications and games to be run in environments they were not programmed for.

Note: For possibly more up to date selection of emulators, try checking the AUR 'emulator' keyword.

Warning: Owning a high-level emulator is legal, but distribution of any type of copyrighted ROMs is illegal. Consequently, Arch Linux does not distribute this copyrighted content, including game ROMs and ripped console BIOSs. You are fully responsible for whatever usage of the emulators obtained from the official repositories or the Arch User Repository you make, as well as any legal repercussion that result. Arch Linux bears no responsibility at all.

Multi-system

ares — Multi-system emulator by Near with experimental Nintendo 64 and PlayStation support.

https://ares-emu.net/ || ares-emu^AUR

BizHawk — A multi-system emulator on .NET. Features rerecording and tools for TASing. (Mono runtime)

https://tasvideos.org/BizHawk || bizhawk-bin^AUR

higan — Multisystem emulator focusing on accuracy, supporting SNES, NES, GB, GBC, GBA.

https://higan-emu.com/^{[dead link 2024-10-12 ⓘ]} || higan-git^AUR, higan-qq^AUR

Fightcade — The best way to play your favorite retro games with or against any other player in the world.

https://www.fightcade.com/ || fightcade2^AUR

FinalBurn Neo — Emulator for Arcade Games & Select Consoles. Based on FinalBurn and MAME.

https://neo-source.com/ || fbneo-git^AUR

GNOME Games — GNOME application to browse your local video games library and to easily pick and play a game from it. It is also a frontend to libretro. Part of gnome-extra.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Games || gnome-games

MAME — Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator.

https://www.mamedev.org/ || mame

mednafen — Command-line driven multisystem emulator.

https://mednafen.github.io/ || mednafen, graphical front-end mednaffe^AUR.

RetroArch — Frontend to libretro (emulation library, using modified versions of existing emulators as plugins).

https://www.libretro.com/ || retroarch

Nintendo

bsnes — Super Nintendo emulator focusing on performance, features, and ease of use.

https://github.com/bsnes-emu/bsnes || bsnes-qt5^AUR HD Fork: bsnes-hd^AUR

Cemu — Wii U emulator.

https://cemu.info/ || cemu^AUR

DeSmuME — Nintendo DS emulator.

https://desmume.org/ || desmume

Dolphin — Very capable GameCube and Wii emulator.

https://dolphin-emu.org/ || dolphin-emu

FCEUX — NTSC and PAL 8 bit Nintendo/Famicom emulator that is an evolution of the original FCE Ultra emulator. It is accurate, compatible and actively maintained.

https://fceux.com/ || fceux

GBCC — A Game Boy Color emulator written in C

https://github.com/philj56/GBCC || gbcc-git^AUR

GBE+ — DMG/GBC/GBA emulator and experimental NDS emulator.

https://github.com/shonumi/gbe-plus || gbe-plus-git^AUR

GearBoy — GameBoy and GameBoy Color emulator.

https://github.com/drhelius/Gearboy || gearboy^AUR

melonDS — Nintendo DS emulator.

https://melonds.kuribo64.net/ || melonds^AUR

Mesen — Multi-system emulator (NES, SNES, Game Boy and PC Engine)

https://github.com/SourMesen/Mesen2 || mesen2-git^AUR

mGBA — A Nintendo Gameboy Advance Emulator focusing on both speed and accuracy.

https://mgba.io/ || SDL frontend: mgba-sdl, QT5 frontend: mgba-qt

Mupen64Plus — Highly compatible Nintendo 64 emulator with plugin system.

https://www.mupen64plus.org/ || mupen64plus or a graphical front-end, such as rmg-git^AUR, simple64^AUR, parallel-launcher^AUR, m64py^AUR or cutemupen^AUR.

NanoBoy Advance — Accuracy-focused Game Boy Advance emulator.

https://github.com/nba-emu/NanoBoyAdvance || nanoboyadvance-git^AUR

Nestopia — Very accurate NES emulator.

http://0ldsk00l.ca/nestopia/ || nestopia^AUR

NooDS — A (hopefully!) speedy NDS emulator.

https://github.com/Hydr8gon/NooDS/ || noods-git^AUR

puNES — Qt-based Nintendo Entertaiment System emulator and NSF/NSFe Music Player

https://github.com/punesemu/puNES || punes^AUR (Note: Fails to run on Wayland as of 0.109. Use punes-git^AUR for working version.)

SameBoy — An accuracy-focused Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator

https://github.com/LIJI32/SameBoy || sameboy^AUR

SkyEmu — Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advanced Emulator.

https://skyemu.app/ || skyemu-git^AUR

Snes9x — Portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator.

https://www.snes9x.com/ || snes9x, GTK frontend snes9x-gtk

Suyu — Actively developed Switch emulator, fork of yuzu.

https://suyu.dev/ || suyu-dev-git^AUR

Visual Boy Advance — Game Boy emulator with Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, and Super Game Boy support.

https://vba-m.com/ || GTK frontend vbam-wx, SDL frontend vbam-sdl

ZSNES — Highly compatible Super Nintendo emulator.

https://www.zsnes.com/ || zsnes

Sony

DuckStation — DuckStation is an simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation(TM) console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.

https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation || duckstation-git^AUR

ePSXe — Emulator for the PlayStation video game console for x86-based PC hardware.

https://www.epsxe.com/ || epsxe^AUR

PCSXR — PlayStation emulator; Debian fork of the abandoned original PCSX

https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=pcsxr || pcsxr^AUR

PCSX2 — PlayStation 2 emulator. It is still being maintained and developed. It requires BIOS files.

https://pcsx2.net/ || pcsx2^AUR

PPSSPP — PlayStation Portable emulator.

https://ppsspp.org/ || ppsspp

Vita3K — Experimental PlayStation Vita emulator.

https://vita3k.org/ || vita3k-git^AUR, vita3k-bin^AUR

RPCS3 — Experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger.

https://rpcs3.net/ || rpcs3-git^AUR

Sega

BlastEm — Genesis and Sega CD Emulator focused on accuracy.

https://www.retrodev.com/blastem/ || blastem^AUR

FlyCast — Sega Dreamcast Emulator

https://github.com/flyinghead/flycast || flycast-git^AUR

Kega Fusion — An emulator of classic Sega consoles like Genesis/Mega Drive, Master System, Sega CD. Game Gear, 32X.

https://www.carpeludum.com/kega-fusion/ || kega-fusion^AUR

Kronos — Hardware-accelerated Sega Saturn emulator forked from uoYabause.

https://fcare.github.io || kronos^AUR

Yabause — A Sega Saturn emulator.

https://yabause.org/ || yabause-qt

Other consoles

Stella — Atari 2600 VCS emulator.

https://stella-emu.github.io/ || stella

Supermodel — A Sega Model 3 Arcade Emulator

https://www.supermodel3.com/ || supermodel-git^AUR

Virtual Jaguar — A portable Atari Jaguar emulator

https://icculus.org/virtualjaguar/ || virtualjaguar-git^AUR

xemu — An original Xbox emulator (fork of XQEMU).

https://xemu.app/ || xemu-git^AUR

Xenia — Xenia is an experimental emulator for the Xbox 360.

https://xenia.jp/ || xenia-git^AUR

XQEMU — An original Xbox emulator.

https://xqemu.com/ || xqemu-git^AUR

Personal computers

86Box — Emulator of x86-based machines based on PCem.

https://86box.net/ || 86box^AUR

ARAnyM — Atari Running on Any Machine

https://aranym.github.io/index.html || aranym^AUR

Atari++ — An emulator of Atari 400/800/400XL/800XL/130XE/5200

http://www.xl-project.com/ || atari++^AUR

Atari800 — An emulator of the Atari 800/800XL/130XE/5200 with various extensions

https://atari800.github.io/ || atari800^AUR

Basilisk II — Open Source 68k Macintosh Emulator

https://basilisk.cebix.net || basiliskii-git^AUR

BeebEM — BBC Micro Emulator

http://beebem-unix.bbcmicro.com/ || beebem^AUR

box64 — Linux Userspace x86_64 Emulator with a twist

https://github.com/ptitSeb/box64 || box64^AUR

CaPriCe32 — An emulator of the Amstrad CPC 8bit home computer range (CPC 464, 664, 6128)

https://github.com/ColinPitrat/caprice32 || caprice32-git^AUR

CLK — A latency hating emulator for 8 and 16 bit platforms

https://github.com/TomHarte/CLK || SDL frontend: clk-sdl^AUR, QT5 frontend: clk-qt^AUR

Denise — Highly accurate C64/Amiga emulator

https://sourceforge.net/projects/deniseemu/ || denise^AUR

DOSBox — Open-source DOS emulator which primarily focuses on running DOS Games.

https://www.dosbox.com/ || dosbox

DOSEmu — Open-source DOS emulator.

http://www.dosemu.org/ || dosemu

fMSX — Portable MSX Emulator.

https://fms.komkon.org/fMSX/ || fmsx^AUR

FS-UAE — Amiga Emulator.

https://fs-uae.net/ || fs-uae, frontend: fs-uae-launcher

Fuse-emulator — ZX Spectrum emulator.

https://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/fuse.php || fuse-emulator^AUR

Hatari — An Atari ST and STE emulator.

https://hatari.tuxfamily.org/ || hatari

LinApple — Apple 2e emulator

https://github.com/linappleii/linapple || linapple-git^AUR

Mini vMac — a miniature early Macintosh emulator

https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/ || minivmac^AUR

OpenMSX — The MSX emulator that aims for perfection.

https://openmsx.org/ || openmsx^AUR

PCem — Emulator for various IBM PC computers and clones.

https://pcem-emulator.co.uk/ || pcem^AUR

ScummVM — Virtual machine for old school adventures.

https://www.scummvm.org/ || scummvm

Vice — Versatile Commodore 8-bit Emulator.

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/ || vice

X Neko Project II — PC-9801 emulator.

https://www.nonakap.org/np2/ || xnp2^AUR

ZEsarUX — A Zx80/Zx81/Z88, Zx Spectrum 16/48/128/+2/+2A and ZX-Uno emulator with ULAPlus support

https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux || zesarux^AUR

Fantasy computers

Lowres-NX — Open source fantasy game console and Basic interpreter.

https://github.com/timoinutilis/lowres-nx || lowres-nx-git^AUR

microw8 — WebAssembly based fantasy console.

https://exoticorn.github.io/microw8/ || microw8^AUR

Pico8 — A fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs that supports the Lua language (multiple architectures supported, but binary only).

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php || pico-8^AUR

Pixel Vision 8 — 8-bit fantasy game console that supports the Lua language.

https://pixelvision8.github.io/Website/ || pixelvision8-1.0.0-bin^AUR

TIC-80 — A GPL-licensed fantasy computer for making, playing and sharing tiny games that supports multiple languages.

https://tic80.com/ || tic-80-git^AUR