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The Best Emulators for Each Platform in LaunchBox


Tom Drake

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I'm an old school emulator user, going back to around 1998-2000, but I haven't been too active the past decade (thanks to kids) other than a Hyperspin setup on my NVIDIA Shield. Now I'm looking at a home arcade cabinet and am really getting back into it.

To get caught up on all the new emulators and how well they're working on Windows, I spent a couple days trying to compile my picks for each system I want to add to LaunchBox. Most posts and videos had some outdated options so I've updated what I could here. In most cases, I'm trying to lean towards RetroArch and MAME for simplicity and to use the bezel project.

I'm sharing my list here because it might help others chose the emulators they want and I'm also hoping people will weigh in if they see a bad choice. I'm only a few days in on this so I haven't tried them all myself!

Platform Emulator
3DO Interactive Multiplayer RA opera
Arcade MAME
Atari 2600 RA stella
Atari 5200 RA atari800
Atari 7800 RA prosystem
Atari Jaguar RA virtual jaguar
Atari Lynx RA bettle handy
Colecovision RA bluemsx
Commodore 64 RA vice x64
Emerson Arcadia 2001 MAME?
GCE Vectrex RA vecx
Laserdisc-Based Hardware Daphne
Mattel Intellivision RA freeintv
MSX RA bluemsx
MSX 2 RA bluemsx
NEC PC-FX RA beetle pc-fx
NEC SuperGrafx RA beetle supergrafx
NEC TurboGrafx-16 RA beetle pce fast
NEC TurboGrafx-CD RA beetle pce fast
Neo Geo Pocket RA beetle neopop
Neo Geo Pocket Color RA beetle neopop
Nintendo 3DS RA citra canary
Nintendo 64 RA mupen64plus-next
Nintendo DS RA melonds
Nintendo Entertainment System RA mesen
Nintendo Famicom Disk System ??
Nintendo Game & Watch MAME?
Nintendo Game Boy RA gambatte
Nintendo Game Boy Advance RA mgba
Nintendo Game Boy Color RA gambatte
Nintendo GameCube RA dolphin
Nintendo Pokemon Mini RA pokemini
Nintendo Satellaview RA bnes accuracy??
Nintendo Switch Yuzu
Nintendo Virtual Boy RA bettle vb
Nintendo Wii RA dolphin
Nintendo Wii U Cemu
Odyssey2 MAME?
Othello Multivision MAME?
Philips CD-i MAME?
RCA Studio II MAME?
Sammy Atomiswave RA flycast
Sega 32x RA picodrive
Sega CD RA genesis plus rx
Sega Dreamcast RA flycast
Sega Game Gear RA genesis plus rx
Sega Genesis RA genesis plus rx
Sega Master System RA genesis plus rx
Sega Model 2 Model 2 Emulator
Sega Model 3 Supermodel
Sega Naomi RA flycast
Sega Pico MAME?
Sega Saturn RA beetle saturn
Sega SG-1000 RA genesis plus rx
Sinclair ZX Spectrum +3 RA 81
SNK Neo Geo AES MAME?
SNK Neo Geo CD MAME?
Sony Playstation RA beetle psx hw
Sony Playstation 2 PCSX2
Sony PlayStation Portable RA ppsspp
Sony PocketStation MAME?
Super Nintendo Entertainment System RA bnes accuracy
SuperVision MAME?
WonderSwan RA beetle wswan? Ares?
WonderSwan Color RA beetle wswan? Ares?
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I like to stick to RA and MAME as much as I can as well. My choices are very similar to yours except for 3.

  1. GCE Vectrex - ParaJVE
  2. Sega 32X = Kega Fusion (Pico core has issues with a few games)
  3. Atari Jaguar - Phoenix (RA core still has issues with a few games)
  4. 3DO Interactive Multiplayer - Phoenix (RA Opera core has a few issues with some games)

 

Edited by Headrush69
Added 3DO
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Overall a very solid list though I would suggest a couple of alternative choices for a couple of systems. Not to say these alternatives are "better" but I would say they are equally good with their own pros over the choices given.

Atari 7800 - A7800, this is a fork of Mame but only does Atari 7800 with support for the Pokey sound chip which some homebrew games utilize.
Gameboy - Sameboy (RA core), this is a more accurate emulator but Gambatte is still very solid.
SNES - Snes9x or Mesen S (RA cores) both of these cores to the end user in terms of gameplay are just as good as BSnes or Higan but without the special chip requirements for games that use them or the CPU power requirements.

On another note, you can use the Beetle Supergrafx core for all the PC Engine stuff, you don't need to use multiple cores.

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  • 3 years later...
8 hours ago, paulitix said:

Is this list still accurate?

For the most part yes, but some people will suggest standalone emus over the RA cores of the same emulation engines.

Some notable changes are:

  1. BigP emu for Atari Jaguar 
  2. Ryujinx and Yuzu are both excellent for Nintendo Switch
  3. Retroarch has a separate a5200 core now that works well for many games (based on same atari800 core)

 

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6 hours ago, Headrush69 said:

For the most part yes, but some people will suggest standalone emus over the RA cores of the same emulation engines.

Makes sense....but I'm enjoying Mega Bezel too much right now to make the switch.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, Nocta said:

Did you find a way to make it work for all games of a system automatically? It's an amazing tool, if it could be set up easily in Launchbox, it would be amazing.

Yes just follow the process in that thread and on github

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Thank you! Do you notice any lag though? The developer of WindoCast said himself that there should be a small amount due to the implementation. I wonder if using Reshade would not be actually better in terms of input lag?

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3 hours ago, Nocta said:

Thank you! Do you notice any lag though? The developer of WindoCast said himself that there should be a small amount due to the implementation. I wonder if using Reshade would not be actually better in terms of input lag?

If your settings are optimal and your pc is powerful lag should be minimal. WindowCast is still new so give it time

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