What an emulator actually does to a thirty-year-old game, why a 3.58 MHz console can need a 3 GHz computer, where the law stands in 2026, and which emulators to use for which system. Step through a frame, scrub the timeline, and the legal helper tells you where you stand.
Video game emulation is running a game built for one system on a different device by re-creating the original hardware in software. A video game emulator is that software: a program that imitates a console's processor, picture chip, sound chip, memory and controller ports closely enough that the console's own games run inside it without knowing the difference. Play a Super Nintendo game on a laptop, or carry a Game Boy library on a phone, and an emulator is what makes it possible.
Two pieces are always involved. The emulator is the pretend console. The game file, a ROM for a cartridge game or a disc image for a CD or DVD game, is the game itself, byte for byte. Some systems need a third: a copy of the console's own start-up firmware, the BIOS, which PlayStation, Saturn and Xbox emulators will not run without. The next sections show what the emulator does with those files sixty times a second, what that costs, and why the files, not the emulator, are where the law gets involved.
A low-level emulator re-creates each chip inside the console, the processor, the picture chip, the sound chip, the memory, and runs them in lockstep, cycle by cycle, the way the real board did. Nothing is assumed about what the game is trying to do; the emulator just does exactly what the hardware would have done and the game comes out right, quirks included. That is why bsnes, Mesen and the MAME project can run games that rely on hardware timing bugs, and why they need so much more computer than the console had: every tick of a 3.58 MHz chip becomes hundreds of instructions on yours.
A high-level emulator watches for what the game asks the hardware to do, draw this triangle, mix this sound, load this texture, and hands the job to your own graphics card and sound system instead of simulating the chip that would have done it. It is a shortcut, and shortcuts miss corners: a game that pokes the hardware in an unexpected way can glitch. The gain is enormous: it is how UltraHLE ran Nintendo 64 games on a 1999 PC, and how Dolphin, PCSX2, PPSSPP and the Switch emulators run 3D games at four times their original resolution.
Most emulators mix the two: a low-level processor so the game logic is right, a high-level renderer so the picture can be upscaled. FPGA consoles, covered in our TV console guide, take low-level emulation one step further and rebuild the chips as logic rather than as software.
Hover or tap a row for the figure's source. The ratio is the story: hundreds of times the clock for a cycle-accurate 8-bit or 16-bit system, a dozen for the high-level PS2 and GameCube emulators, three or four for the Switch, whose processor is close enough to a PC's that much of its code can be translated rather than simulated.
NES ran at 1.79 MHz; Mesen treats about 1 GHz as comfortable (any PC from the last fifteen years). That is 559 times the clock.
Super Nintendo ran at 3.58 MHz; bsnes (accuracy profile) treats about 3 GHz as comfortable (the famous 3 GHz, from byuu's 2011 "Accuracy takes power" article). That is 838 times the clock.
Genesis ran at 7.6 MHz; BlastEm treats about 1.5 GHz as comfortable (a cycle-accurate Genesis on a modest laptop). That is 197 times the clock.
PlayStation ran at 33.9 MHz; DuckStation treats about 2 GHz as comfortable (any 64-bit processor; hardware renderer optional). That is 59 times the clock.
Nintendo 64 ran at 93.75 MHz; Simple64 / Mupen64Plus treats about 3 GHz as comfortable (high-level; the accurate ParaLLEl RDP wants a GPU with Vulkan). That is 32 times the clock.
Dreamcast ran at 200 MHz; Flycast treats about 3 GHz as comfortable (runs on phones from 2018 onward). That is 15 times the clock.
PlayStation 2 ran at 294 MHz; PCSX2 treats about 3.5 GHz as comfortable (recommends four cores and a GPU with Vulkan or DirectX 12). That is 12 times the clock.
GameCube ran at 486 MHz; Dolphin treats about 3.5 GHz as comfortable (two fast cores; most of the work moves to the GPU). That is 7 times the clock.
Nintendo 3DS ran at 268 MHz; Azahar treats about 3 GHz as comfortable (high-level; the second screen is cheap). That is 11 times the clock.
PlayStation 3 ran at 3200 MHz; RPCS3 treats about 4.5 GHz as comfortable (eight threads and AVX2; the Cell's seven SPUs are the hard part, so the clock ratio understates it). That is 1 times the clock.
Switch ran at 1020 MHz; Eden / Citron treats about 3.5 GHz as comfortable (four cores and a modern GPU; shaders compile on first run). That is 3 times the clock.
Hover or tap a bar for the emulator that closed the gap and why it took that long.
NES, 1985 → 1997: Pasofami and iNES came first, but NESticle (April 1997) was the one everybody ran.
Genesis, 1989 → 1997: The same year, from the same Bloodlust and Steve Snake camps.
Super Nintendo, 1991 → 1997: Both arrived in 1997; bsnes made it cycle-accurate from 2004.
PlayStation, 1995 → 1999: Commercial products, both sued by Sony, both won.
Nintendo 64, 1996 → 1999: The first high-level emulator: Mario 64 and Ocarina on a Pentium II.
Dreamcast, 1999 → 2004: Half a decade; nullDC and later Flycast finished the job.
PlayStation 2, 2000 → 2012: Twelve years: the PS2's two vector units made it the hardest console of its time.
GameCube, 2001 → 2008: Started in 2003 as a demo; the 2008 to 2009 builds ran whole games.
PSP, 2005 → 2012: Playable within a year of its first release, and on phones.
Wii, 2006 → 2009: Shares the GameCube's chips, so it came almost free.
PlayStation 3, 2006 → 2019: Thirteen years; most of the library is now playable.
Nintendo 3DS, 2011 → 2017: Now continued as Azahar after Citra closed in 2024.
Wii U, 2012 → 2017: Breath of the Wild at 4K before the Switch version was a year old.
PlayStation 4, 2013 → 2024: Bloodborne first; a growing minority of the library since.
Switch, 2017 → 2019: Two years, the shortest gap ever; both projects were later shut down and forked.
Switch 2, 2025 → 2026: An October 2026 branch boots a few launch games with glitches; not playable in any practical sense yet.
Pick where the game came from and whether its console is still sold, and the verdict appears here.
The game is a cartridge or disc I own for a system that is no longer sold.
Copying a game you own onto your own computer for your own use is the position most preservationists and many lawyers consider defensible as fair use, and no rights holder has sued an individual for it. It has also never been ruled on, so it is a grey area rather than a green one. Dumping needs a cartridge reader or a disc drive; it does not need a download.
The game is a cartridge or disc I own for a system that is still on sale.
Owning the game does not change the copy; what changes is that current consoles encrypt their games, and the DMCA forbids circumventing a technical protection measure even for media you own. Nintendo's 2024 to 2026 actions against Yuzu, Ryujinx and 400 forks rest on that circumvention argument, not on copyright. No court has ruled on whether it holds.
The game is an official re-release I bought for a system that is no longer sold.
Nintendo Classics, PlayStation Plus Premium, the Evercade cartridges, GOG's DOSBox bundles and the various Legacy and Anniversary collections are all emulation sold by the rights holder. Some of those packages contain plain ROM files you can read with another emulator, which is fine for personal use as long as you keep them to yourself.
The game is an official re-release I bought for a system that is still on sale.
You are playing the game the way the publisher sold it. The only limit is the one they chose: a subscription catalogue goes away when you stop paying, and a sealed classic console runs the games it shipped with and no others.
The game is homebrew or a free release for a system that is no longer sold.
Homebrew games, demoscene releases, and games whose rights holders have released them for free are yours to download and play. Itch.io, the Internet Archive's licensed collections and the homebrew sections of fan sites are full of them, and they are the right way to try an emulator before you dump anything.
The game is homebrew or a free release for a system that is still on sale.
Homebrew exists for current consoles too, and running it in an emulator is fine. Running it on the console itself may need a jailbreak, which is where the console maker's terms of service (and sometimes a ban) come in.
The game is a download site for a system that is no longer sold.
A ROM of a commercial game you did not buy is an unauthorised copy, however old the game and however long it has been out of print. Copyright on a 1990 game lasts until well past 2080. Enforcement against downloaders is rare; enforcement against the sites is not (Nintendo's 2018 suit against two ROM sites ended in a $12 million judgment).
The game is a download site for a system that is still on sale.
This is the case that shut Yuzu down: the settlement cited the emulator's use with pirated copies of a game that leaked before release. Nintendo has also pursued individual sellers and modders in 2025 and 2026, with judgments of $2 million and $4.5 million. Downloading a current game is the one square on this grid that is unambiguously against the law everywhere.
United States law, as of November 2026; we are not lawyers. The emulator itself is legal in every square: Sony v. Connectix and Sony v. Bleem (9th Circuit, 2000) settled that an emulator built by reverse engineering does not infringe. Every square is also in the page for anyone reading without scripts.
Everything through the PS2 era, in one place
Not one emulator but a front end that runs dozens of them as "cores" under one interface, with shared controller, shader and save-state settings. The backbone of most retro handhelds and the only one on the iOS App Store that covers this many systems.
NES and SNES, Game Boy and GBA
Cycle-accurate NES, SNES, Game Boy and PC Engine with a debugger good enough that homebrew developers write games in it.
NES and SNES
The SNES emulator that defined accuracy: every SNES game runs, including the ones that rely on timing bugs. Lives on in RetroArch and as Ares.
NES and SNES
The fast one since 1997: nearly as accurate as bsnes on a fraction of the processor, which is why every handheld ships it.
Game Boy and GBA
Game Boy, Color and Advance, accurate enough for link-cable play between instances and small enough for a 2 GB handheld.
Game Boy and GBA
The most accurate Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulator; the one the hardware test ROMs are checked against.
Nintendo 64
Mupen64Plus with the accurate ParaLLEl graphics plugin set up for you: the easy way to a correct Nintendo 64.
GameCube and Wii
GameCube and Wii at any resolution, with online play, since 2003. The project most other emulators measure themselves against.
DS and 3DS
Nintendo DS with local wireless and DSi support; the two screens can be arranged any way your display allows.
DS and 3DS
The 3DS emulator that continued Citra after Nintendo's 2024 settlement closed it; needs the console's own keys to decrypt games.
PlayStation 1
PlayStation 1 with the texture wobble fixed, widescreen patched in and the BIOS still required. The standard choice since 2020.
PlayStation 2
Twenty-five years of PlayStation 2, with the whole library rated on its own compatibility list. Wants four cores and a real GPU.
PlayStation 2
PCSX2 on Android. The original was abandoned in 2023; NetherSX2 is the patched continuation handhelds ship.
PSP
PSP at full speed on almost anything, including the App Store since 2024. The friendliest emulator for a first try.
Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast
Cycle-accurate Sega Genesis that still runs on a weak laptop; also inside RetroArch.
Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, PlayStation 1, Game Boy and GBA
A command-line multi-system emulator whose Saturn, PS1 and PC Engine cores are among the most accurate anywhere; RetroArch's Beetle cores are Mednafen.
Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, Arcade
Dreamcast, plus the Naomi and Atomiswave arcade boards built on the same chips, with online play.
Arcade
Thirty years of documenting arcade hardware, now tens of thousands of machines. Accuracy first, speed second; the project that made emulation a preservation discipline.
Arcade
The arcade emulator for playing rather than archiving: Capcom, SNK and Sega boards at full speed on a handheld.
PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3 on a PC with eight threads and AVX2. Install the official firmware from Sony's site; the emulator will not run without it.
Wii U
Wii U, open source since 2022. Breath of the Wild at 4K is the demonstration everyone has seen.
Switch
The Yuzu continuations that survived 2026 by leaving GitHub. Need the console's keys and firmware, which they will not supply.
PlayStation 4
Early PlayStation 4 emulation: Bloodborne first, a few hundred titles since, many with glitches. Interesting rather than reliable.
Original Xbox
The original Xbox, with its own BIOS and hard-drive image required. Most of the library runs; Halo has been playable since 2021.
DOS and old PC games
MS-DOS and the PCs that ran it. GOG and Steam use DOSBox to sell most of the 1990s PC catalogue, so you may already own it.
DOS and old PC games
Not an emulator but a replacement engine for point-and-click adventures and RPGs; runs the original data files on anything.
NES and SNES, Game Boy and GBA, Nintendo 64, DS and 3DS
The iPhone emulator that opened the App Store in April 2024: NES, SNES, Game Boy, N64 and DS with controller and iCloud sync.
Nothing on this list does that combination. The PS2 and GameCube on an iPhone, and the Wii U on a phone of any kind, are the usual gaps.
Every emulator here is free, and all but three are open source. Download from the linked project page: third-party "download hub" sites wrap the same files in adware, and since Nintendo's 2026 takedowns scattered the Switch emulators across private servers, fake mirrors have multiplied. The screen on each card shows roughly how far up the console timeline it reaches.
RetroArch from retroarch.com covers everything through the PS2 era; for one system, the standalone (Dolphin, DuckStation, PCSX2, mGBA) is usually easier to set up well.
Dump your own cartridges with a reader such as the Retrode or GBxCart, rip discs with any DVD drive, or start with homebrew to learn the ropes. Official collections on GOG and Steam often contain plain ROM files.
PS1, PS2, Saturn and the original Xbox need firmware copied from a console you own; the emulator tells you the file names. Nintendo systems through the Wii need none.
Any Xbox, PlayStation or 8BitDo pad works. Set it up once in RetroArch and every core inherits it.
Turn on a CRT shader or integer scaling for the right look, and learn the save-state hotkey. Everything else can stay at the default.
From Desktop Mode, EmuDeck installs RetroArch and every standalone, sets the controller, and adds your games to the Steam library as if they were Steam games.
EmuDeck makes an Emulation folder with a sub-folder per system. Drop your dumps there; it finds them.
Same folder, bios sub-folder; EmuDeck checks which are present and which are missing.
It writes each game into Steam with artwork, so Gaming Mode shows them next to everything else.
A 60 Hz cap for 2D systems saves the battery; the GPU clock can come down too. PS2 and Switch want the defaults.
RetroArch, PPSSPP, Dolphin and mGBA are on the Play Store; the Switch forks and NetherSX2 are APKs from the projects' own pages, so verify the source.
Android 11 and later restrict storage; give the emulator a folder once through the system picker and keep everything under it.
Bluetooth pads from Xbox, PlayStation and 8BitDo just work; a telescopic clip pad (Backbone, GameSir) makes a phone into a handheld.
In the 3D emulators choose Vulkan on a recent Snapdragon; on an older or Mali chip, try OpenGL if Vulkan glitches.
A 2023 flagship plays through GameCube and most PS2; Switch is a flagship-only hobby and Wii U does not exist on Android.
Since April 2024 Apple allows emulators: Delta, RetroArch, PPSSPP, Provenance and others are there, free. No jailbreak, no sideloading.
AirDrop, iCloud Drive or a cable; each app has an import button. iOS allows no BIOS-dependent emulator on the store, so PS1 is RetroArch-only and PS2 is absent.
Any Bluetooth pad, or the on-screen one; Delta's skins are the best touch controls on any platform.
Delta and RetroArch sync saves between an iPhone and an iPad.
NES through N64, DS and PSP run well; GameCube and newer are not on the App Store and JIT restrictions make them slow even when sideloaded.
Most Linux handhelds ship stock firmware and run better on a community one: muOS or Knulli for Anbernic, OnionOS for the Miyoo Mini. Android handhelds (Retroid, Ayn) use the Android steps.
The firmware has a folder per system; copy your dumps in and the menu finds them on the next boot.
A bios folder on the same card. The firmware's BIOS checker lists what is missing.
Every firmware ships a few CRT and LCD shaders; a Game Boy game through an LCD shader on a 4:3 screen looks right.
A $60 handheld plays through PS1; a $200 Android one plays through GameCube and most PS2; nothing under $400 plays Switch well. Our handheld guide compares them.
The console makers emulate too; they just sell it. Each of these is emulation with the games included and nothing to dump.
NES, SNES, Game Boy, N64, Genesis, GBA and GameCube on a Switch or Switch 2 subscription, running on Nintendo's own emulators.
A catalogue of PS1, PS2, PSP and PS3 games, emulated or streamed, on a PS4, PS5 or PC.
Licensed cartridges of arcade, 8-bit and 16-bit games for its own handheld and the VS-R console; no ROMs, no subscription.
The NES and SNES Classic, Genesis Mini, PlayStation Classic and Atari 2600+ are emulator boxes sold by the original makers.
Mega Man Legacy, Castlevania Anniversary, Atari 50, Sonic Origins, Metal Gear Solid Master Collection: emulation sold as a game.
Most of the 1990s PC catalogue is sold bundled with DOSBox or ScummVM, so buying the game buys the emulator and the data files together.
On 17 August 2026 Nintendo filed seven DMCA notices and GitHub removed more than 400 repositories: 311 copies of Suyu, the Skyline Android emulator, MonoNX and a long tail of Yuzu forks. The notices argue circumvention of encryption rather than copyright, which no court has yet ruled on. Eden and Citron, which had left GitHub for their own servers after a first wave in February, were untouched and continue.
An experimental branch of Eden called Eden-NX2 appeared on 29 October 2026 and boots a handful of launch titles with missing shaders and crashes. It is a research build, not something to play on, and it relies on a jailbreak that was itself written with AI help. Nintendo had not responded as this was written.
Two years after Apple opened the App Store, Delta, RetroArch, PPSSPP, Provenance and Folium are all there, with controller support and iCloud saves. The gap is anything that needs a BIOS or a GPU: PS1 only through RetroArch, no PS2, no GameCube.
A memory shortage and tariffs raised the Raspberry Pi 5 three times in 2026, the Switch 2 and Steam Deck OLED both went up in May, and Nintendo Classics rose with them. A $60 handheld that plays everything through the PlayStation 1 became the cheapest way into retro gaming by a wide margin.
This is the overview; our handheld and TV console guides are the shopping lists. The processor figures come from each emulator's own system requirements page or wiki, with the SNES figure from byuu's 2011 Ars Technica article on accuracy, and they are typical comfortable values rather than minimums: an accuracy setting, a resolution multiplier or a particular game can move them a long way. The timeline uses the first release that the community used to play through a library, which is a judgement; the note on each bar says which emulator and why.
On the law we describe what courts have decided and what they have not, and we are not lawyers. The two 2000 appellate decisions (Sony v. Connectix and Sony v. Bleem) are the settled part; the status of personal backups and of decryption keys is the unsettled part, and the legal helper says so. We do not link to ROM sites and we do not recommend them.
Video game emulation is using software to make one device behave like another gaming system, so that games built for that system can run on hardware they were never designed for. A PC running a Game Boy emulator pretends to be a Game Boy closely enough that the original game cannot tell the difference. The emulator is the pretend console; the ROM or disc image is the game it plays.
The emulator is the program that imitates the console; the ROM is the data of one game, copied from its cartridge (a disc game is a disc image instead). You need both: an emulator with no ROM is a player with no disc. They also differ in law. Emulators are legal to write, distribute and use; a ROM of a commercial game is legal only if you made it from your own copy or bought it in an official release.
Because an accurate emulator re-creates every chip in software, and a chip doing one thing in silicon in one tick becomes hundreds of instructions on a general-purpose processor. The SNES ran at 3.58 MHz; bsnes, which reproduces its timing exactly, wants about 3 GHz, roughly 840 times as fast. Faster emulators such as Snes9x take shortcuts and run on a fraction of that, with a handful of games that misbehave as the price.
In the United States, yes: two 2000 appeals court rulings, Sony v. Connectix and Sony v. Bleem, held that building an emulator by reverse engineering is lawful. What you load into it is where the questions start. Downloading commercial games you did not buy is copyright infringement; dumping games you own is an untested grey area; and for current consoles, Nintendo argues that using the console's decryption keys is illegal circumvention under the DMCA, a claim no court has ruled on.
No court has said so, and the download itself is a copy you did not make, so most lawyers would call it infringement in principle even where the dump would have been defensible. The careful route is to dump your own cartridge or disc: a cartridge reader costs $30 to $100 and any DVD drive rips a disc. Enforcement against individual downloaders is rare; the suits have gone after the sites and the sellers.
RetroArch, if you want one program for every system through the PlayStation 2 era, on any device including an iPhone. If you want one console done well, the standalone: mGBA for Game Boy Advance, DuckStation for PlayStation 1, Dolphin for GameCube and Wii, PPSSPP for PSP. Download from the project's own site; third-party download hubs bundle adware.
Low-level emulation re-creates each chip and runs them cycle by cycle, which is accurate and expensive. High-level emulation recognises what the game is asking the hardware to do, draw a triangle, play a note, and hands the job to your own graphics card and sound system, which is fast and occasionally wrong. Nearly every emulator for a 3D console is high-level; nearly every accurate emulator for a 2D one is low-level. Most mix the two.
Not in any practical sense. An experimental Eden branch began booting a few Switch 2 launch games in October 2026 with missing graphics and crashes, and there is no PlayStation 5 emulator at all; the PS4 emulator shadPS4 is itself early. Switch 1 games run on a fast PC through Eden or Citron, and PS3 games through RPCS3.
It is the main tool of it. Cartridges, discs and consoles decay, publishers stop selling games, and storefronts close; the Video Game History Foundation found in 2023 that 87 percent of games released in the US before 2010 were out of print. Emulation keeps the software runnable after the hardware is gone, which is why libraries, museums and the console makers themselves rely on it.
Gander Games makes free retro-style browser games and has no connection to any emulator project, console maker or storefront named here. There are no affiliate links on this page. Our guides to emulation handhelds and emulation consoles for the TV cover the hardware.