Video game platform emulators

Related articles
List of games
Gaming
Gamepad
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
BizHawk
— A multi-system emulator on .NET. Features rerecording and tools for TASing. (Mono runtime.)
https://tasvideos.org/BizHawk
||
bizhawk-bin
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-bin
AUR
FinalBurn Neo
— Emulator for Arcade Games & Select Consoles. Based on FinalBurn and MAME.
https://neo-source.com/
||
fbneo-git
AUR
higan
— Multisystem emulator focusing on accuracy, supporting SNES, NES, GB, GBC, GBA.
https://higan-emu.com/
[
dead link
2025-08-16—domain name not resolved]
||
higan-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.retroarch.com/
||
retroarch
Nintendo
Azahar
— Open-source 3DS emulator project based on Citra & Lime3DS.
https://github.com/azahar-emu/azahar
||
azahar
AUR
AzaharPlus
— Fork of Azahar which restores some features
https://github.com/AzaharPlus/AzaharPlus
||
azaharplus-appimage
AUR
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
Citra
— Nintendo 3DS emulator.
https://citra-emulator.com/
||
citra
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
gopher64
— Nintendo 64 emulator written in Rust and C.
https://github.com/gopher64/gopher64
||
gopher64
AUR
mandarine
— Nintendo 3DS emulator - Citra fork with added features/tweaks.
https://github.com/mandarine3ds/mandarine
||
mandarine
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
Tanuki3DS
— 3DS Emulator
https://github.com/burhanr13/Tanuki3DS
||
tanuki3ds
AUR
Visual Boy Advance
— Game Boy emulator with Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Color, and Super Game Boy support.
https://www.visualboyadvance-m.org/
|| GTK frontend
vbam-wx
AUR
, SDL frontend
vbam-sdl
AUR
ZSNES
— Highly compatible Super Nintendo  emulator.
https://www.zsnes.com/
||
zsnes
Sony
DuckStation
— DuckStation is an simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation™ console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.
https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation
||
duckstation
AUR
ePSXe
— Emulator for the PlayStation video game console for x86-based PC hardware.
https://www.epsxe.com/
||
epsxe
AUR
Iris
— Experimental PlayStation 2 emulator
https://github.com/allkern/iris
||
iris-emu
AUR
PCSX2
— PlayStation 2 emulator.
https://pcsx2.net/
||
pcsx2
AUR
PCSXR
— Debian fork of the abandoned original PCSX PlayStation emulator.
https://archive.codeplex.com/?p=pcsxr
||
pcsxr
AUR
PPSSPP
— PlayStation Portable emulator.
https://ppsspp.org/
||
ppsspp
RPCS3
— Experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger.
https://rpcs3.net/
||
rpcs3-git
AUR
ShadPS4
— PlayStation 4 emulator.
https://shadps4.net/
||
shadps4
AUR
Vita3K
— Experimental PlayStation Vita emulator.
https://vita3k.org/
||
vita3k-bin
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
Gearsystem
— Sega Master System / Game Gear / SG-1000 Emulator
https://github.com/drhelius/Gearsystem
||
gearsystem
AUR
jgenesis
— Sega Genesis / Sega CD / SNES / Master System / Game Gear Emulator
https://github.com/jsgroth/jgenesis
||
jgenesis
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-qt5
AUR
Ymir
— Sega Saturn emulator.
https://github.com/StrikerX3/Ymir
||
ymir-emu
AUR
Other consoles
Gearcoleco
— ColecoVision emulator
https://github.com/drhelius/Gearcoleco
||
gearcoleco
AUR
Geargrafx
— PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 emulator and debugger
https://github.com/drhelius/Geargrafx
||
geargrafx
AUR
Stella
— Atari 2600 VCS emulator.
https://stella-emu.github.io/
||
stella
Supermodel
— A Sega Model 3 Arcade Emulator.
https://www.supermodel3.com/
[
dead link
2025-08-16—domain name not resolved]
||
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
AUR
Xenia
— Xenia is an experimental emulator for the Xbox 360.
https://xenia.jp/
||
xenia-git
AUR
Xenia Canary
— Active fork of Xenia.
https://github.com/xenia-canary/xenia-canary
||
xenia-canary-bin
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
EasyRPG Player
— RPG Maker 2000/2003 interpreter.
https://easyrpg.org/player/
||
easyrpg-player
AUR
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/
[
dead link
2025-11-17—SSL error]
||
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/
[
dead link
2025-03-15—domain name not resolved]
||
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
See also
Emulation General wiki
Wikipedia:List of video game console emulators