The Emulation Megathread

[craigritchie]

I felt that this was as good a place as any to collect in one place a list of what the Retro Gamer forum regulars believe to be the best emulators for various systems. My motivation is basically to find a good emulator for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari ST without having to wade through all the options out there.

As this thread progresses, I will edit this original post to list all of the agreed upon recommendations and hopefully turn this thread into the one-stop-shop for any information on the best way to emulate our favourite old systems. Note that this is in no way intended to be a thread discussing where to get ROMs or any other illegal matters. There are a TON of legal and public domain roms, images, tapes, demos and games out there, plus being able to dump roms or make images of our old tapes is now (relatively) easy with the right kit. Let's not turn this into a dodgy thread, guys.

To get it started, as mentioned above I'm interested to see what you guys feel are the best emulators for ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Atari ST. Suggestions? Feel free to post your favourite emulators for whatever system, and I will add accordingly. Links to whatever else may be relevant would be appreciated. I'll edit this post as the thread grows.

System: 3DO
(Windows) Freedo

System: Amiga
(Windows) WinUAE

System: Amstrad CPC
(Windows) WinAPE

System: Arcade
(Windows) MAME Official Release ; MAMEUI (formerly MAME32)

System: Atari 2600 VCS
(Windows, Mac, Linux) Stella

System: Atari ST
(Windows, Linux) Steem

System: BBC Micro
(Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, and many others) BeebEm

System: Commodore 64
(Windows, Unix, Mac, DOS and many others) VICE
(Mac) Power64

System: Gameboy
(Windows, Linux, Mac) VisualBoy Advance
(PSP) RIN

System: Game Gear
(Windows) Fusion

System: Mac Classic / Mac II
(Windows, Mac, Unix and others) Basilisk II

System: Master System
(Windows) Fusion

System: Megadrive / 32X
(Windows) Fusion
(PSP) DGEN

System: MSX
(Windows) BlueMSX

System: NeoGeo Pocket Colour
(Windows) Koyote

System: NES
(Windows, SDL) FCE Ultra

System: Nintendo 64
(Windows) Project 64

System: Oric
(Windows) Euphoric (Note: This might not be the home page - does anyone know for sure?)

System: PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16
(Windows) Ootake

System: Playstation
(Windows, Linux) ePSXe

System: Saturn
(Windows) SSF (Translated from Japanese to English by Google, original site in Japanese here.

System: SNES
(Windows, Mac, Unix) SNES9x

System: ZX Spectrum 48k
(Windows) ZXSpin
(DS) ZXDS or SpeccyDS

[psj3809]

Theres quite a few good emulators for the Speccy, Spectaculator (have to pay though), Fuse or Spin.

However be careful listing the game sites, most you wont be able to list as you cant list rom sites here. World of spectrum has permission for most of their downloads but a fair few sites (eg for Atari ST) and others you wont be able to list.

Surely people can find the rom sites themselves but its a good idea to talk about the best emulators as theres so many out there

[craigritchie]

Noted, but hopefully people will list only stuff that is legal or in the public domain. If it gets a little grey as to whether something is legal or not, I will just remove all mention of sites listing games. I'm going to have a look at Fuse and Spin now, thanks.

[CraigGrannell]

Quick suggestion: amend your 'top spot to get games' to 'top spot to find out about games'. Lemon64 is the obvious port of call for C64 stuff, and although there are are links to GameBase, you're not directly going "Hey, guys! Go to the naughty internet". And then I won't have to remove the thread, which means everyone should be happy.

Also, regarding emulators, are you thinking WINDOWS RULES!, or other platforms, too? If this really is going to be a useful megathread resource, how about people including emulators for other major platforms, where relevant (as in, where the emulator is pretty damn good), such as Mac and DS? For example, to me Power64 for Mac OS X still beats all other C64 emulators, and I'd sooner use ZXDS or SpeccyDS on DS than any Windows- or Mac-based Speccy emulator.

[neuromancer]

(PC based emulators)

Spectrum:
I still use Spectaculator for this - it's not free, and in previous threads it seems it's not rated as the best by everyone, but I really love this.

Megadrive:
Used to be Gens all the way, but it has problems with some 32X titles, so I often use Kega Fusion these days

Brilliantly I can't recall the names of the emus I use for the ZX-81, the SNES, NeoGeo, etc etc. I'll check them later and post again...

[Smurph]

Used to be Gens all the way, but it has problems with some 32X titles...

Yeah, that's the emulator retching.

[MikeHaggar]

Hm...

http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=10348

[neuromancer]

Used to be Gens all the way, but it has problems with some 32X titles...

Yeah, that's the emulator retching.

Ouch. Harsh! I'm the 32X's only fan hereabouts...

[neuromancer]

Hm...

http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=10348

Good call MikeHaggar. I recall that thread now...

[craigritchie]

Quick suggestion: amend your 'top spot to get games' to 'top spot to find out about games'. Lemon64 is the obvious port of call for C64 stuff, and although there are are links to GameBase, you're not directly going "Hey, guys! Go to the naughty internet". And then I won't have to remove the thread, which means everyone should be happy.

Also, regarding emulators, are you thinking WINDOWS RULES!, or other platforms, too? If this really is going to be a useful megathread resource, how about people including emulators for other major platforms, where relevant (as in, where the emulator is pretty damn good), such as Mac and DS? For example, to me Power64 for Mac OS X still beats all other C64 emulators, and I'd sooner use ZXDS or SpeccyDS on DS than any Windows- or Mac-based Speccy emulator.

OK, I have removed all the stuff to do with finding games - it's going to take this thread away from what I intended with it. And by all means, bring the Mac suggestions!

Hm...

http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewtop ... =2&t=10348

Thanks for this, I didn't see that and I'll go through it and see if it comes up with good suggestions for my OP. One advantage this thread has is that I don't mind staying on top of this OP and editing it to the point where it is a comprehensive guide to what the majority of RG forum folk feel are the best emulators. That other thread requires a lot of wading through pages to find good stuff whereas I hope this thread can be a much easier resource (and maybe even be stickied if it gets to that point).

[craigritchie]

OK, I've made some significant edits to the OP and added in some emulators for Mac, Linux and PSP. Will gladly add in any more that you guys suggest. On the other hand, if interest in this thread proves to be next to nothing and everyone gets their emu info elsewhere, I'll just let this die a slow undignified death.

If it does become popular, however, there's always the chance this can become a sticky and I'll update the OP to also include version numbers and date of latest update for each emu. This seems like something the Retro Gamer community could benefit from (and I would benefit from it too, of course), so let's see what happens...

[DPrinny]

Used to be Gens all the way, but it has problems with some 32X titles...

Yeah, that's the emulator retching.

Theres a gameboy emulator for the 32X
I think the people that came up with that where high

[hydr0x]

Replace SNES9X with ZSNES and the list will look a lot better

[Rev. Stuart Campbell]

System: Oric
(Windows) Euphoric (Note: This might not be the home page - does anyone know for sure?)

Euphoric is complete censored. The only way to emulate the Oric on a modern Windows PC is through MESS.

[Rabiteman]

Replace SNES9X with ZSNES and the list will look a lot better

I second this notion.