retro gaming

Game On: 18 Console Emulators That Bring Retro Gaming to macOS

Hazem Abbas

Nov 12, 2024 — 12 min read

Hey there, fellow retro gaming enthusiast! 🎮

Can we take a moment to geek out about something super exciting? Remember those amazing classic games that filled our childhood with joy? Well, guess what - we can totally bring that magic back to life on our trusty Macs!

I know what you might be thinking: "But isn't that complicated on macOS?" Well, let me share a little secret with you - while it might need a tiny bit more love and attention than on Windows (you know how Macs like to be fancy! 😉), the end result is absolutely worth it!

Think of it like restoring a classic car - sure, you might need to tinker a bit under the hood, but oh boy, when those pixels start dancing across your screen just like they did back in the day... pure magic! ✨

Here's the scoop:

With amazing tools like DOSBox-X (our friendly DOS game companion)
RetroArch (the Swiss Army knife of retro gaming)
OpenEmu (seriously, it's like the iTunes of classic gaming!)

You can transform your modern Mac into a time machine of gaming goodness!

Now, I'll be honest with you - especially with those snazzy new Apple Silicon Macs, we might need to roll up our sleeves a tiny bit. It's kind of like following a recipe for the first time - you might need to adjust a few ingredients to get it just right. But once you do... chef's kiss 👨‍🍳

The best part? This isn't just about playing games - it's about preserving gaming history! Imagine showing your kids or younger friends the games that made you fall in love with gaming in the first place. How cool is that?

Whether you're:

Craving that nostalgic rush of playing your childhood favorites
Curious about gaming history
Looking to share these classics with others
Or just want to experience what gaming was like "back in the day"

Your Mac can make it happen! Sure, it might not be as simple as clicking "install" on the App Store, but think of it as a fun little adventure - and hey, I bet those old-school games had us figure out tougher puzzles, right? 😄

Want to start this retro gaming journey together? What classic game are you most excited to replay? I'd love to hear your gaming memories and help you bring them back to life on your Mac! 🌟

1- OpenEmu

OpenEmu is an open-source project whose purpose is to bring macOS game emulation into the realm of first-class citizenship. The project leverages modern macOS technologies, such as Cocoa, Metal, Core Animation, and other third-party libraries.

One third-party library example is Sparkle, which is used for auto-updating.

OpenEmu uses a modular architecture, allowing for game-engine plugins, allowing OpenEmu to support a host of different emulation engines and back ends while retaining the familiar macOS native front end.

Currently, OpenEmu can load the following game engines as plugins:

Here’s a shuffled list of emulators for various retro gaming consoles:

Sega Saturn (Mednafen)
Nintendo DS (DeSmuME)
TurboGrafx-CD / PCE-CD (Mednafen)
Atari 5200 (Atari800)
Game Boy Advance (mGBA)
Sega Genesis / Mega Drive (Genesis Plus)
GameCube (Dolphin)
Atari Lynx (Mednafen)
Vectrex (VecXGL)
Sony PSP (PPSSPP)
Super Nintendo (BSNES, Snes9x)
WonderSwan (Mednafen)
Nintendo (NES) / Famicom (FCEUX, Nestopia)
SG-1000 (Genesis Plus)
NeoGeo Pocket (Mednafen)
Sega 32X (picodrive)
Virtual Boy (Mednafen)
TurboGrafx-16 / PC Engine (Mednafen)
Atari 7800 (ProSystem)
Odyssey² / Videopac+ (O2EM)
Sony PlayStation (Mednafen)
ColecoVision (CrabEmu)
Sega Master System (Genesis Plus)
Intellivision (Bliss)
Sega CD / Mega CD (Genesis Plus)
Game Boy / Game Boy Color (Gambatte)
Atari 2600 (Stella)
Famicom Disk System (Nestopia)
PC-FX (Mednafen)
Nintendo 64 (Mupen64Plus)

2- RetroArch

RetroArch is a powerful frontend for many emulators, game engines, and media players, offering a seamless experience for running classic games on macOS, Linux, and Windows. It unifies settings for easy configuration, supports running original game discs, and features advanced capabilities like shaders, netplay, rewinding, next-frame response times, and machine translation.

RetroArch also includes accessibility options, such as blind accessibility features, making it a versatile tool for retro gaming enthusiasts across multiple platforms.

3- Surge Engine

Surge Engine is a A retro game engine with a fun platformer for making your dreams come true! Beside macOS, and Windows, It also Works for Android, and Linux systems.

4- ppsspp.org

PPSSPP is a free tool that can run your PSP games on your PC or Android phone in full HD resolution or even higher. It can also upscale textures to make them sharper, and you can enable post-processing shaders to adjust color and brightness the way you like, and other effects.

It can be installed on macOS, Linux, Windows as well.

5- melonDS

This is a simple yet DS powerful gaming emulator that can be easily installed on macOS, Linux and Windows.

Features

Nearly complete core (CPU, video, audio)
JIT recompiler for fast emulation
OpenGL renderer with 3D upscaling
RTC, microphone, lid close/open support
Joystick support
Savestates
Various display position, sizing, and rotation modes
Work-in-progress (WIP) Wifi: local multiplayer and online connectivity
WIP DSi emulation
DLDI support
WIP GBA slot add-ons

6- SameBoy

SameBoy is an open-source emulator for both Game Boy (DMG) and Game Boy Color (CGB), written in portable C. It features a native Cocoa frontend for macOS, an SDL frontend for other systems, and a libretro core.

SameBoy also comes with a handy text-based debugger with an expression evaluator. I’ve used it for a while, and it worked great for playing classic Game Boy games. It's an excellent option for retro gaming enthusiasts looking for reliability and performance!

Features

Supports Game Boy (DMG) and Game Boy Color (CGB) emulation
Lets you choose the model you want to emulate regardless of ROM
High quality 96KHz audio
Battery save support
Save states
Includes open source DMG and CGB boot ROMs:
- Complete support for (and documentation of) all game-specific palettes in the CGB boot ROM, for accurate emulation of Game Boy games on a Game Boy Color
- Supports manual palette selection with key combinations, with 4 additional new palettes (A + B + direction)
- Supports palette selection in a CGB game, forcing it to run in 'paletted' DMG mode, if ROM allows doing so.
- Support for games with a non-Nintendo logo in the header
- No long animation in the DMG boot
Advanced text-based debugger with an expression evaluator, disassembler, conditional breakpoints, conditional watchpoints, backtracing and other features
Extremely high accuracy
Emulates PCM_12 and PCM_34 registers
T-cycle accurate emulation of LCD timing effects, supporting the Demotronic trick, Prehistorik Man, GBVideoPlayer and other tech demos
Real time clock emulation
Retina/High DPI display support, allowing a wider range of scaling factors without artifacts
Optional frame blending (Requires OpenGL 3.2 or later)
Several scaling algorithms (Including exclusive algorithms like OmniScale and Anti-aliased Scale2x; Requires OpenGL 3.2 or later or Metal)

7- Gambattye

Gambattye is a native macOS Game Boy Color emulator. It is powered by a fork of Gambatte.

8- UTM

UTM is not an actual gaming emulator, it is a virtual machine system for iOS and macOS.

Features

Full system emulation (MMU, devices, etc) using QEMU
30+ processors supported including x86_64, ARM64, and RISC-V
VGA graphics mode using SPICE and QXL
Text terminal mode
USB devices
JIT based acceleration using QEMU TCG
Frontend designed from scratch for macOS 11 and iOS 11+ using the latest and greatest APIs
Create, manage, run VMs directly from your device

9- GBEmu

GBEmu (working title) is a Game Boy Emulator written in a C-style C++ (using some C++11 features like auto) and SDL2 (and a tiny bit of GTK3 on Linux).

Some distinctive features include a ROM debugger, a rewind system and easy-to-use quick save and restore slots. Right now it works on Mac, Windows and Linux.

10- MAME4iOS

MAME4iOS is an iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and macOS port of the popular MAME emulator, allowing users to enjoy arcade games from the past 30+ years. Designed for modern Apple devices, it takes advantage of Metal graphics and the M1 processor for enhanced performance.

Whether you're reliving classic arcade memories or exploring retro games for the first time, MAME4iOS brings a nostalgic experience to your Apple device, offering seamless gameplay and powerful features for retro gaming enthusiasts.

11- CocoaMSX

CocoaMSX is an open source MSX emulator for OS X.

Features

Based on blueMSX, one of the most accurate MSX emulators currently available
Built-in support for 3 virtual systems, automatic download and installation of over 200 MSX systems
Built-in support for cartridge (ROM) files, optional support for diskette (DSK) and cassette (CAS) files
Support for pasting text directly into MSX
Support for MSX-Music, MSX-Audio, Moonsound, SCC and PSG sound systems
Various video effects, such as scanlines and signal noise simulation
Snapshots with Finder previews
Support for MSX joysticks, joypads and mice
Flexible keyboard and input peripheral configuration
Screen capture
Audio capture
Gameplay capture
MSX Mouse support
Mixing for all six sound channels (PSG, SCC, MSX-Music, MSX-Audio, Moonsound, Keyboard)
Full screen support, including enhanced full screen on Lion and higher
Automatic updates

12- DuckStation

DuckStation is an emulator for the Sony PlayStation, focusing on speed, accuracy, and long-term usability. It's designed to run smoothly on low-end devices while offering a fully-featured frontend with Qt and a fullscreen TV UI. To use it, you'll need a PS1 or PS2 BIOS, which must be legally obtained.

13- Mythic

Mythic is not a game emulator, but a game launcher for macOS that lets you run Windows games seamlessly. It’s built as a frontend for Legendary, offering support for DX9-12 games, Steam, and Epic Games.

Mythic also features manual game imports, game management, and Discord integration. With the help of Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit, it enables cross-platform play, and there’s more to come on the roadmap. For anyone seeking to run Windows games on macOS, this is a solid open-source solution.

14- Mesen

Mesen is a multi-system emulator (NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, PC Engine, Master System/Game Gear) for Windows, Linux and macOS built in C++ and C#.

for macOS, Mesen supports macOS Intel and macOS Apple Silicon.

15- Play!

Play! is a PlayStation2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android, iOS & web browser platforms.

16- Boxer DOS Game Emulator for macOS

The Boxer XCode project provides an easy, one-click build for the Boxer emulator on macOS. It includes three build targets: the main Boxer emulator, a streamlined "Boxer Standalone" version for gameboxes, and the "Boxer Bundler" tool for converting gameboxes into standalone apps.

All dependencies are included, making it simple to set up and build.

17- SimpleNES

SimpleNES is a fun NES emulator written in C++ that works with macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon). It supports games that use mappers 1, 2, 3, and experimental support for 4, 7, 66, and 11. Some tested games include Super Mario Bros., Contra, MegaMan 2, Tetris, and more.

While it’s not fully compatible with all NES titles, it offers a good experience for classic retro gaming enthusiasts.

18- DOSBox-X

DOSBox-X is an enhanced DOS emulator, perfect for running classic DOS games and legacy applications on macOS, Linux, and modern Windows systems. It supports a wide range of retro gaming experiences, from old-school titles to vintage productivity software.

With features like full sound and graphics emulation, disk and CD-ROM support, and customization options, DOSBox-X is a great tool for retro gaming enthusiasts and those needing to run outdated DOS apps on current operating systems. Perfect for nostalgic gamers and professionals.

Wanna more resources about Retro Gaming? Check our Our Following Articles:

15 Free Open-source Android Retro Game Emulators - Play your Favorite Retro Games on Atari, NES and PS1/ PS2

14 Free Open-Source Web-Based Game Emulators, Libraries, and Tools to Run Retro Games in Your Browser

26 Free and Open-source Educational Games for Students, Kids, and Teens

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