Comparison of frontends

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Below is a basic comparison table for all the known multi-system front-ends for emulators. The table does not include single system front-ends (such as EmuCon, Mame Classic, Negatron, pfeMame, QMC2, etc.) or front-ends for other dedicated software such as Kodi.

Name Creator Open Source Free (Libre) First public release date Latest stable version release date Windows Macintosh GNU/Linux Other platforms
All Stars Launcher 'el Comandante' ✓ ✗ 2020-09-30 (v2020.274) 2024-01-30 (v2024.030) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Atomic 'Youki' ✗ ✗ 2005-02-08 (v0.11) 2010-01-23 (v0.20) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Attract-Mode Andrew Mickelson ✓[1] ✓ (GPLv3) 2013-11-17 (v1.0) 2023-06-10 (v2.7.0) ✓ ✓ ✓ N/A
Aurora Game Hub Carlos Machado, Sammy Guergachi ✓[2][3] ✓ (GPLv3) 2013-08-14 (Alpha_8_b794) 2013-08-14 (Alpha_8_b794) ✓ ✓ N/A BSD
BizHawk 'Nach' ✓[4] "minefield"[5] 2018-03-15 (v1.0.0) 2020-02-24 (v2.4.8_1) ✓ N/A To be compiled[6] N/A
CabrioFE Steve Maddison ✓[7] ✓ (GPLv2) 2009-10-26 (v0.3.0) 2011-06-24 (v0.8.2 - beta version) v0.8.1 ✗ ✓ N/A
CoinOPS N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
EmuCenter 2 N/A ✗ ✗ 2010-03-20 (v0.6) 2016-09-01 (v7.1.0.181) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
EmuCon N/A ✓[8] ✗ 2008-04-23 (v2.0) 2017-11-21 (v2.7.7) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
EmulationStation Alec Lofquist and others ✓[9][10] ✓ (MIT) 2013-10-26 (v1.0.0) 2019-03-09 (v2.7.6 - on retropie repo) ✓ ✗ ✓ Raspberry Pi[11]
EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) ES-DE Frontend team ~[12] ~ (MIT for PCs)[12] 2021-04-20 (v1.0.0) 2024-06-14 (v3.0.3-26) ✓ ✓ ✓ Android
EmuLoader N/A ✓[13] ✗ 2007-08-27 (v5.1.6) 2021-10-27 (v8.9.4) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
FEEL 'Sincro' ✓[14] ✓ (LGPLv3) 2015-09-12 (v1.8.1) 2020-04-21 (v1.9.8.6) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
GameEx Tom Speirs ✗ ✗ 2016-04-14 (v14.44) 2024-03-13 (v18.61) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
GameRoom Max 'n0xew' ?? ✗ ✗ 2016-12-13 (v0.0.0.9) 2018-03-12 (v1.1.2.0) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Games (Gnome) Various contributors ✓[15] ✓ (GPLv3) 2015-10-20 (v3.18.0) 2019-05-24 (v3.33.2) ✗ N/A ✓ N/A
HyperSpin Jonathan Habers ✗ ✗ N/A 2018-05-07 (v1.5.1) ✓ ✗ ✗ Android[16]
Ice Scott Rice ✓[17] ✓ (MIT) 2016-01-29 (v1.0.0) 2016-01-29 (v1.0.0) ✓ ✓ ✓ N/A
LaunchBox Jason Carr ✗ ✗ N/A N/A ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
LusSpace 'Space1' ✗ ✗ N/A 2016-11-08 (v1.23) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Lutris Mathieu Comandon and others ✓[18] ✓ (GPLv3) 2013-12-15 (v0.3.2) 2019-04-09 (v0.5.2) ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗
MaLa Stefan 'swindus' Windus, Simon 'loadman' Loader ✗ ✗ 2005-07-26 (v0.9.7b) 2011-03-27 (v1.74) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Maximus Arcade N/A ✗ ✗ N/A N/A ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Metropolis Launcher Jörg 'MK2k' Sonntag ✓[19] ✓ (GPLv3) 2017-04-27 (v1.0.0) 2018-09-07 (v1.2.0) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
mGalaxy N/A ✗ ✗ 2007-02-05 (v1.0) 2019-04-?? (v7.5) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Nostlan Quinton Ashley ✓[20] ✓ (MIT) 2019-03-04 (v1.0.12) 2024-01-10 (v2.4.1) ✓ ✓ ✓ N/A
Pegasus Mátyás Mustoha ✓[21] ✓ (GPLv3) 2017-08-07 (Alpha 3) 2021-05-04 (alpha15) ✓ ✓ ✓ Android, Raspberry Pi
Photon Game Manager Thomas Preece ✗ ✗ N/A N/A ✓ ✗ Experimental ✗
Playnite Josef Nemec ✓[22] ✓ (MIT) 2017-03-28 (v0.70 Alpha) 2023-06-22 (v10.18) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Project Ascension Jake Schadewe and others ✓[23] ✓ (MIT) 2016-01-30 (v1.0.34) 2016-01-30 (v1.0.34) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
QuickPlay John Scott ✓[24] ✓ (BSD-3) 2014-04-14 (v3.9.0) 2022-03-26 (v4.7.6) ✓ N/A N/A N/A
RetroArch 'Twinaphex' and others ✓[25] ✓ (GPLv3) 2011-01-25 (v0.2) 2024-05-30 (v1.19.1 ) ✓ ✓ ✓ DOS, BSD, Haiku, Solaris, PS2, PS3, PSP, PSVita, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, 3DS, Switch, NES/SNES Classic Edition, Raspberry Pi, Android, iOS, Blackberry, Web Browser
RetroFe Don Honerbrink ✓[26] ✓ (GPLv3) 2016-07-26 (v0.7.2-beta-1) 2019-05-26 (v0.9.0) ✓ To be compiled ✓ N/A
RoM-Jacket 'Jinx' ✓ (.bat files) ✗ N/A N/A ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
skeletonKey 'romjacket' ✗[27] ✗ 2018-05-22 (v0.99.34.34) 2019-05-30 (v0.99.69.81) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Snowflake Ronny Chan ✓[28] ✓ (MPLv2.0) 2015-01-15 (v0.1.0) 2017-07-10 (v0.2.1158) To be compiled To be compiled To be compiled N/A
Steam Rom Manager Lukas Senionis ✓[29] ✓ (GPLv3) 2017-04-30 (v1.0.0) 2019-03-10 (v2.2.19) ✓ ✓ ✓ N/A

Technical facts[edit]

Name Download size Current status Language used Libraries used
All Stars Launcher 100 KiB - 135 MiB Possibly discontinued MASM - Machine Language
Atomic 35.2 MiB Discontinued Visual Basic N/A
Attract-Mode 34.5 - 35.9 MiB Actively maintained C++ SFML, OpenAL, Zlib, FreeType 2, FFmpeg (avformat, avcodec, swscale, avutil, swresample/avresample), OpenGL+GLU, JPEG. Optionally: Fontconfig, Xinerama, libarchive, Libcurl.
Aurora Game Hub 12.2 MiB Discontinued Java h2 database Engine
BizHawk 48.1 MiB (+43 MiB on Windows) Actively maintained C++ & C# DirectX 9, libblip_buf
Bottlenose 56.4 - 87.2 MiB Actively maintained HTML/JS/CSS await-spawn, bootstrap, chrome-finder, circletype, contro, contro-ui, copy-paste, deep-extend, delay, diacritics, electron-pug, fs-extra, fuse.js, gca-js, gooder, jquery, klaw, markdown-it, material-design-icons-iconfont, moment, mousetrap, node-7z, opn, popper.js, probe-image-size, pug, puppeteer-core, requisition, tether, three, yauzl-promise
CabrioFE 1.5 MiB Discontinued C SDL, SDL_image, SDL_gfx, SDL_mixer, SDL_ttf, glut, libxml2, ffmpeg
CoinOPS ? Discontinued ? ?
EmuCenter 2 176 MiB Possibly discontinued C++ and/or C# N/A
EmuCon 5.54 MiB Discontinued Pascal
EmulationStation 13.1 MiB Actively maintained C++ SDL2, Boost (System, Filesystem, DateTime, Locale), FreeImage, FreeType, Eigen3, and cURL
EmuLoader 16.50 MiB Actively maintained Pascal
ES-DE 189 MiB Actively maintained C++
FEEL 26.4 MiB Possibly discontinued C# XNA, SharpDx, SmartASD, "other smaller libs" (sic)
GameEx 81.8 MiB Actively maintained C#
GameRoom 67.7 MiB Discontinued Java
Games (Gnome) 8.9 MiB Actively maintained Vala retro-gtk, libmanette, libhandy
HyperSpin 479.12 MiB Possibly discontinued ActionScript
Ice 11.3 MiB Possibly discontinued Python appdirs, pastebin, psutil, pysteam
LaunchBox 218 MiB Actively maintained C#
LusSpace 2.9 MiB Possibly discontinued Visual Basic 6
Lutris 1.7 MiB Actively maintained Python PyYAML, PyGObject, evdev, requests, optional pypresence for discord
MaLa
Maximus Arcade
Metropolis Launcher 261.16 MiB Actively maintained VB.Net 4.0 DevExpress WinForms v15.2, DiscUtils, HtmlAgilityPack, Newtonsoft.Json, Ookii.Dialogs, SgmlReaderDll, SharpCompress
mGalaxy
Pegasus
Photon Game Manager
Playnite Actively maintained
Project Ascension
QuickPlay 32.8 MiB Actively maintained Delphi
RetroArch 4.8 - 165 - 806 MiB (Android - Win10 64bit - PS3 DEX) Actively maintained C libretro, an audio library (ALSA, OSS, etc.), optional dependencies
RetroFe
RoM-Jacket
skeletonKey
Snowflake
Steam Rom Manager

Emulator support[edit]

Name RetroArch MAME NEStopia FCEUX Snes9x ZSnes Mupen64Plus Dolphin Cemu VisualBoyAdvance(-M) Citra NeoCD EPSXe PCSX2 RPCS3 PPSSPP
Atomic
Attract-Mode
Aurora Game Hub
BizHawk
Bottlenose
CabrioFE
CoinOPS
EmuCenter 2
EmuCon
EmulationStation
EmuLoader
ES-DE ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
FEEL
GameEx
GameRoom
Games (Gnome)
HyperSpin
Ice
LaunchBox ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
LusSpace
Lutris
MaLa
Maximus Arcade
Metropolis Launcher ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
mGalaxy
Pegasus
Photon Game Manager
Playnite
Project Ascension
QuickPlay ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
RetroArch
RetroFe
RoM-Jacket
skeletonKey
Snowflake
Steam Rom Manager

Features[edit]

Name Has console categories Theme support Display descriptions Display box arts Display video previews Scrape descriptions Scrape box arts Scrape video previews
Atomic ✓ ✓ ✓
Attract-Mode ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Aurora Game Hub ✓ ✓
BizHawk ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗ ✗
Bottlenose
CabrioFE ✓ ✓
CoinOPS
EmuCenter 2 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
EmuCon
Emulation Station ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗
EmuLoader ✓ ✓ ✓
FEEL ✓ ✓
GameEx ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
GameRoom
Games (Gnome) ✓ ✓
HyperSpin ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Ice ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗
LaunchBox ✓ ✓ (Paid) ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
LusSpace
Lutris
MaLa
Maximus Arcade
Metropolis Launcher ✓ ✓ (built-in only) ✓ ✓ ✓ (offline db) ✓
mGalaxy
Pegasus ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Photon Game Manager
Playnite ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Via plugin ✓ ✓ Via plugin
Project Ascension
QuickPlay
RetroArch ✓ ✓ (Limited) ✗ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗
RetroFe
RoM-Jacket
skeletonKey
Snowflake
Steam Rom Manager ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓ ✗
  1. ↑ Github - mickelson/attract
  2. ↑ SourceForge.net - auroragm
  3. ↑ Github - sguergachi/AuroraGameHub
  4. ↑ Github - TASVideos/BizHawk
  5. ↑ Repository License
  6. ↑ BizHawk README.md - Installing GNU+Linux
  7. ↑ Github - SteveMaddison/cabrio
  8. ↑ EmuCon Download page with sources
  9. ↑ Github - Aloshi/EmulationStation
  10. ↑ Github - RetroPie/EmulationStation (fork)
  11. ↑ RetroPie Documentation on the EmulationStation wiki
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Github - Aloshi/EmulationStation ES-DE Frontend Gitlab for Windows, macOS, and Linux is open source under the MIT license and free to use. Android version is partially close-sourced and costs $5.50 on Patreon at minimum (no re-subscription required for future updates) or $6.50 on selected mobile stores (currently only Galaxy Store at the moment; was delisted from Huawei AppGallery).
  13. ↑ EmuLoader Download page with sources
  14. ↑ Github - dr-prodigy/feel-frontend
  15. ↑ Gitlab - GNOME-games
  16. ↑ HyperSpin (Android)
  17. ↑ Github - scottrice/Ice
  18. ↑ Github - lutris/lutris
  19. ↑ Github - theMK2k/MetropolisLauncher
  20. ↑ Github - quinton-ashley/Nostlan
  21. ↑ Github - mmatyas/pegasus-frontend
  22. ↑ Github - JosefNemec/Playnite
  23. ↑ Github - Project Ascension
  24. ↑ SourceForge - QuickPlay
  25. ↑ Github - libretro/RetroArch
  26. ↑ Bitbucket - phulshof/retrofe
  27. ↑ Github - romjacket/skeletonKey
  28. ↑ Github - SnowflakePowered/snowflake
  29. ↑ Github - FrogTheFrog/steam-rom-manager
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