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) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Emulation Station | 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] |
EmuLoader | N/A | ✓[12] | ✗ | 2007-08-27 (v5.1.6) | 2021-10-27 (v8.9.4) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
FEEL | 'Sincro' | ✓[13] | ✓ (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 | ✓[14] | ✓ (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[15] |
Ice | Scott Rice | ✓[16] | ✓ (MIT) | 2016-01-29 (v1.0.0) | 2016-01-29 (v1.0.0) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | N/A |
Launch Box | Jason Carr | ✗ | ✗ | N/A | N/A | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
LusSpace | 'Space1' | ✗ | ✗ | N/A | 2016-11-08 (v1.23) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Lutris | Mathieu Comandon and others | ✓[17] | ✓ (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 | ✓[18] | ✓ (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 | ✓[19] | ✓ (MIT) | 2019-03-04 (v1.0.12) | 2024-01-10 (v2.4.1) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | N/A |
Pegasus | Mátyás Mustoha | ✓[20] | ✓ (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 | ✓[21] | ✓ (MIT) | 2017-03-28 (v0.70 Alpha) | 2023-06-22 (v10.18) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Project Ascension | Jake Schadewe and others | ✓[22] | ✓ (MIT) | 2016-01-30 (v1.0.34) | 2016-01-30 (v1.0.34) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
QuickPlay | John Scott | ✓[23] | ✓ (BSD-3) | 2014-04-14 (v3.9.0) | 2022-03-26 (v4.7.6) | ✓ | N/A | N/A | N/A |
RetroArch | 'Twinaphex' and others | ✓[24] | ✓ (GPLv3) | 2011-01-25 (v0.2) | 2023-03-16 (v1.15.0) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 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 | ✓[25] | ✓ (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' | ✗[26] | ✗ | 2018-05-22 (v0.99.34.34) | 2019-05-30 (v0.99.69.81) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
Snowflake | Ronny Chan | ✓[27] | ✓ (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 | ✓[28] | ✓ (GPLv3) | 2017-04-30 (v1.0.0) | 2019-03-10 (v2.2.19) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | N/A |
Technical facts
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 | |
Emulation Station | 13.1 MiB | Actively maintained | C++ | SDL2, Boost (System, Filesystem, DateTime, Locale), FreeImage, FreeType, Eigen3, and cURL |
EmuLoader | 16.50 MiB | Actively maintained | Pascal | |
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 | Possibly 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 |
Launch Box | 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
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 | ||||||||||||||||
Emulation Station | ||||||||||||||||
EmuLoader | ||||||||||||||||
FEEL | ||||||||||||||||
GameEx | ||||||||||||||||
GameRoom | ||||||||||||||||
Games (Gnome) | ||||||||||||||||
HyperSpin | ||||||||||||||||
Ice | ||||||||||||||||
Launch Box | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
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
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 | ||||||||
Launch Box | ||||||||
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 | ||||||||
RetroFe | ||||||||
RoM-Jacket | ||||||||
skeletonKey | ||||||||
Snowflake | ||||||||
Steam Rom Manager |
- ↑ Github - mickelson/attract
- ↑ SourceForge.net - auroragm
- ↑ Github - sguergachi/AuroraGameHub
- ↑ Github - TASVideos/BizHawk
- ↑ Repository License
- ↑ BizHawk README.md - Installing GNU+Linux
- ↑ Github - SteveMaddison/cabrio
- ↑ EmuCon Download page with sources
- ↑ Github - Aloshi/EmulationStation
- ↑ Github - RetroPie/EmulationStation (fork)
- ↑ RetroPie Documentation on the emulation station wiki
- ↑ EmuLoader Download page with sources
- ↑ Github - dr-prodigy/feel-frontend
- ↑ Gitlab - GNOME-games
- ↑ HyperSpin (Android)
- ↑ Github - scottrice/Ice
- ↑ Github - lutris/lutris
- ↑ Github - theMK2k/MetropolisLauncher
- ↑ Github - quinton-ashley/Nostlan
- ↑ Github - mmatyas/pegasus-frontend
- ↑ Github - JosefNemec/Playnite
- ↑ Github - Project Ascension
- ↑ SourceForge - QuickPlay
- ↑ Github - libretro/RetroArch
- ↑ Bitbucket - phulshof/retrofe
- ↑ Github - romjacket/skeletonKey
- ↑ Github - SnowflakePowered/snowflake
- ↑ Github - FrogTheFrog/steam-rom-manager