Getting involved

Getting involved with the Emulation General Wiki.

If you're interested in helping out the wiki but don't know where to start, here are some things we would appreciate help with.

Before reading / Guidelines

Contributing

Emulation General Wiki focuses on detailed and advanced information for "software emulators", preservation projects and other related stuff such as "hypervisors", "simulators", "compatibility layers", "wrappers" and "FPGA". Recommended to see Emulation accuracy and High and low-level emulation pages for more information about these terms.

Also check out and join us in building a comprehensive resource by contributing other emulation related pages such as game engine recreations and source ports, homebrew and ROM hacks, list of notable ports, legal status and history of emulation, official emulators, emulation boxes, revival projects, and much more...

Compatibility & Accessibility

To ensure compatibility, accessibility and reliability with older systems and retro web browsers (and related proxy projects), please avoid (as much as possible) using redirection links and other elements on pages that rely on JavaScript. Opt for non-JavaScript alternatives whenever possible, as JavaScript can cause issues with legacy systems/retro web browsers and Web Archiving Services.

Mindfulness

To protect emulator projects, please avoid sharing the Emulation General Wiki pages directly on their official websites, discord servers and other services.

This public exposure could potentially attract unwanted legal attention and jeopardize their projects. The last thing we (the Wiki users and contributors) want is for these projects to be taken down. Thank you, see Legal Status of Emulation page for more information.

With communities (Like the CHIP-8 and Fantasy consoles communities) that have little to no worries for legal persecution this advice likely would not need to be followed.

This is for a variety of reasons, some of which are links connected to or committing copyright infringement (such as violating the GNU GPL license).

While registration is not required, we strongly encourage users to create an account before sharing unofficial third-party download links. Unofficial compiled binaries and unverified, closed-source builds can carry significant security risks, such as malware or malicious code. When links are posted by anonymous IP addresses, it is much more difficult to verify the source or maintain a history of trust. Registering an account provides a layer of accountability, helping the community identify reliable contributors and ensuring the long-term safety of our users.

Censorship and restriction

You don't need to self-censor for neutral wording when editing Emugen Wiki.
Keep in mind that some pages on Emulation General Wiki (such as the front page) are restricted to only edits by autoconfirmed users to prevent vandalism and edit warring. In order to become autoconfirmed on Emulation General Wiki, you must have an account that is at least 2 weeks old and that has made at least 20 edits to the wiki. In addition to obvious vandalism (spam, blanking, nonsense edits), attempts to force ideological changes (such as systematically censoring derogatory or taboo language or removing "factual but controversial" information) can be treated as disruptive editing or edit warring, and usually reverted ("undone") by the community. We're aware of the potential contradiction: any revert or undo inherently suppresses one version of the content in favor of another, so it can reasonably be viewed as a form of censorship in the broad sense, a dilemma. However, on this wiki, such actions usually aim to enforce stability, verifiability, and resistance to personal/ideological agendas rather than bowing to moral panics, activism, or external pressures. The Emugen wiki community typically appreciates direct language without forced self-censorship. This anti-self-censorship stance exists to prioritize the unfiltered, accurate preservation of emulation knowledge over unending sanitization. In that respect, "anti-censorship != cucking to vandalism" is still consistent, and actual vandalism should get nuked instantly. That's not ideology, that's keeping the site from turning into garbage. The problem is when Wikimedia's ideologues redefine "vandalism" or "disruption" to include any pushback against their worldview; that's using moderation tools as a political cudgel. It pretends to be the "sum of all human knowledge" while quietly curating what counts as knowledge through a progressive filter. That's why trust in it keeps dropping among anyone not already in the "bubble". We don't want that here. Always discuss contentious changes on the talk page first instead of edit warring. And don't forget to sign your messages with 4 tildas by adding ~~~~ at the end in talk pages.

Sandboxing

See Help:Sandbox and Template:Sandbox

Not needed, recommended for overhauls of (commonly read / popular) pages

It is recommended to make your own Sandbox page so there are not multiple edits for different pages in the main Sandbox.

Creating your own Sandbox page or using the Emulation General's Sandbox allows to demo page edits before adding them to the proper page, This is useful in the case of making large redesign/addition to a page while having the proper page readable before the redesign is finished.

Architecture

Before adding an emulator, ensure that you place it in the correct architecture section (ARM, x86, etc.). Due to recent advancements in compatibility layers, some users mistakenly believe that certain x86 emulators are native ARM applications. However, these x86 emulators running on ARM devices through compatibility layers like Winlator.

Cites and references

Editors should largely follow Wikipedia's citation rules (listed here), with the exemption that twitter and other sources by the other are allowed.

Guidelines:

• Cite clearly viewable content. Not things such as Discord, where it requires you to have an account.
• Primary sources are commonly used, secondary news sources should also be cited when available.
• Facts not included in the emulators home page or repository should have a reference.

Low effort

• Updating software versions (add new software version templates there upon their creation). You can find news and new releases on EmuNations, Zophar's Domain, Next Generation Emulation, Emu-France, EmuCR, Planet Emulation and AEP Emulation Page. For convenience, you may also track relevant specific software's releases with services like New Releases (supports GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg, Bitbucket, Gitea, SourceForge and more)
• Updating the News section on the Main Page.
• Cleaning up any "bad" URL hyperlinks. E.g. by removing tracking tokens (e.g. "&fbclid=" by Meta/Facebook, "?si=" by YouTube and similar ones; not only are they used to spy on people to push targeted ads, but they also make web addresses unnecessarily bloated) and referral URLs (e.g. "?ref_src=twsrc" in X/Twitter post links), replacing occasional AMP links with regular ones, replacing "http://" with "https://" (unless the site linked to is ill-configured and simply refuses to load via https), etc. "Clean" links improve readability, user experience and safety/privacy.
• Correcting any redirect that links to another redirect instead of a page.
• Finding categories to put these pages in.
• Finding categories to put these files in.
• Finding categories to put these templates in.
• Finding categories to put these categories in.
• Tagging pages that need it with {{Stub}} or {{Outdated}}.
• Checking Short pages and tagging them with either {{stub}} if they should be longer or {{delete}} if they fill no function.
• Fixing spelling and grammar issues.
• Fixing capitalization.
• Sorting content in alphabetical order.
• Getting rid of asterisks or any special characters in page category sorting.
• Getting rid of THOSE lazy words. (N-A-T-I-V-E S-U-P-P-O-R-T).

Moderate effort

• WIP articles – These are new articles that are not yet ready for the main page and need to be improved.
• Outdated articles – These articles contain information that might no longer be accurate and need to be updated.
• Articles stubs – These articles are stubs and need to be expanded with more information.
• Update/create new emulator pages - Copy the template below, add {{WIP}} if you need help or intend to finish the page later, add {{stub}} if everything is finished but it should be longer. Don't forget to categorize your articles and, if they are about emulators, list them in articles listing emulators OF a particular system (just for example, PlayStation 2 emulators) and articles listing emulators ON a particular system (for example, Emulators on macOS). Additionally, if you create a software version template using the parent template, please add your created template accordingly to the list there to keep the list verison templates' list up-to-date!
• Don't forget that unlike in Wikipedia where they only put the most subcategories into articles, we tend to put both subcategories and their parent categories those subcategories are parts of. For example, PPSSPP's article isn't only included under subcategory Category:PlayStation Portable emulators, but also under its parent Category:Handheld console emulators, which itself is a subcategory for its parent Category:Console emulators.
• Keep in mind that category redirects are useless in practice because if you put an article into a category which is just a redirect to another category, then the destination category will NOT be populated with your article's entry. So if you put an article A into Category:B which redirects to Category:C, then once you open Category:C page, you won't see your article A listed there.
• Adding licensing info to Image files using Image wiki templates for licensing info.

Archival and preservation.

• Archive links on the wiki using archive.org or ghostarchive.org for websites/downloads
• Archiving YouTube videos on the wiki using ghostarchive.org or preservetube.com
• Fixing broken links with archived versions using archive.org or ghostarchive.org
• Identifying broken links with tools such as deadlinkchecker.com
• Updating tables for hardware features and peripherals and enhancements by checking out their availability in emulators/compatibility layers in articles dedicated to targeted systems
• Adding old news previous years section of the news template, using this list.

High effort

Wikipedia copies

These are articles we took from Wikipedia. The source article may either contain updated information beyond what we've copied, causing us to stagnate and provide potentially incorrect information, or showcase a subject in a manner that may stray from its relevance in emulation. The best way to deal with these articles is to rewrite them, but in their current form they require a high degree of knowledge in their fields in order to break them down for readers.

Layout

Main article: Emulation General Wiki:Guidelines

The infobox and comparison tables may overlap at 100% scale and 100% zoom level across various resolutions, a common display configuration for most internet users today. If this occurs, reduce the comparison table's width to 74%. If there are active, good enough alternative projects available, and the obsolete project requires patching or another workaround to launch on modern systems, do not include obsolete, historical emulators in the main comparison tables. Instead, include them in the Emulators on legacy Microsoft products, Emulators on Legacy systems, or History of emulation sections.

Emulator infobox template

Here's our current layout for an emulator page. Copy-paste this if you are creating a new emulator page, or use it if a page needs updating.

Software infobox template

Here's our current layout for a non-emulator software page. Copy-paste this if you are creating a new software page, or use it if a page needs updating.

System page example

Please avoid adding obsolete, historic emulators such as NESticle to these tables. There are dedicated sections for those emulators on the wiki such as History of emulation, Emulators on legacy Microsoft products, and Emulators on legacy systems. Also, be sure to read the Recommended emulators page first.

Most system pages are more detailed, this is a bare-bones example. Copy-paste this if you are creating a new system page, or use it if a page needs updating.

Layout

{|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;line-height:1.5;width:74%;font-size:90%;"
|+Before editing, review the [[Getting involved]] and [[Recommended emulators|Recommended]] pages. See [[Computer_specifications#Recommended_Specifications|system requirements]] page for performance demand of the emulators.<br/>See tables for <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #CC0000; border: 1px solid #CC0000; padding: 2px;">[[#Hardware variants|hardware variants]], [[#Enhancements|enhancements]], [[#Hardware_features_and_peripherals|hardware features and peripherals]].</span><br/>For more details such as [[licensing]], [[Source_code#Language_levels|programming language]], [[High_and_low-level_emulation|emulation method]], visit each emulator’s dedicated page.
!Name
!Platform(s)
!Latest version
!Active
![[Licensing|License]]
!Compatibility
![[Recommended emulators|Recommended]]
|-
|[[emulator name]]
|align=left|{{Icon|platforms}}
|[link {{EmulatorVersionTemplate}}]
|{{Dunno}}
|{{ColorName}} {{License|LicenseName}}
|{{Emulator compatibility}}
|{{Dunno}}
|}

Render

Before editing, review the Getting involved and Recommended pages. See system requirements page for performance demand of the emulators.
See tables for hardware variants, enhancements, hardware features and peripherals.
For more details such as licensing, programming language, emulation method, visit each emulator’s dedicated page.

Name	Platform(s)	Latest version	Active	License	Compatibility	Recommended
PCSX2		2.8.2	?	GPLv3 (Copyleft)	10% 100 out of 1000 reported titles	?

Enhancements

Please add only the highly recommended emulators in these tables.

layout example...

Hardware features and peripherals

Please add only the highly recommended emulators in these tables.

layout example...

Hardware variants

Please add only the highly recommended emulators in these tables.

layout example...

Similar and related sites

For similar sites, see

• FantasyAnime - Has in-depth pages on the options of each emulator. Emulation General Wiki focuses on detail of the history of a emulator on its page and details of our many other articles.
• PCGamingWiki - Focuses on PC gaming instead of emulators. (Emulation specific pages are outdated).
• AppleGamingWiki - Similar to PCGamingWiki but instead focuses on M1 Apple silicon Macs.
• EmuReady.com - Community-driven compatibility reports for emulators.