Changes

The Mac has changed considerably over the years, both in terms of hardware and software. It is important to understand these changes so you can choose the best emulators for your Mac.

The Mac has gone through four major cpu architecture changes: Motorola 68k, PowerPC (PPC), x86 and most recently Apple Silicon (Arm64). There have also been minor architectural changes such as moving from Intel's 32-bit x86 to 64-bit x64. Each time there was a hardware transition, Apple provided ways to continue to support older software on the new systems. Rosetta was a software emulation layer that helped PPC applications to run on x86/x64 Macs, but was dropped in macOS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Rosetta 2 currently facilitates x64 software to run on Arm Macs. While Rosetta performs very respectably for most software, it adds extra overhead which can reduce performance on demanding games and emulators.

The Mac has had two main operating systems over its history. The original System/Mac OS, which is now referred to as “Classic Mac OS”, was closed-source and proprietary. It had 9 major versions. However it had severe technical limitations, so Apple developed macOS which is Unix-based. The first several releases up to 10.4 Tiger contained support for Classic applications, but this was later dropped. Another major event for compatibility was the dropping of support for 32-bit software in macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Another aspect to consider is the graphical backend of the emulator. For many years OpenGL was the main cross-platform standard for developing graphical software. However in recent times this has changed. More modern backends such as Vulkan and Metal are superseding it. OpenGL on macOS has now been marked as deprecated, meaning it is stuck on the older OGL 4.1 and will someday be removed from macOS completely. Apple recommends for developers to create native Metal backends for their apps.

Using one of these backends is not mandatory, of course. Some emulators may use a different backend or handle graphics themselves.

All this means that to find an emulator that works well for your Mac you should understand its specs first. Choose an emulator that supports your CPU architecture natively where possible. The emulators shown here will indicate the processor architecture it supports.

Lastly, remember that emulators can have different levels of completion or compatibility. If a game you are trying to run does not work properly with a recommended emulator, try a different one.

==Frontends==

===Fightcade===

[https://www.fightcade.com Fightcade] is a matchmaking frontend for playing many arcade fighting games online with other players. There is no Arm build at time of writing.

==Arcade==

|{{~}} <ref group=N>MAME is run through the command line or through a frontend like OpenEmu.</ref>

|}

==Nintendo==

|{{~}}

|}

==Sega==

|{{✓}}

|}

==Sony==

|{{✓}}

|}

==Commodore==

|{{✓}}

|}

==Atari==

|{{✓}}

|}

==NEC==

| {{✗}}

|}

==Tandy==

| {{✗}}

|}

==Sinclair==

|{{✗}}

|}

==IBM PC Compatible / MSDOS==

|{{✗}}

|}

==References==