Multi-system emulators

Revision as of 18:21, 27 November 2025 by R-K (talk | contribs)

Multi-system emulators focus on emulating many different systems under one program. They can be focused on a single company's systems because of the similarity of the systems or may have systems from many different companies.

To be defined as "multi-system" an emulator has to emulate two or more distinct systems. Although, for simplicity reasons in this wiki (not just this page), the term, "multi-platform", in the OS column fields can come to mean three or more covered platforms. For the purpose of this list, Add-ons (eg. Sega CD, 32X) are not counted as a separate system.

The term 'multi-system emulator' can sometimes be confused with frontend applications.

Emulators

Name Platform(s) Latest version Retro
Achievements
Libretro Core # of Emulated systems License Active Recommended
Multi-company
MAME         git artifacts[N 1]
0.289
libretro core[N 2]
0.289 (akatana and ddpsdoj unlocked)[N 3]
Thousands of electronics[1] GPLv2
BSD-3-Clause
Mednafen            
 
1.32.1
Wii
PS3
GCW Zero
15 GPLv2 (Copyleft)
Mesen       2.2.1 ✗ Cores are outdated 11 GPLv3
OpenEmu   2.4.1 35 GPLv2 (Copyleft)
BizHawk     Dev builds
2.11.1
30 (excluding the libretro cores) MIT
GPL)
ares       git Artifacts
v148
20 ISC (Permissive)
jgenesis       0.14.1 8 MIT (Permissive) ?
Delta   1.7.3s ~ 6 AGPLv3 (Copyleft) ~
Folium   2.0 ($)
Sideload
3 GPLv3 (Copyleft) ~
ZEsarUX         13.0 22 GPLv3 (Copyleft) ~
Pantheon   16.458 21 Proprietary ~
CLK       2026-07-23 14 MIT (Permissive) ~
WinArcadia       30.7 21 ? ~
Xpeccy       0.6.20260804 14 MIT (Permissive)
Z64K   3.0.0 5 Proprietary
DSP         0.24WIP3 More than 10 Non-commercial ?
Phoenix       2.8.JAG 5 Proprietary
higan (火眼)         v110 ~ 14 GPLv3 (Copyleft) [N 4]
WAVE Multi-Emulator   V1.1.3 7 (ROMs have to be converted to hex via a website to be played) CC BY-SA 2.0
EMU (Russian)   1.01 More than 50 ? ?
kindred   1.12 Preview Build 3 7 Proprietary ?
Xe     2.16.2 18 Proprietary
DarcNES       9b0401/9b0313 8 Proprietary
rew.     rew12stx ? 3 ? ?
Nintendo
Dolphin             2606a
libretro core
3 GPLv2 (Copyleft)
mGBA          
           
 
Dev builds
libretro core
0.10.2
~ 2 MPL 2.0 (Copyleft)
GBE+       1.10 4 GPLv2 (Copyleft) ~
No$GBA     3.06 3[N 5] Proprietary
Sega
Genesis Plus GX            
       
       
     
     
Latest builds
v1.7.5-RC1 latest release
pGENBased on Genesis Plus GX
1.2PS3 Port (Inactive)
RetroArch Builds
5 Non-commercial Source-available
Kega Fusion       3.64 10 Proprietary ~
PicoDrive          
       
           
   
2.05
libretro core
6 MAME license (Non-commercial) ~
Sinclair
EightyOne (81)   1.41 12 GPLv2 (Copyleft)
Retro Virtual Machine       2.1.20 2 Proprietary ~
Commodore
VICE         3.10 6 GPLv2 (Copyleft)
  1. CI-Windows CI-Linux CI-Macos
  2. As 0.251, 0.139 (2010), 0.78 (2003), 0.37b5 (2000)
  3. Akai Katana and Dodonpachi Saidaioujou removed at the request of the current rightholder, exA-Arcadia ([email protected]). https://github.com/mamedev/mame/commit/54899379258a7266db8d5bc6cda8b48169e67503
  4. Superseded by ares.
  5. No$GBA also does PocketStation emulation.

References

  1. www.mamedb.org's list (Only shows the games covered, not systems)

See also