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An '''emulation box''' is an unofficial term for a device built with for the specific purpose of running emulators. They generally consist While it can technically be any small computer, the emulation boxes we list here are primarily single-purpose embedded devices intended to capitalize on nostalgia despite a multitude of overpriced better alternatives being readily available (like computers, mobile devices, and locked-down ARM microcomputers and some game consoles). There are more so just "collector's items". They should be avoided as your computer will generally provide better performance overall.two types of boxes:

==Cartridge Emulation boxes are frowned upon because, aside from a first party box's value as a collector's item, the hardware in an emulation box is often nothing more than a cheap, locked-down, ARM-based==These emulation system-on-a-chip, and the price you pay for obtaining it is marked up by the designer in order to make easy money. To make matters worse, numerous boxes uses orginal game cartridges have been found using emulators illegally, due to a prohibition in the emulator's license (like commercial distribution or CDs and cannot (without hackinglocked down hardware) load ROMs directly, resulting in many controversies unfolding over the matter.

===First Party Boxes=-party boxes==

|Official Nintendo product designed to only emulate the SNES. Includes 21 games. Uses the ''exact same hardware '' (motherboard, SOC SoC, and all) as the NES Classic, but with a different firmware.

|?m2engage|Official SEGA product designed to only emulate the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Includes 42 games and is scheduled to launch September 19th. Interestingly, 2019it has the same specs as the (S)NESC. Unlike The emulator used was developed by [[wikipedia:M2 (game_developer)|M2]], who is best known for handling the emulation of various re-releases of games including several Sega ports and the Genesis Virtual Console on the other "minis", this one may offer Wii.|-|[https://www.polygonsega.comjp/2019genesismini2/6Sega Genesis Mini 2]|[[Sega]]|Sega Genesis, [[Sega Genesis emulators|Sega CD]]|$99.99|m2engage|Official SEGA product designed to emulate normal Sega Genesis/4Mega Drive games plus Sega CD/18652108Mega CD games and two enhanced Genesis/sega-genesis-mini-mega-drive-tower-price useless add-onsMega Drive games. Includes 60 games. Compared to its predecessor, the system has an overclocked SoC, double RAM, and 8GB of NAND storage. Again, [[wikipedia:M2 (game_developer)|M2]] that are purely for aesthetics , handled the emulation of Genesis and provide no additional featuresSega CD games.

|[https://www.konami.com/games/pcemini/gate PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16 Mini]

|TBA$99.99

|Official Konami product. Includes 57 games (58 in Japan) and has about an equal mix of American and Japanese exclusives. The Japanese market will get casing and branding has the same regional differences as the original (Japan is the original white PC Engine, while Europe will get is the Core Grafx revision. In , and the US, players will get USA is the TurboGrafx-16 case design). Price The emulator used was developed by [[wikipedia:M2 (game_developer)|M2]], release date the same company that did the Sega Genesis Mini and full games list to be revealedother console ports.

|[[Sony|Sony Interactive Entertainment]]

|<strike>$99.99</strike> $4020

|Official Sony SIE product designed to only emulate the PS1. Includes 20 games.

|Offical CAPCOM product designed to emulate CPS1 and CPS2 arcade games. Includes 16 games. Scheduled |-|[https://sega.jp/astrocitymini/original/index.html Astro City Mini]|Sega Toys|Arcade|JP¥ <strike>12800</strike>13511<br>$<strike>129.99</strike>161.99|?|Offical SEGA product designed to launch October 25themulate various Sega arcade games. Includes 36 games and the test program "Dottori-Kun". |-|[https://sega.jp/astrocitymini/v Astro City Mini V]|Sega Toys|Arcade|JP¥ 19580|?|Offical SEGA product designed to emulate various vertical-oriented Arcade games only. Includes 22 games (23 in the International version distributed by Limited Run Games)|-|[https://www.taito.co.jp/egret2mini Egret II Mini]|Taito|Arcade|JP¥ <strike>18678</strike>15800<br>$<strike>229.99</strike>109.03|?|Offical Taito product designed to emulate various Taito arcade games. Includes 40 games, 10 more bundled with optional paddle+trackball controller, 2019and more purchasable games released in the form factor of SD cards.

===Third Party Boxes=-party boxes==

|$299.99-$499.99 <small>(Deluxe bundle)</small>

|Modular system. First emulation box with CD supportand one of the few to run on an Intel processor instead of ARM. Emulates PS1, Saturn, Genesis, Sega CD, 32X, TG-16/CD, Neo Geo CD, NES, SNES(only disc-based systems are supported out of the box, cartridge-based systems requires a separate add-on for each system).

|?<br/>(Genesis-on-a-Chip ?)

==ControversiesControversy==Some of those products have attracted ===Poor catalog===A first party box may prove to be lacking due to its game catalog missing some essential title. This is often the ire of parts result of the emulator community over messy licensing issues not necessarily related that continue to the product's qualityplague consoles today, but ones related as many games are a nightmare to relicense due to open source emulatorssome external factor. In some cases, itIt doesn's because negotiations with open source emulator and/or frontend developers fell through and t help that first-party boxes often lack the company used a "lesser" option as a replacementability to load games externally. In others, an arrangement was reached, contracts and money were exchanged only for This is done to prevent the project maintainers manufacturer from having to turn out not to have gathered admit support for cartridge and disc formats that the complete consent of all contributorsemulation community uses, some parts are licensed as a strictly non-commercial license, and similar issues. Sometimes, it might have to do with an incomplete source code release from companies that have to abide would by GPLv3 obligations. And of course, the company might be acting malicious towards emulator developersextension imply support for unofficial emulation.

Since the problem with these is primarily a meta problem that doesn't These limitations have much caused many to do with the product's actual quality, and is a controversial subject even within emulator developer circles (some well-known developers such as byuu did eventually agree [[Modding Consoles/Flashcarts#NES.2FSNES.2FPSX.2FMD_.28GEN.29_Classic|modify]] their systems just to work with the likes of Hyperkin, after all) this section is about listing some be able to get more use out of those casesit.

* Capcom Home Arcade: Capcom has licensed Some redistributors of third party boxes that pre-load them with games (which in itself is illegal to redistribute with compensation) FinalBurnAlpha from the project's maintainer, however this has lead to some [https://www.google.com/search?q=capcom+home+arcade+illegal&oq=capcom+home+arcade+illegal controversy] and outrage by fellow FBA developers (who didn't agree with this move, and eventually made their own forkgame images preinstalled) and MAME developers (where some of FBA's code comes from), as FB Alpha's license isnmay contain game images that aren't cleared 1:1 identical to allow for commercial use and many of those developers think the FBA's license is an ugly mess of contradicting licenses that should not existoriginals either due to possibly cobbling them from various sources.* Retron5 (Hyperkin): Is using RetroArch, Snes9x, Nestopia, VBA-M and Genesis Plus GX. While they did release their source code, Use the guides on the latter four have a non-commercial license. Retroarch's source code used was partial, and had DRM going against GPLv3 obligationswebsite where possible for obtaining game images.

Outside of Since the emulation communityproblem with these is primarily meta, people have complained that some of these products are lacking or disappointing. This and is mainly due to controversial within emulator developer circles, they may not affect the selection of games determined to be "worthy" of being preloaded to experience that the system. The issue of not having certain games have caused many to [[Modding Consoles/Flashcarts#NES.2FSNES.2FPSX_Classic| modify]] their systems just to be able to play the games they wantbox itself provides.Some examples where this has happened:

* Retron5: Its problems are explained at [[Retron5#Controversy|its page]].* Capcom Home Arcade: Koch Media (under license from Capcom) announced that they would use [[FinalBurn Alpha]] as the backend for games on the Capcom Home Arcade. This is despite the fact that FinalBurn Alpha was developed and released under a license that forbids commercial use (which was taken from versions of [[MAME]] before they had relicensed in 2015). When other FBA developers were questioned on the issue, they were completely unaware that this happened, resulting in the the project maintainer revealing that he had greenlit its use. The resulting fallout led to the creation of [[FinalBurn Neo]]. ==DIY Solutionssolutions=={{WIP|section}}If you still want some kind of "emulation box", but don't want to be limited by any consumer product, but still have something you can technically call an "emulation box," you can make one yourself! These other SoCs are relatively single-board computers tend to be cheaper and offers offer more than a first-party boxesbox will:*;Nvidia Shield TV (:An Android TV box fast enough for 2D & and 3D emulation of many consoles).;LattePanda*LattaPanda (:A Windows 10 computer with integrated Arduino. Fast enough for Saturn emulation.)*;ODROID (Decent :Has decent speeds for Saturn emulation).*;Raspberry Pi (Eg. :A very popular single-board computer that can run projects like Lakkaoff an SD card. It recommended You'll want to use the a Raspberry Pi 3 or newer for decent performance.)It is best if you use some kind of For more convenience, a [[Frontends|frontend]] to run the emulators as it will provide more convenienceis recommended with these devices. ===Distributions===These Linux distributions offer complete emulation packages for single board computers and other systems. {| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"! scope="col"|Name! scope="col"|Architecture! scope="col"|Frontend! scope="col"|Latest Version! scope="col"|Active! scope="col"|[[Recommended Emulators|Recommended]]|-|[[RetroPie]]|ARM|[[EmulationStation]] fork|[https://retropie.org.uk/download/ {{RetroPieVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{✓}}|-|[[Lakka]]|ARM, x86|[[RetroArch]]|[http://www.lakka.tv/get/ {{LakkaVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|[https://batocera.org/ Batocera.linux]|ARM, x86|[[EmulationStation]] fork|[https://batocera.org/download {{BatoceraLinuxVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|[https://www.recalbox.com/ Recalbox]|ARM, x86|[[EmulationStation]]|[https://archive.recalbox.com/ {{RecalboxVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|[https://chimeraos.org/ ChimeraOS]|x86|Steam Big Picture|[https://chimeraos.org/download 28]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|SteamOS 3|x86|Steam Big Picture|N/A|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|}

==References==<references /> ==External Linkslinks==