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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 based==;First-party boxes:Use the official branding of a console, with the support of the company who made it. More often than not, modern console manufacturers are not the ones who come up with the idea, and are usually approached by some other company who offloads some or all of the work of getting it running.These emulation ;Third-party boxes uses original game cartridges or CDs and cannot :Use their own branding because they don't have a license to use the actual companies' trademarks. A legal ruling for emulators has allowed them to use the name of the console in marketing (without hackingsuch as advertising the ability to play games from a specific console on the packaging) load ROMs directly, but not as the name for the box itself.

=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 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 have been found using emulators illegally, due to a prohibition in the emulator's license (like commercial distribution or locked down hardware), resulting in many controversies unfolding over the matter. ==First-party boxes===

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

|Official SEGA product designed to only emulate the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Includes 42 games. Interestingly, it has the same specs as the (S)NESC. The emulator used was develop developed by [[wikipedia:M2 (game_developer)|M2]], who are is best known for handling the emulation of various re-releases of games including several Sega ports and the Genesis Virtual Console on the Wii.|-|[https://sega.jp/genesismini2/ Sega Genesis Mini 2]|[[Sega]]|Sega Genesis, [[Sega Genesis emulators|Sega CD]]|$99.99|m2engage|Official SEGA product designed to emulate normal Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games plus Sega CD/Mega CD games and two enhanced Genesis/Mega 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]], handled the emulation of Genesis and Sega 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]]

|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===

|$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=====Poor catalog===A first party box may prove to be lacking due to its game catalog missing some essential title. This is often the result of messy licensing issues that continue to plague consoles today, as many games are a nightmare to relicense due to some external factor. It doesn't help that first-party boxes often lack the ability to load games externally. This is done to prevent the manufacturer from having to admit support for cartridge and disc formats that the emulation community uses, as it would by extension imply support for unofficial emulation. These limitations have caused many to [[Modding Consoles/Flashcarts#NES.2FSNES.2FPSX.2FMD_.28GEN.29_Classic|modify]] their systems just to be able to get more use out of it. Some redistributors of those third party boxes that pre-load them with games (which in itself is illegal to redistribute with the game images preinstalled) may contain game images that aren't 1:1 identical to the originals either due to possibly cobbling them from various sources. Use the guides on the website where possible for obtaining game images. ===Licensing===Some of the products have attracted the ire of parts of the emulator emulation community over issues not necessarily related to the product's quality, but ones related to open source emulators. In some cases, it's because negotiations with open source emulator and/or frontend developers fell through and the company used a "lesser" option as a replacement. In others, an arrangement was reached, contracts and money were exchanged only for the project maintainers to turn out not to have gathered the complete consent of all contributors, 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 by GPLv3 obligations. And of course, the company might be acting malicious towards emulator developers.

Since the problem with these is primarily a meta problem that doesn't have much 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 to work with , they may not affect the likes of Hyperkin, after all) experience that the box itself provides. Some examples where this section is about listing some of those cases.has happened:

* Retron5: Its problems are explained at [[Retron5#Controversy|its page]].* Capcom Home Arcade: Koch Media (under license from Capcom has licensed (with compensation) FinalBurnAlpha from the project's maintainer, however this has lead to some announced that they would use [[https://www.google.com/search?q=capcom+home+arcade+illegal&oq=capcom+home+arcade+illegal controversyFinalBurn Alpha]] and outrage by fellow FBA developers (who didn't agree with this move, and eventually made their own fork) and MAME developers (where some of FBA's code comes from), as FB the backend for games on the Capcom Home Arcade. This is despite the fact that FinalBurn Alpha's was developed and released under a license isn't cleared to allow for that forbids commercial use and many (which was taken from versions of those [[MAME]] before they had relicensed in 2015). When other FBA developers think were questioned on the FBA's license is an ugly mess of contradicting licenses that should not exist.* Retron5 (Hyperkin): Is using RetroArch, Snes9xissue, Nestopia, VBA-M and Genesis Plus GX. While they did release their source codewere completely unaware that this happened, resulting in the the latter four have a non-commercial licenseproject maintainer revealing that he had greenlit its use. Retroarch's source code used was partial, and had DRM going against GPLv3 obligationsThe resulting fallout led to the creation of [[FinalBurn Neo]].

Outside of the ;Nvidia Shield TV:An Android TV box fast enough for 2D and 3D emulation community, people have complained that some of these products are lacking or disappointingmany consoles.;LattePanda:A Windows 10 computer with integrated Arduino. This is mainly due to the selection of games determined to be "worthy" of being preloaded to the systemFast enough for Saturn emulation. The issue of not having certain games have caused many to [[Modding Consoles/Flashcarts#NES;ODROID:Has decent speeds for Saturn emulation.2FSNES;Raspberry Pi:A very popular single-board computer that can run projects like Lakka off an SD card.2FPSX_Classic| modify]] their systems just You'll want to be able to play the games they wantuse a Raspberry Pi 3 or newer for decent performance.

For more convenience, a [[Frontends|frontend]] is recommended with these devices. ===Distributions=DIY Solutions==If you still want some kind of 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="emulation boxcol", but don't want to be limited by any consumer product, you can make one yourself|Active! These other SoCs are relatively cheaper and offers more than firstscope="col"|[[Recommended Emulators|Recommended]]|-|[[RetroPie]]|ARM|[[EmulationStation]] fork|[https://retropie.org.uk/download/ {{RetroPieVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{✓}}|-party boxes|[[Lakka]]|ARM, x86|[[RetroArch]]|[http://www.lakka.tv/get/ {{LakkaVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}*Nvidia Shield TV (Android TV box fast enough for 2D & 3D emulation of many consoles)|-*LattaPanda (Windows 10 computer with integrated Arduino|[https://batocera. Fast enough for Saturn emulationorg/ Batocera.)linux]*ODROID (Decent speeds for Saturn emulation)|ARM, x86|[[EmulationStation]] fork*Raspberry Pi (Eg|[https://batocera. Lakkaorg/download {{BatoceraLinuxVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|[https://www. It recommended to use the Raspberry Pi 3 or higher for decent performancerecalbox.)com/ Recalbox]|ARM, x86It is best if you use some kind of |[[FrontendsEmulationStation]]|frontend[https://archive.recalbox.com/ {{RecalboxVer}}]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|[https://chimeraos.org/ ChimeraOS] to run the emulators as it will provide more convenience|x86|Steam Big Picture|[https://chimeraos.org/download 28]|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|-|SteamOS 3|x86|Steam Big Picture|N/A|{{✓}} ||{{TBD}}|}

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