The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, commonly shortened to Super Nintendo, Super NES or SNES, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Oceania and 1993 in South America. In Japan, it is called the Super Famicom (SFC). In South Korea, it is called the Super Comboy and was distributed by Hyundai Electronics. The system was released in Brazil on August 30, 1993, by Playtronic. Although each version is essentially the same, several forms of regional lockout prevent cartridges for one version from being used in other versions.
UAE is a computer emulator which emulates the hardware of Commodore International's Amiga range of computers. Released under the GNU General Public License, UAE is free software.
Visual Pinball ("VP") is a freeware and source available video game engine for pinball tables and similar games such as pachinko machines. It includes a table editor as well as the simulator itself, and runs on Microsoft Windows. It can be used with Visual PinMAME, an emulator for ROM images from real pinball machines.
ZSNES is a free software Super Nintendo Entertainment System emulator written mostly in x86 assembly with official ports for Linux, DOS, Windows, and unofficial ports for Xbox and macOS.
NESticle is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator, which was written by Icer Addis of Bloodlust Software. Released on April 3, 1997, the widely popular program originally ran under MS-DOS and Windows 95. It was the first freeware NES emulator, and became commonly considered the NES emulator of choice for the 1990s. Initially offering few features and only supporting a handful of games, development proceeded rapidly and to expand usability such that NESticle is today credited with introducing the concept of recordable playthrough for emulation, as well as providing the capacity for users to create their own graphical hacks via an integrated graphics editor. In pioneering this heightened level of access for users, and providing the tools for fans to hack and remix familiar classics, NESticle has been credited by Spin as representing a milestone toward the development of video game music as a genre.
SuperTux is a free and open-source two-dimensional platform video game inspired by Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. series. The player character is Tux, the official mascot of the Linux kernel.
VisualBoyAdvance is a free emulator of the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance handheld game consoles as well as of Super Game Boy and Super Game Boy 2.
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to software produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development.
The GP2X is a Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only.
Dolphin is a free and open-source video game console emulator for GameCube and Wii that runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S.
PCSX2 is a free and open-source PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS that supports a wide range of PlayStation 2 video games with a high level of compatibility and functionality. Although PCSX2 can closely mirror the original gameplay experience on the PlayStation 2, PCSX2 supports a number of improvements over gameplay on a traditional PlayStation 2, such as the ability to use resolutions up to 8 times larger than native, anti-aliasing and texture filtering.
PCSX is a free and open-source, video game console emulator that allows software designed to be used with the Sony PlayStation to run on personal computers. Over the years, development changed hands several times with PCSX-Reloaded (PCSXR) now being the main version. As of 2021, the emulator seems to be no longer under active development. A newer, actively maintained fork of PCSX-Reloaded is PCSX-Redux.
Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because many games are not natively supported for the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, such as Wine, Cedega, and Proton, and managers such as Lutris and PlayOnLinux. The Linux gaming community has a presence on the internet with users who attempt to run games that are not officially supported on Linux.
Higan is a free and open source emulator for multiple video game consoles, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It was developed by Near. Originally called bsnes, the emulator is notable for attempting to emulate the original hardware as accurately as possible through low-level, cycle-accurate emulation and for the associated historical preservation efforts of the Super NES platform.
A video game console emulator is a type of emulator that allows a computing device to emulate a video game console's hardware and play its games on the emulating platform. More often than not, emulators carry additional features that surpass limitations of the original hardware, such as broader controller compatibility, timescale control, easier access to memory modifications, and unlocking of gameplay features. Emulators are also a useful tool in the development process of homebrew demos and the creation of new games for older, discontinued, or rare consoles.
Mupen64Plus, formerly named Mupen64-64bit and Mupen64-amd64, is a free and open-source, cross-platform Nintendo 64 emulator, written in the programming languages C and C++. It allows users to play Nintendo 64 games on a computer by reading ROM images, either dumped from the read-only memory of a Nintendo 64 cartridge or created directly on the computer as homebrew.
PPSSPP is a free and open-source PSP emulator for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Nintendo WiiU, Nintendo Switch, BlackBerry 10, MeeGo, Pandora, Xbox Series X/S and Symbian with an increased focus on speed and portability. It was first released to the public on November 1, 2012, licensed under the GNU GPLv2 or later. The PPSSPP project was created by Henrik Rydgård, one of the co-founders of the Dolphin emulator.
RetroArch is a free and open-source, cross-platform frontend for emulators, game engines, video games, media players and other applications. It is the reference implementation of the libretro API, designed to be fast, lightweight, portable and without dependencies. It is licensed under the GNU GPLv3.
RetroN is a series of video game consoles created and developed by Hyperkin which allows users to play video games from consoles such as the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Super NES. Since the release of the RetroN 5, they have been connected via HDMI. The latest in the series, RetroN Sq, was released in 2021.
