So you want to emulate some old video games. Well, you’ve come to the right place. If you want to play retro console and handheld games from the NES all the way to the DS (and even 3DS), it’s never been as easy as it is now. If you want to emulate most retro games on your PC/Mac/Linux computer or on your Android smartphone, it’s as easy as downloading RetroArch. To really round out your collection, you’ll also want to get DraStic (for Android), PCSX2 (for your computer), and a few other emulators but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s focus on RetroArch.
RetroArch: Free Retro Game Emulation On Your Computer And Android
First things first, click here to see how to download RetroArch for your computer, Android, PSP, or any other platform, or just to try out the Web Player. If you’re on Android, you can also just find it in the Google Play Store, of course. Some installations are more complicated than others, but that link also has instructions for any platform available.
Once you have RetroArch downloaded, you might open it up and be confused as to what you should do next. This is where some people get frustrated with RetroArch and just switch to dedicated emulators, but it’s not as hard as you might think. All you have to do is download Cores. Think of Cores as emulators that you’re downloading and inserting into RetroArch, because that’s basically what they are.
Downloading Cores in RetroArch
- From the Main Menu, go to the Online Updater
- Go to the Core Updater
- Download the corresponding Core for any systems you want
For example, if you want a Game Boy Color emulator, scroll down until you get to the entries that say Game Boy/Game Boy Color. You can download any of these, but the one I prefer is (Gambatte). Repeat this process for any other emulators you want. My preferred RetroArch cores for some popular systems are Gambatte for Game Boy and Game Boy Color, mGBA for Game Boy Advance, Nestopia UE for the NES, Mupen64Plus for the N64, PCSX ReARMed for the PlayStation, Genesis Plus GX for the Sega Genesis, and Snes9x for the SNES.
Other systems you might want to play, like GameCube, only have the one core (Dolphin), which you can either download within RetroArch or as a standalone emulator (where it will run better). Note: if you’re on Android, not all of the above will be available. Also, if you’re on Android, DraStic is the best DS emulator, not a RetroArch core, so scroll down to read more about DraStic.
Finally, if you’re on Ubuntu (and possibly in other Linux distributions that use APT), you can just do the following to download every single RetroArch core and configuration, which doesn’t take up too much disk space:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libretro/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install retroarch* libretro*
Once you’ve gotten every core you want, pat yourself on the back! You now have RetroArch ready to play thousands of your favorite games. Actually playing them is pretty easy, too.
Playing Games in RetroArch
Now that you have your cores ready to go, it’s time to start playing games! If you’re gonna be playing a lot of games, you might want to point RetroArch to your games directory. This step is optional:
- Navigate to Settings > Directory
- Select File Browser
- Set the directory to wherever your games are
Now that you have that set up, you can get into your games quicker. To actually play a game:
- From the Main Menu, press Load Content
- Navigate to where your games are, or press Start Directory if you set your games directory
- Find and press on whichever game you want to play
- Select the correct core depending on which system the game is for (pick an SNES core for an SNES game, for example)
That’s it! Now you’re ready to start playing games in RetroArch!