- Gaming Resources for Windows
- Adding Gryoscope Controller Support
- Sleep/Suspend Games
- Gaming Peripherals
- Graphics
- Setting up OBS Studio
- Discord
- Twitch
- Game Stores & Launchers
- Game Streaming
- Playing Android Games
- Game Emulators
- Performance Benchmarks
- r/gaming
- r/Games
- r/Steam
- r/Origin
- r/GOG.com
- r/EAGames
- r/Ubisoft
- r/Xbox
- r/XboxGamePass
- r/PlayStation
- r/pcgaming
- r/GamingPC
- r/Games
- r/AMD
- r/radeon
- r/NVIDIA
- r/hardware
- r/ASUSROG
Handheld Companion is a combination of a Windows service and a touch interface optimized GUI to increase your handheld gaming computer experience.
Features include:
- Motion control a.k.a. gyro control through a device's inertial measurement unit (IMU, Gyroscope and Accelerometer) or external sensor. Settings availible for racing, 1st and 3rd person gaming and emulator support.
- Quicktools overlay, with easy access to various settings and information such as TDP, GPU, Screen Hz, Resolution, Brightness, Volume, Powermode control and battery level.
- Virtual controller simulation of Microsoft Xbox 360 Controller and Sony DualShock 4 Controller.
- Profile settings system, automatic detection of active game and applying of settings.
- PS Remote Play support with DS4 controller, including motion and touchpad.
- 3D Controller overlay for stream recordings.
Nyrna is a tool that let's you Suspend games and applications. Similar to the useful sleep/suspend function found in consoles like the Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation; suspend your game (and its resource usage) at any time, and resume whenever you wish at the push of a button.
Suspend Games
- Pause cutscenes to read the subtitles, examine the scene, answer the door, etc.
- Pause games that can't normally be paused (single-player games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, etc).
- Suspend games whose pause screens keep the system running hot or playing unwanted music.
- Suspend inbetween checkpoints (example: Hollow Knight).
Xbox Wireless Controller + USB-C® Cable
Xbox Controller
- Xbox Game Bar is a tool for Windows 10 and 11 that can be opened with Win+G, or by pressing the Xbox button on an Xbox controller. It has quick shortcuts for taking screenshots or screen recordings, checking CPU and GPU usage, changing audio levels/outputs, and more.
Game Controller Bar. Image Credit: Microsoft
PlayStation 5 DualSense™ Wireless Controller
PS 5 DualSense™ Controller
Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
Nintendo Switch Pro Controller
8BitDo SN30 Pro+ Controller
8BitDo SN30 Pro+ Controller Button Mapping
Google Stadia Controller on ebay
Switch your Stadia Controller to Bluetooth mode to keep gaming wirelessly on your favorite devices and services after Stadia shuts down.
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Note: Steam Controllers were discontinued on November 26, 2019, though, you can still buy them on ebay.
- The Luna Controller is made for Amazon's cloud gaming service. Powered by Cloud Direct technology Connect directly to Amazon's custom game servers when playing on Luna, reducing roundtrip latency by 17 to 30 milliseconds vs. a local Bluetooth connection among Windows PC, Mac, and Fire TV.
Precision Boost 2 is a performance-maximizing technology available will work with the Ryzen 5000 or newer AMD processors improving your PC's performance by raising clockspeeds, which makes the processor and your applications run faster. This technology will not be applied retroactively to previous-gen models, like Ryzen 3000 chips. You'll need either a 500-series or 400-series motherboard and a new BIOS based on version 1.1.8.0 AGESA.
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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. FSR enables “practical performance” for costly render operations, such as hardware ray tracing for the AMD RDNA™ and AMD RDNA™ 2 architectures.
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AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 2.0 is an open source, high-quality solution for producing high resolution frames from lower resolution inputs. It uses temporal data and optimized anti-aliasing to boost framerates in supported games while delivering similar or better image quality than native resolution.
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FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 (FSR 3), is the latest version of the company’s upscaling tech. AMD claims it’ll provide 2x times increase in frame rate over FSR 2, boosted by the new AMD Fluid Motion Frames technology.
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AMD Open Source Driver for Vulkan® is an open-source Vulkan driver for Radeon™ graphics adapters on Linux®. It is built on top of AMD's Platform Abstraction Library (PAL), a shared component that is designed to encapsulate certain hardware and OS-specific programming details for many of AMD's 3D and compute drivers.
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Vulkan® Memory Allocator (VMA) is a library provides a simple and easy to integrate API to help you allocate memory for Vulkan® buffer and image storage.
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Radeon™ Raytracing Analyzer (RRA) is a tool that investigates the performance of your raytracing applications and highlight potential bottlenecks.
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Radeon™ GPU Profiler is a low-level optimization tool that provides detailed information on Radeon™ GPUs.
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Radeon™ GPU Analyzer is an offline compiler and performance analysis tool for DirectX®, Vulkan®, SPIR-V™, OpenGL®, and OpenCL™. It can be used together with RGP, RMV, and RDP.
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Radeon™ Developer Panel (RDP) is an essential part of the Radeon™ Developer Tool Suite. It provides the communication channel that delivers requests to, and receives data from, the AMD Radeon™ driver.
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Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV) is a powerful tool that allows users to analyze video memory usage on AMD Radeon GPUs.
Radeon™ Memory Visualizer (RMV)
Hydra 1.2 is a AMD Ryzen tuning and overclocking utility which adds support for Zen 4 CPUs & also allows GPU tuning as an additional component to the suite. It's developed and maintained by Yuri Bubliy aka 1usmus. To get early access Hydra 1.2 and Hydra Pro 1.2.
- Complete redesign of all features.
- New Curve Optimizer diagnostics (and for Zen 4).
- More flexibility for AMD PBO2 and HYBRID OC.
- Automatic problem solving (assistant).
- Auto GPU tuning.
- Unlimited GPU profiling.
- Powerful new monitoring.
OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) is free and open source software for video recording and live streaming. Stream to Twitch, YouTube and many other providers or record your own videos with high quality H264 / AAC encoding. Starting with OBS Studio version 28 it will feature 10-bit and HDR video encode support for AV1 and HEVC, improved AMD encoding on Windows, NVIDIA RTX software integration, a new default theme, and many other changes.
OBS Studio
OBS Studio 29 adds AV1 Support for Intel Arc & AMD GPUs.
New features
- Added support for the AMD AV1 Encoder for RDNA3 GPUs.
- Added support for the Intel AV1 Encoder for Arc GPUs.
- Added support for the Intel HEVC Encoder.
- Added an upward compressor filter.
- Added a 3-band equalizer filter.
- Added update channels for opting into receiving beta/release-candidate builds to Windows.
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Streamlink is a CLI utility which pipes video streams from various services into a video player, such as VLC.
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Advanced Scene Switcher plugin; an automated scene switcher.
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Audio Pan plugin; control stereo pan of audio source.
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Browser plugin; CEF-based OBS Studio browser plugin.
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Directory Watch Media plugin; filter you can add to media source to load the oldest or newest file in a directory.
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Downstream Keyer plugin; add a Downstream Keyer dock.
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Dynamic Delay plugin; filter for dynamic delaying a video source.
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Freeze Filter plugin; freeze a source using a filter.
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Gradient Source plugin; adding gradients as a Soource.
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GStreamer plugins; feed GStreamer launch pipelines into OBS Studio and use GStreamer encoder elements.
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Move Transition plugin; move source to a new position during scene transition.
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Multi Source Effect plugin; provides a custom effect to render multiple sources.
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NDI plugin; Network A/V via NewTek's NDI.
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NvFBC plugin; screen capture via NVIDIA FBC API. Requires NvFBC patches for Nvidia drivers for consumer grade GPUs.
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Soundboard plugin; adds a soundboard dock.
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Source Copy plugin; adds copy and paste options to the tools menu.
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Source Dock plugin; create a Dock for a source, which lets you see audio levels, change volume and control media.
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Recursion Effect plugin; recursion effect filter.
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Replay Source plugin; slow motion replay async sources from memory.
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RGB Levels plugin; simple filter to adjust RGB levels.
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RTSPServer plugin; encode and publish to a RTSP stream.
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Scale to Sound plugin; adds a filter which makes a source scale based on the audio levels of any audio source you choose
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Scene Collection Manager plugin; filter, backup and restore Scene Collections.
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Scene Notes Dock plugin; create a Dock for showing and editing notes for the current active scene.
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Source Record plugin; make sources available to record via a filter.
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Source Switcher plugin; to switch between a list of sources.
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Spectralizer plugin; audio visualization using fftw.
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StreamFX plugin; collection modern effects filters and transitions.
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Teleport plugin; open NDI-like replacement.
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Text Pango plugin; Provides a text source rendered using Pango with multi-language support, emoji support, vertical rendering and RTL support.
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Text PThread plugin; Rich text source plugin with many advanced features.
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Time Warp Scan plugin; a time warp scan filter.
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Transition Table plugin; customize scene transitions.
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Virtual Cam Filter plugin; make sources available to the virtual camera via a filter
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VNC Source plugin; VNC viewer that works as a source.
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Websockets plugin; remote-control OBS Studio through WebSockets, compatible with StreamControl.
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obsws-python is a Python SDK for OBS Studio WebSocket v5.0.
Discord is an application with modern voice & text chat app. It provides clear voice, multiple server and channel support, mobile apps, and more. It's available on Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and your web browser.
Twitch Studio Beta is a free streaming software designed for new streamers to create content and share it with a community.
Twitch is an application where thousands of communities come together for our favorite streamers join millions enjoying live games, music, sports, esports, podcasts, cooking shows, IRL streams, etc..
Steam Link app is available free of charge, streaming your Steam PC games to phones, tablets, and TV.
Playnite is an open source video game library manager and launcher with support for 3rd party libraries like Steam, GOG, Origin, Battle.net and Ubisoft Connect. Includes game emulation support, providing one unified interface for your games.
Launchbox is a video game library manager and launcher that lets you Emulate, Organize, and Beautify Your Game Collection.
Razer Cortex is a video game library manager and launcher that lets you all your games across different platforms, including Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy, and Ubisoft Connect.
Heroic Game Launcher is an Open Source Game Launcher for Linux, Windows and MacOS (for both Native and Windows Games using Crossover). It supports launching games from the Epic Games Store using Legendary, a CLI alternative to the Epic Games Launcher.
Epic Games Store is a digital video game storefront for Microsoft Windows and macOS, operated by Epic Games.
Blizzard Battle.net is an internet-based online gaming, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Activision and Blizzard Entertainment. Battle.net is the launcher for World of Warcraft, Diablo III, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch and Call of Duty.
Origin is an online gaming, digital distribution and digital rights management (DRM) platform developed by Electronic Arts that allows users to purchase games on the internet for PC and mobile platforms, and download them with the Origin client (formerly EA Download Manager, EA Downloader and EA Link).
EA Play is a subscription-based video game service from Electronic Arts for the Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Windows platforms, offering access to selected games published by Electronic Arts along with additional incentives.
- Note: you will need to install Origin to access all EA game titles for EA Play even if you use EA Play on Steam.
Ubisoft Connect is a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service created by Ubisoft to provide an experience similar to the achievements/trophies offered by various other game companies.
Rockstar Games Launcher is a game launcher for downloading and playing the latest Rockstar Games PC titles.
GOG Galaxy is an application that lets you combine multiple game libraries into one place and connect with your friends across all gaming platforms, consoles included.
Itch.io Store is an app that lets you effortlessly download and run games and software from itch.io. All of your downloads are kept in a single place and are automatically updated.
FFXIV Launcher is a faster launcher for our favorite critically acclaimed MMO, with various available addons and enhancements to the game.
Features:
- Auto-login.
- Fast patching.
- Discord Rich Presence.
- Fast in-game market board price checks.
- Chat filtering.
- Chat bridge to Discord.
- Discord notifications for duties, retainer sales, etc.
Xbox Cloud Gaming is Microsoft's cloud-based Xbox game-streaming technology (currently in Beta). Play games like Forza Horizon 4, Halo 5: Guardians, Gears of War 4, Sea of Thieves, Cuphead, Red Dead Redemption 2, and 100+ other games on your mobile device or Chrome web browser. Xbox Cloud Gaming does require an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
Geforce NOW is NVIDIA's Cloud Gaming Service.
Amazon Luna is Amazon's Cloud Gaming Service. Amazon Luna is Compatible/Supported on a vartiey of Devices and Browsers.
Shadow is a fully-featured, cloud-based, high-end computer. It is the only remote service that offers performance capable of competing with a local PC. Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android/AndroidTV, and iOS/tvOS.
BlueStacks X is a Cloud-Based Android Gaming Platform that let's you select a game to play from the 2 million+ games available either locally or stream to your PC from the cloud.
Steam Remote Play Together is a steam service that let's you share your Steam local multi-player games with friends over the internet, for free. Using Remote Play Together, one player owns and runs the game, then up to four players can join.
Steam Link app is available free of charge, streaming your Steam PC games to phones, tablets, and TV.
PlayStation Remote Play is a feature available on all PS4 and PS5 consoles that let's you control your PlayStation® console remotely wherever you have a high-speed internet connection.
Chiaki is a Free and Open Source Software Client for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 Remote Play for Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Android, macOS, Windows, Nintendo Switch and potentially even more platforms.
Parsec is a video game streaming platform, which offers a wide variety of games and genres to choose from and provides a high-quality and smooth gameplay. SParsec is developed in order to provide a high-quality smooth gameplay, same time to be free of all ads and in-game purchases.
Moonlight Game Streaming is a program that let you stream from your PC games over the Internet with no configuration required. Stream from almost any device, whether you're in another room or miles away from your gaming rig. Sunshine is a Game stream host for Moonlight that is a self-hosted, low latency, cloud gaming solution with support for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA GPUs.
Getting started with Windows Subsystem for Android
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Open the Amazon App store from this link.
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Click Install. It would download Amazon AppStore and Windows subsystem for Android.
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When done, you would see the Windows subsystem for Android on your app list, together with Amazon AppStore.
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Open the Amazon AppStore, and sign in with your US-based Amazon Account on the screen that shows.
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Locate your App in the catalogue and click Install.
Windows Subsystem for Android Settings
There are also a bunch of Android Settings you can customize as well, which are as under.
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Files show the files which Apps download to the Device.
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Subsystem Screen reader helps accessibility wise, like screen reading on in Android apps you plan to run.
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Developer mode helps you to sideload an APK file manually using ADB.Checkout this YouTube video.
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If the Subsystem is selected As needed, no resources are used in the Background, so as a result, apps open slowly. If a continuous option is selected, resources continue to be used in the Background, and Apps open quickly.
Amazon App Store is an app store for Android-compatible platforms operated by Amazon.
BlueStacks is a the Fastest & Lightest Android App Player for PC.
Google Play Games for PC (Beta) is a platform that brings your Android games to PCs using high performance emulation with Android and Chrome OS cross-device play from a single codebase.
Aurora Store is an alternate to Google's Play Store, with an elegant design, using Aurora you can download apps, update existing apps, search for apps, get details about in-app trackers, spoof your location and much more.
F-Droid is an installable catalogue of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) applications for the Android platform.
Magisk on WSA is a tool that integrates Magisk root and Google Apps into WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android).
Features:
- Integrate Magisk and GApps in a few clicks within minutes.
- Keep each build up to date.
- Support both ARM64 and x64.
- Supports all OpenGApps variants except for aroma (aroma does not support x86_64, please use super instead).
- Remove Amazon Appstore.
- Add device administration feature.
- Unattended installation.
- Automatically activates developers mode in Windows 11.
Also checkout these subreddits for more great Game Emulators recommendations
- r/emulation
- r/emulations
- r/RetroArch
- r/DolphinEmulator
- r/Citra
- r/cemu
- r/yuzu
- r/OpenEmu
- r/MAME
- r/EmuDev
- r/Roms
EmulationStation Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is a frontend application for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform game collection. It's available for Unix/Linux, macOS(M1 & Intel) and Windows.
EmuDeck for Windows is a tool that simplifies the process of adding 160 different emulators and their supporting utilities to your ROG Ally or Steam Deck. The new graphical interface now let's you select different resolutions for PS1, PS2, Switch and Gamecube games.
RetroArch is a frontend for emulators, game engines and media players. It enables you to run classic games on a wide range of computers and consoles through its slick graphical interface. Settings are also unified so configuration is done once and for all.
Pegasus is a cross platform, customizable graphical frontend for launching emulators and managing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place. It's focused on customizability, cross platform support (including embedded devices) and high performance.
RetroBat is a software distribution designed for emulation and to be the easiest way to enjoy your game collection on your Windows computer. The supplied EmulationStation interface is fully functional and highly customizable.
Mednaffe is a front-end (GUI) for mednafen emulator which is a portable argument(command-line)-driven multi-system emulator. *
The following systems are supported:
- Atari Lynx
- Neo Geo Pocket (Color)
- WonderSwan
- GameBoy (Color)
- GameBoy Advance
- Nintendo Entertainment System
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom
- Virtual Boy
- PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 (CD)
- SuperGrafx
- PC-FX
- Sega Game Gear
- Sega Genesis/Megadrive
- Sega Master System
- Sega Saturn (experimental, x86_64 only)
- Sony PlayStation
Cartridge is a self-hosted game library made with Laravel + Vue.js.
Cartridge Features
- Scan for ROM files and match with IGDB game information
- Serve ROM download links alongside game details
- Manage access to library with user creation and permissions (WIP)
- Allow users to request games (Planned)
- Play select ROMs in-browser using JS emulators (Planned)
- Track played and favorite games (even ones that aren't available for download) (Planned)
Cartridge UI
Dolphin is an emulator for two recent Nintendo video game consoles: the GameCube and the Wii. It allows PC gamers to enjoy games for these two consoles in full HD (1080p) with several enhancements: compatibility with all PC controllers, turbo speed, networked multiplayer, and even more.
PrimeHack is a fork of Dolphin Emulator to bring modern Mouse and Keyboard controls, as well as Dual-Stick gamepad controls to the Metroid Prime Trilogy. It also offers many other features such as increased FoV and various new cheats. Versions of Metroid Prime that are currently supported.
Ryujinx is an open-source Nintendo Switch emulator created by gdkchan and written in C#. This emulator aims at providing excellent accuracy and performance, a user-friendly interface, and consistent builds.
yuzu is an experimental open-source emulator for the Nintendo Switch from the creators of Citra.
m64p is a Nintendo 64 Emulator. It uses mupen64plus-gui, a brand new mupen64plus frontend written in Qt5. It supports all of the things you’d expect from a frontend (savestate management, pausing, screenshots).
simple64 is an emulator based on a heavily modified version of mupen64plus-core, and ParaLLEl RSP/RDP. It includes a GUI, netplay, controller configuration, and more. *
Nintendo 3DS
Citra is an open-source emulator for the Nintendo 3DS capable of playing many of your favorite games.
DeSmuME is a Nintendo DS emulator.
melonDS is a tool that aims at providing fast and accurate Nintendo DS emulation. While it is still a work in progress, it has a pretty solid set of features.
Features:
* Nearly complete core (CPU, video, audio, etc...)
* OpenGL renderer, 3D upscaling
* RTC, microphone, lid close/open
* Joystick support
* Savestates
* Various display position/sizing/rotations modes
* Work-in-progress Wi-Fi emulation for online connectivity and local multiplayer
* Experimental emulation of the Nintendo DSi
Snes9x is a portable, freeware Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) emulator.
bsnes is a Super Nintendo (SNES) emulator focused on performance, features, and ease of use.
Nestopia is a portable NES/Famicom emulator written in C++.
Mesen is a multi-system emulator (NES, SNES, Game Boy and PC Engine) for Windows, Linux and macOS.
mGBA is a new emulator for running Game Boy Advance games. It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack.
NanoBoyAdvance is a highly accurate Nintendo Game Boy Advance emulator.
DOSBox is an open-source DOS emulator which primarily focuses on running DOS Games.
DOSBox Staging is a full x86 CPU emulator (independent of host architecture), capable of running DOS programs that require real or protected mode.
Stella is a multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Stella is available on Windows MacOS, Linux, and FreeBSD.
Hatari is an Atari ST/STE/TT/Falcon emulator for Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows and other systems which are supported by the SDL library. The Atari ST was a 16/32 bit computer system which was first released by Atari in 1985.
Flycast is a multi-platform Sega Dreamcast, Naomi and Atomiswave emulator derived from reicast.
Redream is a Dreamcast emulator, enabling you to play your favorite Dreamcast games in high-definition(1080p or 4k).
PPSSPP is a PSP emulator that can run games in full HD resolution. It can even upscale textures that would otherwise be too blurry as they were made for the small screen of the original PSP.
DuckStation is an simulator/emulator of the Sony PlayStation 1 console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability.
Avocado is a Modern PlayStation 1 emulator.
PCSX2 is a Playstation 2 'emulator', a free program that tries to replicate the Playstation 2 console to enable you to play PS2 games on your PC.
Play! is a PlayStation2 emulator for Windows, macOS, UNIX, Android, iOS and web browser platforms.
RPCS3 is an experimental open-source Sony PlayStation 3 emulator and debugger written in C++ for Windows and Linux. RPCS3 started development in May of 2011 by its founders DH and Hykem. The emulator is currently capable of running over 1800 commercial titles powered by Vulkan and OpenGL.
xemu is an original Xbox emulator.
Xenia is an Xbox 360 Emulator.
MAME is a Arcade Machine Emulator.
Process Lasso is a tool for real-Time CPU Optimization and Automation.
Geekbench 6 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your system's performance with the press of a button.
UNIGINE Superposition is an extreme performance and stability test for PC hardware: video card, power supply, cooling system.
