As a tech enthusiast and infrequent programmer, console emulation is a topic that has fascinated me for years. The concept of writing a piece of software to translate from one piece of hardware to another can be incredibly challenging but yield spectacular results. Every few years I’ll go on an emulation kick and look around at how the community has progressed since I last checked up on it, and I’m always amazed at what I find. Having to sort through all of the competing emulators and familiarize myself with how to run them can be daunting, so I decided to share my results with you and hopefully make your initiation or reintroduction to emulation slightly more accessible.

Game Boy, GB Color, GB Advance

While most of the Game Boy’s games are designed to be portable titles enjoyed on the go in short sessions, there are the occasional releases that merit the same amount of respect and devotion as their home console counterparts. Series like The Legend of Zelda and Golden Sun make Game Boy emulation especially appealing, as they’re the kinds of games that you can easily lose days playing, but don’t want to worry about batteries or the strain of staring at a tiny screen. For this purpose, Visual Boy Advance is the best GB/GBC/GBA emulator out there, with the ability to render games exactly as you remember them, or use one of its many filters to clean up the image. The results from using ‘hq2x’ are simply stunning and can make 20 year old sprites look like something out of Super Paper Mario.

Visual Boy Advance

Nintendo DS

GBA emulation has been a breeze for programmers for the past few years, so it comes as no surprise that DS emulation wasn’t far behind when you consider the architecture similarities between the two platforms. Though it’s still not perfect, NO$GBA (which is a GBA emulator as well if you hadn’t guessed already) has support for DS emulation and will allow you play through many 2D Nintendo DS games with ease. Development on NO$GBA’s 3D support is ongoing and continues to improve, but like all emulator projects they’re only worked on in spare time so progress can be slow. A newer alternative is iDeaS, which doesn’t do 2D games as well as NO$GBA, but seems to be making more progress in the 3D arena. Which emulator you want to use might come down to the game you want to play.

NO$GBA

iDeaS

SNES

ZSNES has been king of SNES emulation for years, and though some might still prefer Snes9x, I’ll stick to ZSNES for its great compatibility, filters, and support for netplay. Many purists are vehemently opposed to the use of filters, but for most games I think they look great and will make playing a 15 year old far less grating on the eyes.

ZSNES