OpenEmu is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

multi-system

video game emulator 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 ...

designed for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

. It provides a plugin interface to emulate numerous consoles' hardware, such as the

Nintendo Entertainment System The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in America ...

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Bible * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...

Game Boy The is an 8-bit fourth generation handheld game console developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan on April 21, 1989, in North America later the same year, and in Europe in late 1990. It was designed by the same t ...

, and many more. The architecture allows for other developers to add new cores to the base system without the need to account for specific macOS APIs. Version 1.0 was released on December 23, 2013, after a lengthy beta testing period. Numerous incremental updates have been released since then, with plans to incorporate support for more consoles in future releases. Some of these in-development cores are available to download in an optional "experimental" cores build (released alongside the regular, "standard" version), containing support for arcade systems using

MAME MAME (formerly an acronym of Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a free and open-source emulator designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. Its intention is to preserve ...

History

Beginnings

OpenEmu was first released on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 as ''OpenNestopia'', a

Cocoa Cocoa may refer to: Chocolate * Chocolate * ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree * Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao'' * Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter an ...

-port written by Josh Weinberg for then Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger of the NES/

Famicom The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit Third generation of video game consoles, third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redes ...

emulator

Nestopia Nestopia UE - and its predecessor Nestopia - are an open-source NES/Famicom emulator designed to emulate the NES hardware as accurately as possible. Features The requirements for the original Nestopia were considered higher than some of its co ...

(written by Martin Freij). Weinberg and his friend, Ben Devacel, began searching for more developers to port other emulators to macOS, which led to the name change to OpenEmu in 2009, to better describe the multi-system emulator.

1.0

OpenEmu 1.0 released on Monday, December 23, 2013 with 12 "cores" emulating

Nintendo is a Japanese multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produced handmade playing cards ...

Sega is a Japanese multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, respectively. Its division ...

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

, and SNK's

home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. ...

tabletop Tabletop may refer to: Mountains * Table Top Mountain in Rangeville, Queensland, Australia * Table Top Mountain (New York) * Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa * Tepui, flat top mountains in South America Places * Tabletop, New South Wale ...

, and

handheld A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

consoles from the

3rd Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', or 1⁄3600 of a ''minute'' Places * 3rd Street (disambiguation) * Third Avenue (disambiguation) * H ...

through 7th video game console generations. OpenEmu 1.0 needed Mac OS X Lion (10.7.x) to run. A Wednesday, October 15, 2014 (296 days later) midstream update to the OpenEmu library (1.0.4) would introduce Stella, a core emulating the 2600, a 2nd generation console from

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French publisher Atari SA through a subsidiary named Atari Interactive. The original Atari, Inc., founded in Sunnyvale, Ca ...

2.0

Introduced on Wednesday, Dec 23, 2015, (exactly two years after 1.0) OpenEmu 2.0 was released. OpenEmu 2.0 began requiring a minimum of OS X El Capitan 10.11, dropping support for Mac OS X Lion (10.7.x) through OS X Yosemite (10.10.x). OpenEmu 2.0 introduced 16 new cores along with hundreds of bug fixes and lesser features. The new cores added several 2nd generation cores, support for

optical media In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data ( bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces ...

-based-image games, additionally emulating systems from

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

Mattel Mattel, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational toy manufacturing and entertainment company founded in January 1945 and headquartered in El Segundo, California. The company has presence in 35 countries and territories and sells products in mor ...

Bandai is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational toy manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Taitō, Tokyo. Its international branches, Bandai Namco Toys & Collectables America and Bandai UK, are respectively headquartered in Irvine ...

Magnavox Magnavox (Latin for "great voice", stylized as MAGNAVOX) is an American electronics company that since 1974 has been a subsidiary of the Dutch electronics corporation Philips. The predecessor to Magnavox was founded in 1911 by Edwin Pridham and ...

, Milton-Bradley, and

Coleco Coleco Industries, Inc. was an American company founded in 1932 by Maurice Greenberg as The Connecticut Leather Company. It was a successful toy company in the 1980s, mass-producing versions of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls and its video game consol ...

. Another midstream update, ''2.0.6.1'', released Tuesday, Dec 19, 2017 (727 days after 2.0) added support for

Mednafen Mednafen (My Emulator Doesn't Need A Frickin' Excellent Name), formerly known as Nintencer, is an OpenGL and SDL multi-system free software wrapper that bundles various original and third-party emulation cores into a single package, and is drive ...

Sega Saturn The is a home video game console developed by Sega and released on November 22, 1994, in Japan, May 11, 1995, in North America, and July 8, 1995, in Europe. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it was the successor to the su ...

branch, with a suggested quad-core i7 CPU to emulate.

2.1 and 2.2

OpenEmu 2.1 ( Friday, October 15, 2019, 675 days after version ''2.0.6.1''; "coincidentally," exactly 5 years after the ''1.0.4'' Stella update) was significant, not for any new cores, but for supporting

Metal A metal (from ancient Greek, Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electrical resistivity and conductivity, e ...

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

's visual API successor to OpenGL and OpenCl, giving OpenEmu significant gains in both performance and battery life. OpenEmu 2.2 ( Friday December 27, 2019, 63 days later) added support for a

downstream Downstream may refer to: * Downstream (bioprocess) * Downstream (manufacturing) * Downstream (networking) * Downstream (software development) * Downstream (petroleum industry) * Upstream and downstream (DNA), determining relative positions on DNA ...

, Metal-forked version of

Dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the b ...

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the ...

branch A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term '' twig'' usuall ...

, building on 2.1's foundation. This brings OpenEmu's number of supported cores to 31.

Limitations

32X Hybrid Games

As confirmed by the OpenEmu developers on their official

subreddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images ...

, Sega 32X-CD hybrid games (versions of games that could use a 32X cartridge and Sega CD at once, such as ''

Night Trap ''Night Trap'' is a 1992 interactive movie developed by Digital Pictures and published by Sega for the Sega CD. Presented primarily through full-motion video (FMV), ''Night Trap'' tasks the player to observe teenage girls having a sleepov ...

'', ''

Corpse Killer ''Corpse Killer'' is a horror-themed rail shooter developed and published by Digital Pictures for the Sega CD, Sega CD 32X, 3DO, Sega Saturn, Windows 95 and Macintosh computers. An interactive variation on the zombie film genre, it utilizes li ...

'', and ''

Fahrenheit The Fahrenheit scale () is a temperature scale based on one proposed in 1724 by the physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686–1736). It uses the degree Fahrenheit (symbol: °F) as the unit. Several accounts of how he originally defined hi ...

'') are not supported. Users are prompted with a "This game requires the Sega 32X attachment" error if attempted.

GameCube Limitations

At present, GameCube emulation doesn't support Save States (due to continual updates breaking compatibility with saved states); users are encouraged to use in-game saves. OpenEmu GameCube emulation also does not support th
22 multi-disc GameCube titles
at present (despite the main Dolphin branch doing so).

Features

OpenEmu features a backend that uses multiple game engines while maintaining the familiar, native macOS frontend UI. It also uses modern macOS technologies such as

and

Quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical f ...

. A unique feature of OpenEmu is its ROM library, which allows one to import ROM files and view them in a gallery type setting, similar to

iTunes iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mu ...

. Game info and cover art can be automatically added from OpenEmu's databases. OpenEmu includes the following features: * High-quality

(formerly

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

) scaling, multithreaded playback, and other optimizations * Real-time 3D effects and image processing * Graphic filters to enhance display * Full-screen support * Ability to play multiple ROMs at once * Ability to scan attached disks for ROMs * Automatic downloading of game info and cover art * Ability to use custom cover art * Can play

ROM hacks Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

for multiple systems. * A fully featured library, supporting multiple views, collections (categories), and game ratings * Optional automatic organization of ROM files within the library folder * Full

save state A saved game (also called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardw ...

support, including automatic save states * Enhanced

gamepad A gamepad is a type of video game controller held in two hands, where the fingers (especially thumbs) are used to provide input. They are typically the main input device for video game consoles. Features Gamepads generally feature a set o ...

support for USB controllers and accessibility to

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

(including DualShock 3 controllers, DualShock 4 controllers, Xbox 360 controllers and Xbox One controllers) * Custom cores for custom systems (For systems like

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, ...

)

Compatibility

* Default core plugin. ** Version 2.1 and lower must have custom system core.

Reception

Upon its 1.0 release, OpenEmu was positively received, and subject to much online press coverage, praising the software's UI, features, and ease of use. In particular, it was praised by the gaming community for "

ringing Ringing may mean: Vibrations * Ringing (signal), unwanted oscillation of a signal, leading to ringing artifacts * Vibration of a harmonic oscillator ** Bell ringing * Ringing (telephony), the sound of a telephone bell * Ringing (medicine), a ring ...

the idea of an emulator for a mainstream, general audience to reality". As of August 16, 2018, OpenEmu has been downloaded over 10,000,000 times since its version 1.0 release, making it one of the most popular multi-system emulators on macOS.

References

External links

* * {{github, OpenEmu Free software programmed in Objective-C Video game culture Arcade video game emulators MacOS-only free software Nintendo emulators Software using the BSD license Neo Geo emulators Game Gear emulators Free video game console emulators Multi-emulators