Discussion and News forum for all things video game emulation related, or tangentially. Platform agnostic. Mobile is welcome too. We'll keep it loose, but more focused on emulation.
Piracy discussion is allowed, that's one reason we're on this domain.
A General Discussion will be stickied for the community to chat in about whatever. Staying on topic isn't important in any GD stickies.
Rules
#1: Obey our domain rules first and foremost.
- TheDude abides. Try to be like The Dude here.
#2: Mundane Tech Support/ROM Sourcing Questions should to be kept to the sticky posts, unless it's something novel/interesting others might want to see.
- if the community grows, the stickies should be renewed monthly.
#3: Unless it's at least tangentially relevant to emulation, no politics. Don't get your toque in a knot.
#4: Be nice, and consider reporting an offending hoser of #4 instead of responding to mean people to begin with.
Inspired by negative impressions of /r/ROMS:
#5a: Strive to be polite & patient with noobs asking questions.
#5b: Doesn't mean be a doormat.
- Report rude, unjustifiably entitled, or ungrateful users asking questions too.
#6: Projects that are AI assisted are allowed. Vibe coded slop and lazy AI ports of other people's hard work is banned. Especially lazy port jobs. Exceptions could in theory be made, just DM me first.
Decompilation and Recompilations are accepted for now.
I'm not sure if another community is needed, Fediverse is smol so at least for now I'll allow these. I am open to discussion about this if it ever comes up as a pain pont for community members.
Helpful Links
Good shaders for stuff like retroarch:
https://github.com/RetroCrisis/Retro-Crisis-GDV-NTSC
https://docs.libretro.com/shader/crt_royale/
Boxart
https://r-roms.github.io/
Get all your games here, retro and up. r/ROMs reddit community's game link aggregator.
A Download Manager is recommended. JDownloader2, for example, download the clean installer here: https://board.jdownloader.org/showthread.php?t=54725
Play ROMS online within your web browser emulators here, no setup required: https://vimm.net/vault
Myrient is shutting down unfortunately :( You can read about it here and about the rescue mission fan torrents:
https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/385tb-video-game-archive-saved-by-fans-myrient-has-been-100-percent-backed-up-and-validated-torrents-being-generated
More aggregators: https://shakil-shahadat.github.io/awesome-piracy/#roms
https://wiki.dbzer0.com/piracy/megathread/emulators/
https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Main_Page
The wiki dedicated to all things emulation.
https://www.readonlymemo.com/emulation-101/
Fiddly Switch Shit
Prod Keys for Switch
Switch Firmware
Current prime Yuzu continuations:
https://git.eden-emu.dev/eden-emu/eden/releases
Or
https://github.com/suyu-emu/suyu-main
Ryubing probably the main Ryujinx fork for now:
https://git.ryujinx.app/Ryubing/Canary/releases
There's also:
https://git.ryujinx.app/projects/Kenji-NX
Switch games (Use adblock for the love of gods):
https://nxbrew.net/
Speaking of which...
For more fiddly emulators, their wiki sites provide tweaks/fixes/hacks, and explain any bugs that are still known issues.
https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Category:Games
https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=Category%3AGames
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Nintendo_GameCube
https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=Wii
Hax
Account Required
Pre-Patched ROM/ISO hacks and fan translations here: https://retrogametalk.com/repo/
DIY ROM/ISO patches:
https://romhackplaza.org/
Browser based ROM patchers:
https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/
https://www.hack64.net/tools/patcher.php
https://www.ff6hacking.com/patcher/
Good Programs
The good (standalone) N64 emulator: https://github.com/Rosalie241/RMG
Quick and Dirty shaders in a window you can overlay on other windowed emulators: https://github.com/mausimus/ShaderGlass