If you are a lover of the most classic console games such as the Game Boy Advance, Super Nintendo, Mega Drive and others, you are going to hallucinate what we bring you today. You may have already played one of these consoles using downloaded emulators on your PC, but what if you didn't need to install anything to play? Today we bring you a compilation of the best online emulators to play retro games from the browser.
Emulators + ROMs, how do they work?
If this is the first time you hear about emulators or ROMs, the first thing is that you know what they are about and what are the key points of this system to play games. We could say that, to carry out this process, we have two different parts:
- emulator or kernel: The first member of this equation is in charge, as its own name indicates, of acting as the console. It is an "app" that will emulate any old game console you can imagine such as the SNES, Amstrad, Neo Geo Pocket, Spectrum and many more. Some are endowed with certain advantages such as autosave, stability improvements, speed and many other details.
- ROMs or games: this second part is easy to understand. ROMs are the games themselves in a compatible extension that allows emulators to play them and start playing.
So, in order to play any title that you played (or wanted to play) in your childhood, you will need to find both elements, that is, the game and the emulator of the corresponding console.
For our part, we cannot instruct or encourage you to use the ROMs. But it is completely legal for us to talk to you about emulators and where to find them and, for the rest, it will depend on what each user wants to do under their own responsibility. But, as you already know, the internet is very wise and surely has a solution for this.
Online emulators: the most comfortable system
However, although the most common way was to look for both pieces, currently there are many options for web which, in your code, include the emulator itself.
Therefore, the only thing that we would have to do is own the ROM in question that we want to play, load it / upload it to the web and start playing. Or, there are even websites that directly include classic games within their code. Although of course, these may stop working in the future if they do not legalize and pay all the necessary rights.
That being said, here is a list classified by consoles of the different emulators available and the ROM extensions with which they are compatible. And, in the case of incorporating the games, we will also indicate it to you.
Nintendo Entertainment System NES
The best websites with an emulator that allows us to play titles of NES are:
- NESBOX: It is an emulator that will link directly (as a directory for the games) with our Onedrive account.
- tripletsandus: here the games are already included in the page itself. We will only have to search for our favorite titles and click on “Play Now”.
- 8BBIT: same as above. A list of titles with a search engine among which you can locate and play NES games simply by clicking on them.
super nintendo snes
afterplay
Moving now to the super nintendo snesOn our website we have already told you once about the star online emulator for this (and other consoles). Is about afterplay.io, a website with an incredible number of possibilities.
> ACCESS AFTERPLAY.IO BY CLICKING HEREFirst of all, if you want to enjoy the experience to the fullest, we recommend that you "subscribe" to it from the upper right corner. Once this is done, the next step is to upload your own ROMs directly to the web. Something as simple as:
- Click on “Add Game”.
- Search for the compatible file in the appropriate path of our computer. The extensions that Afterplay can play are: .gb, .gbc, .gba, .sfc, and .smc.
- Open the file and wait for the game to load. I would be
From this ROM loading interface you can:
- Enlarge or make the screen smaller.
- Save the game at any time and, even if you close the browser, it will remember those save points.
- Consult the keys for use through the keyboard icon.
- Link a Gamepad.
- Upload more than one game within your profile.
However, if you don't want to go through the search for ROMs, you can choose to use the Snesfun website (http://www.snesfun.com/). Here, again, the way to use it is to locate the title that we want to play among all the available ones and click on it to start playing it.
SNESFUN
With an endless list of titles, playing on this website is as easy as locating the game you want and clicking on it. We can register an account in this service to be able to save our games in the cloud if we wish. You can also activate cheats and other tricks to play your 16 bit retro games.
> ACCESS SNESFUN BY CLICKING HEREGameBoy, GameBoy Color & GameBoy Advance
Turning now to the most popular portable consoles in the history of Nintendo, we have grouped the online emulators available for GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance:
- GBAFUN: Within this web page we will find games to play directly from both GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance.
- afterplay.io: As we mentioned before, this website is compatible with more consoles such as GameBoy, GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance, in addition to the SNES.
Sega Megadrive & Genesis
Moving on now directly to the Sega Megadrive, there is an online emulator of the same "family" of GBAFUN. Is about SEGA and its operation is identical to the previous one:
- We look for the game in its own browser, without having to download ROMs.
- Click on it.
- We start to play.
If you need to know some details of commands or saving, you can check in the interface options of this emulator.
PlayStation
Although it may seem unbelievable, you can also play PS1 online simply through a browser. This time we will use the PS1Fun website. It is a very complete online repository in which we will be able to play practically any famous title from this first Sony console. In this case, we will not have to provide the ROMs, but they are on the platform. The system is very simple and in a matter of minutes you will be able to play the game from your childhood that evokes the best memories.
In this case, PS1Fun lets you map the controls, save the game (and download it to your computer) and even play multiplayer. One of the most complete online emulators that you will find at the moment.
Play PSX games onlineEmulation of everything at once
You have another alternative that is a little more dispersed but almost endless, because It's not limited to one console or gaming system from the past, but EVERYONE. This is Archive.org, a website that tries to be a testimony and repository of magazines, manuals, covers and versions of video games that, in thousands of cases, we can enjoy online and completely free.
You just have to search for any name (for example Pac Man) and the results of all available versions will appear, from consoles, to remakes, computer versions or original arcade modes. If you want to access, it is possible do it from here.
Other interesting web emulators
In order not to repeat ourselves too much because, from here on, all the emulators work with the integrated game system, we are going to name the consoles for which they are available. Thus, simply by clicking on them, you will be able to access and see the list of available titles.
> ACCESS THE Retro Atari 400 / 800 EMULATOR BY CLICKING HERE > ACCESS THE MS-DOS EMULATOR BY CLICKING HERE > ACCESS THE TurboGrafx 16 EMULATOR BY CLICKING HERE > ACCESS THE NEO GEO EMULATOR BY CLICKING HERE > ACCESS THE Sony MSX / MSX2 EMULATOR BY CLICKING HERE