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ES-DE (EmulationStation Desktop Edition) 3.0 (development version) - Android documentation

This document contains information specific to the Android release, for more general ES-DE documentation refer to the User guide as well as the general FAQ.

It's also generally recommended to read the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for Android document prior to diving into the information in this document.

You can buy the Android APK from our Patreon page:
https://www.patreon.com/es_de

Table of contents:

[[TOC]]

First startup and onboarding

When you first start ES-DE you will be greeted by a welcome screen, this is part of the configurator, the ES-DE onboarding interface. The configurator is easy to use and will guide you through the necessary setup steps.

As a first step you need to give ES-DE the required storage access permission or it will not be able to function. Just enable the setting and the configurator will proceed to the next step. Next you will need to define a application data directory where your settings, scraped media, custom collections and so on will be stored. By default this will be placed in the ES-DE directory in the root of your device's internal storage, and this directory will be created for you automatically.

After this step you need to select a ROMs directory where your game files will be stored, by default this will be named ROMs and will be located in the root of you device's internal storage. You can however choose to place this on an SD card if you want to, just change the path using the Android file selector GUI. If you do change the path to the SD card you will however need to manually create the ROMs directory as well as to delete the empty directory that was created for you in the built-in storage.

The next step is optional, and it's whether to create the game systems directory structure inside your ROMs folder. Performing this will also create systeminfo.txt files in each system directory. These files contain information about the system such as what file extensions and emulators that are supported. They are not mandatory for the app to function, they are only there for your convenience. In general it's recommended to create the system directories, although you could remove the ones you don't need afterwards for a slightly faster app startup speed.

This is basically the onboarding process, and ES-DE should now start up. Just be aware that you need to place at least one game with a supported file extension in the ROMs directory tree or ES-DE will only show an information dialog about missing games.

Also note that ES-DE does not install any emulators, you need to install those separately. There is more information about that topic later in this document.

If you need to re-run the configurator for some reason then the easiest way is to go into the Android Apps setting screen and revoke the storage access permissions under Special app access. This will make the configurator run automatically next time you start ES-DE. Another way to force it to start is to clear the app's storage under Storage & cache but this is normally not recommended as it also deletes all themes you have downloaded using the theme downloader. A third option would be to rename either the ES-DE or ROMs directory as this will also trigger the configurator on next app startup.

Touch input overlay

By default the touch input overlay will be enabled which makes it possible to use ES-DE without a controller or physical keyboard by overlaying virtual buttons on top of the ES-DE interface. If you are using a device which has a built-in controller you may however want to disable this feature. That is done via the Enable touch overlay option in the Input device settings menu on the main menu. Just be aware that disabling this option on a device where you have no other input method than touch will lock you out of the application.

If you accidentally disable the touch overlay you can force the configurator to run as explained in the previous section above, this will always reset the touch overlay setting. Another option would of course be to temporarily plug in a controller or keyboard to enable the setting via its menu entry. A third option would be to manually edit the es_settings.xml file in the ES-DE application data directory. The setting you are after is named InputTouchOverlay which should be changed from false to true.

Apart from this there are numerous options for the touch overlay, like the ability to change its size, opacity and fade-out time. Setting the fade-out to zero will make it permanently visible. See the User guide for a complete reference of all app settings and features.

Retention of files and data

Almost all files saved and used by ES-DE are kept in the shared storage on either the device's built-in storage or on the SD card. This means that uninstalling the ES-DE app will not remove any of that data. The only thing that will be deleted are themes that have been downloaded using the built-in theme downloader, as it's not possible to store these in the ES-DE application data directory for technical reasons.

Emulation on Android in general

There are some challenges with emulation on Android. Some emulators on the Google Play store have not been updated for a long time, or like in the case with RetroArch they are crippled to comply with Google's rules and policies. And some emulators are not available on the Play store at all. For these reasons you will need to sideload some manually downloaded APKs for a good emulation setup. There is a section later in this document describing the best place to get hold of each supported emulator.

Thankfully sideloading emulators is not very difficult to do, the exact producedure for how to install APKs manually is not covered here but there are many resources available online on how to accomplish this.

There is also the F-Droid app store as an alternative to Google Play, and this service contains a couple of emulators that are not present on the Play store, or that are present there but haven't been updated for a very long time.

A number of emulators support the FileProvider API which makes it possible for ES-DE to temporarily provide storage access to the game file on launch. This means that no access permission needs to be setup in the emulator upfront. This is however only usable for single files, so for systems that support multi-file games such as disc-based games in .bin/.cue format SAF URIs are used instead. For those emulators you will therefore generally need to manually provide scoped storage access to each game system directory. Note that it's not supported to give access to the root of the entire ROM directory for emulators that use scoped storage, it has to be for the specific system. For instance /storage/emulated/0/ROMs/n64 rather than /storage/emulated/0/ROMs.

Some emulators like RetroArch are still using an older storage access method and for those emulators this is not something you need to consider.

The following emulators are configured for FileProvider access:

2600.emu
GBA.emu
GBC.emu
Lynx.emu
MD.emu
MAME4droid 2024
MAME4droid
NES.emu
NGP.emu
PCE.emu (pcengine, supergrafx and tg16 systems)
Ruffle
Swan.emu

Some of these emulators still require BIOS files, so not all of them will be completely free from manual configuration.

The following emulators have partial FileProvider access support but are currently not configured for that in ES-DE:

C64.emu - doesn't work with multi-file games
Dolphin - doesn't work with multi-file games
M64Plus FZ - the FileProvider interface doesn't work reliably and game launching randomly fails when using it
PCE.emu - doesn't work with multi-file games for the pcenginecd and tg-cd systems
Play! - doesn't work with multi-file games
PPSSPP - doesn't work with multi-file games and the FileProvider interface doesn't work with .chd files specifically
Saturn.emu - doesn't work with multi-file games

Splitting system directories across multiple storage devices

While it's possible to split the game system directories across multiple storage devices this is not recommended. First it's tedious to setup, but more importantly it breaks portability for the installation. For instance you can't easily migrate between the different operating systems that ES-DE support and your custom collections will not be portable at all, as they will instead contain absolute paths to your games.

The way ES-DE works is that you have a defined ROMs directory which corresponds to the %ROMPATH% variable that is used throughout the es_systems.xml file and the custom collections files. For example this is the system configuration for the samcoupe system:

<system>
    <name>samcoupe</name>
    <fullname>MGT SAM Coupé</fullname>
    <path>%ROMPATH%/samcoupe</path>
    <extension>.dsk .DSK .mgt .MGT .sad .SAD .sbt .SBT .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
    <command label="Speccy (Standalone)">%EMULATOR_SPECCY% %ACTION%=android.intent.action.VIEW %DATA%=%ROMSAF%</command>
    <platform>samcoupe</platform>
    <theme>samcoupe</theme>
</system>

Here the path tag is using the %ROMPATH% variable to keep it relative to the base ROMs directory as selected via the onboarding configurator when you first installed ES-DE. If you relocate your ROMs directory to a different storage device, or copy it to another device altogether or if you synchronize your games across Android and Linux, macOS or Windows then everything will still work correctly.

Similarly custom collection files contain the %ROMPATH% variable too, such as this:

%ROMPATH%/amiga/OoopsUp.lha
%ROMPATH%/amiga/PacMania.lha
%ROMPATH%/samcoupe/Manic Miner.zip
%ROMPATH%/samcoupe/Prince of Persia.zip

This makes your custom collections portable if you move your ROMs directory and you can also transfer the collections between various devices and operating systems while keeping everything working seamlessly.

If you still insist on relocating some game system directories to another storage device then you need to make custom system configuration entries for them. See the Game system customization section of the User guide for details on how this is accomplished. In short you need to create an es_systems.xml file in the ES-DE/custom_systems directory and replace the %ROMPATH% variable with an absolute path for the specific systems you want to relocate.

You can find the bundled es_systems.xml file for Android here (which contains configuration for all supported systems):
https://gitlab.com/es-de/emulationstation-de/-/tree/stable-3.0/resources/systems/android

Here's an example of a custom es_systems.xml file that relocates the samcoupe system:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<systemList>
    <system>
        <name>samcoupe</name>
        <fullname>MGT SAM Coupé</fullname>
        <path>/storage/719F-3A7F/ROMs/samcoupe</path>
        <extension>.dsk .DSK .mgt .MGT .sad .SAD .sbt .SBT .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
        <command label="Speccy (Standalone)">%EMULATOR_SPECCY% %ACTION%=android.intent.action.VIEW %DATA%=%ROMSAF%</command>
        <platform>samcoupe</platform>
        <theme>samcoupe</theme>
    </system>
</systemList>

This example points the samcoupe directory to the external storage device /storage/719F-3A7F which may for instance be an SD card.

Note that doing the opposite, i.e. placing your primary ROMs directory on external storage and relocating a specific system to internal storage requires you to use the /storage/emulated/0 path, you can't use /sdcard in the path tag.

Here's again an example for the samcoupe system:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<systemList>
    <system>
        <name>samcoupe</name>
        <fullname>MGT SAM Coupé</fullname>
        <path>/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/samcoupe</path>
        <extension>.dsk .DSK .mgt .MGT .sad .SAD .sbt .SBT .7z .7Z .zip .ZIP</extension>
        <command label="Speccy (Standalone)">%EMULATOR_SPECCY% %ACTION%=android.intent.action.VIEW %DATA%=%ROMSAF%</command>
        <platform>samcoupe</platform>
        <theme>samcoupe</theme>
    </system>
</systemList>

If going for this configuration, adding samcoupe games to a custom collection would end up with something like the following:

%ROMPATH%/amiga/OoopsUp.lha
%ROMPATH%/amiga/PacMania.lha
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/samcoupe/Manic Miner.zip
/storage/emulated/0/ROMs/samcoupe/Prince of Persia.zip

This is obviously a non-portable collection.

You can relocate as many systems as you want, you just need to place them all within the systemList tag pairs in ES-DE/custom_systems/es_systems.xml.

Issues with the Ayn Odin 2

There are two serious issues that seem to be specific to the Ayn Odin 2, although it remains to be seen whether the problem exists also on other devices.

The first problem is that some emulators refuse to run games that you place inside directories that contain dots in their names. This is quite problematic as the directories interpreted as files functionality depends on the ability to add file extensions to directory names.

This has been observed with M64Plus FZ, Play!, Saturn.emu, FPse and FPseNG and it's working fine with RetroArch, NetherSX2, ePSXe and DuckStation. Note however that this is not a complete list as not all emulators have been tested for this problem.

If you run into this issue you can use the folder link functionality as an alternative to the directories interpreted as files functionality. How to use folder links is described in the User guide.

The second problem is that a number of emulators can't be launched from ES-DE at all. When attempting to run such an emulator an error popup with the game name followed by "ERROR CODE -1" is displayed. The affected emulators are ColEm, fMSX, iNES, MasterGear, My Boy!, My OldBoy!, Redream and Speccy.

The following devices have been tested and do not experience either of these two problems:

Ayn Odin Lite (Android 11)
Retroid Pocket 4 Pro (Android 13)
Google Pixel 4a (Android 13)
Google Pixel Tablet (Android 14)

There are also some issues with sound quality on the Odin 2, such as large fluctuations in volume where some sounds are quite loud and some are quite silent. There are also some strange aliasing effects when playing samples rapidly.

Known ES-DE problems

In addition to the issues specific to the Ayn Odin 2 there are a couple of other problems that will hopefully be resolved in the near future:

Poor performance/low frame rate after startup on some devices, which seems to happen randomly and is usually resolved by itself within 10 to 30 seconds.
The Android soft keyboard causes rendering issues when navigating using a controller or physical keyboard, as such the ES-DE built-in keyboard is enabled by default for the time being. For testing purposes the Android soft keyboard can be enabled via the Enable virtual keyboard option in the UI settings menu. If only using touch input the issue is not present. This problem is believed to be caused by a bug in the SDL library so it probably needs to be resolved there.
Using a mounted USB storage device for the ES-DE and/or ROMs directories will lead to the configurator exiting after finishing the setup instead of launching ES-DE. Restarting ES-DE manually will lead to a successful startup. If the option to create the system directories was selected in the configurator then this will have to be executed again from inside ES-DE. Note that using a mounted USB storage device leads to a very crippled setup anyway, as for example RetroArch can't read any games from such devices (i.e. from the /mnt/media_rw/ directory tree). Only emulators supporting scoped storage will be usable in such a setup.

Emulator installation and setup

Below are specific instructions and considerations for all supported emulators.

RetroArch

The RetroArch release from the Google Play store is problematic. It does not contain all emulator cores and a number of people have reported issues launching games from ES-DE (apparently it doesn't work at all on some devices). For these reasons it's strongly recommended to use the 64-bit release from the RetroArch website instead, or to install it from the Amazon Appstore or the F-Droid store.

https://retroarch.com
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09753XRVF
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.retroarch

Be aware that you need to manually install every core you want to use from inside the RetroArch user interface, and you also need to install all necessary BIOS files. The Android release of RetroArch is pretty unforgiving and will usually just present a black screen on game launch if the core file or the BIOS file is missing, and it will hang there until Android realizes the app is not responding and displays a popup where you can choose to kill the process.

AetherSX2 / NetherSX2

Although the emulator entry is named AetherSX2 the recommended release of this emulator is actually the NetherSX2 patched version as the AetherSX2 release on the Google Play store doesn't work correctly and probably can't be used with ES-DE at all. You'll need to search for this APK online, the filename you'll want is 15210-v1.5-4248-noads.apk

If you prefer to apply the NetherSX2 patch yourself (i.e. build the APK) then you can find all relevant information here:

https://github.com/Trixarian/NetherSX2-patch

Citra

The Citra emulator is no longer in active development and it's unclear where it can be obtained and whether it will be worked on in the future. The Citra MMJ fork is still available for download from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/weihuoya/citra/releases

ColEm

This emulator can be installed from the Play store. There is a paid version as well named ColEm Deluxe (ColEm+ ColecoVision Emulator is the store listing name).

Although this emulator supports both the Adam and ColecoVision systems it can unfortunately not do both interchangeably. In order to play Adam games you need to go into the Emulation settings in ColEm and tick the Coleco Adam box. And likewise you'll need to untick it any time you want to play a ColecoVision game. This is true for launching games from ES-DE as well as starting them from inside the emulator GUI.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.colem
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.colem.deluxe

Dolphin

The Play store version is somehow up to date and could be used, otherwise the F-Droid store version is up to date, or you could download the latest release directly from their website.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.dolphinemu.dolphinemu
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dolphinemu.dolphinemu
https://dolphin-emu.org/download/

Dolphin MMJR and MMJR2

Although it's not normally recommended to use the unofficial Dolphin forks because they are mostly ancient and have been surpassed by the mainline Dolphin releases, there could still be situations where it's useful. For example on weaker devices where the older release would work better.

There are multiple MMJR forks in existence, but the ones supported by ES-DE are Dolphin.MMJR.v11505.apk and MMJR.v2.0-17878.apk which can be downloaded from here:

https://archive.org/details/dolphin-and-citra-fork-backup

DraStic

This emulator can be installed from the Play store as a paid app. Note that it does not support launching of zipped game files.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dsemu.drastic

DuckStation

The Play store version of this emulator is getting frequent updates and is therefore recommended.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.stenzek.duckstation

EKA2L1

This emulator can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/EKA2L1/EKA2L1/releases

There does not seem to be a way to launch individual EKA2L1 games from a frontend application on Android, instead ES-DE will simply launch the EKA2L1 user interface and you'll have to manually start your game from there.

ePSXe

This emulator can be installed from the Play store as a paid app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.epsxe.ePSXe

EX Plus Alpha emulators

These set of emulators also known as the "Robert Broglia" emulators consist of 2600.emu, C64.emu, GBA.emu, GBC.emu, Lynx.emu, NEO.emu, NES.emu, NGP.emu, MD.emu, MSX.emu, PCE.emu, Snes9x EX+, Saturn.emu and Swan.emu

You can install them via Google Play (as paid apps) or download them from their GitHub automatic build system.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/developer?id=Robert+Broglia
https://github.com/Rakashazi/emu-ex-plus-alpha/actions

There are also some BIOS files and similar that are needed to run these emulators, and which can be downloaded from their website.

https://www.explusalpha.com/

Fake-08

This RetroArch core is a good port of the official PICO-8 game engine which does not exist on Android. It's not shipped with RetroArch by default though so you need to manually install it. After downloading it you'll need to place the core inside's RetroArch's downloads directory and then install it from the RetroArch app.

You must use the 64-bit version with the filename libfake08-arm64.so and it has to be renamed to fake08_libretro_android.so before you install it into RetroArch. Details on how to manually install cores in RetroArch can be found on the Internet. Fake-08 can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/jtothebell/fake-08/releases

Flycast

Flycast is not available on the Play store or the F-Droid store, but it can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/flyinghead/flycast/releases

fMSX

This emulator can be installed from the Play store. There is a paid version as well named fMSX Deluxe (fMSX+ MSX/MSX2 Emulator is the store listing name).

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.fmsx
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.fmsx.deluxe

FPseNG and FPse

These emulators can be installed from the Play store as a paid apps. FPseNG is the more modern version so it's probably best to go for that. Note that these emulators do not support .chd files.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emulator.fpse64
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.emulator.fpse

iNES

This emulator can be installed from the Play store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.ines.free

MAME4droid 2024 and MAME4droid

These emulators can be installed from the Play store. It's strongly recommended to go for the MAME4droid 2024 version as this is updated with a recent MAME release while the older MAME4droid is using an ancient MAME release.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.seleuco.mame4d2024
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.seleuco.mame4droid

MasterGear

This emulator can be installed from the Play store as a paid app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.mg

melonDS

This emulator can be installed from the Play store but it's quite buggy. Every time you add a new game to the ROM directory you need to start the emulator and manually refresh the game list or you won't be able to launch the game from ES-DE.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.magnum.melonds

M64Plus FZ

This emulator can be installed from the Amazon Appstore or the Google Play store. The Pro version is recommended to avoid annoying ads.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09L5FB7T4
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mupen64plusae.v3.fzurita.pro
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mupen64plusae.v3.fzurita

Mupen64Plus AE

This emulator is very similar to M64Plus FZ and it can be downloaded from their GitHub automatic build system.

https://github.com/mupen64plus-ae/mupen64plus-ae/actions

My Boy! and My OldBoy!

These emulators can be installed from the Play store as paid apps. There are also free/Lite versions availble for these emulators but they have not been updated in years and don't run on modern devices. As such they are not supported by ES-DE.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastemulator.gba
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fastemulator.gbc

Nesoid

Nesoid is not available on the Play store but it can be installed from the F-Droid store, or it can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.androidemu.nes
https://github.com/proninyaroslav/nesoid/releases

OpenBOR

Although OpenBOR is working fine on Android it's not possible to properly integrate it with a frontend, you'll instead need to install your game PAKs into the /sdcard/OpenBOR/Paks directory and create dummy .openbor files for your games in ROMs/openbor and after launching a game from ES-DE you need to manually start it from inside the OpenBOR GUI. There are more detailed setup instructions in the OpenBOR section of the User guide.

You can download OpenBOR from their GitHub site, the version named OpenBOR v3.0 Build 6391 has for example been proven to work well.

https://github.com/DCurrent/openbor/releases

Panda3DS (pandroid)

This emulator is in early development and there currently seems to be no way to run a game directly from ES-DE. Instead the emulator GUI will be displayed on game launch and you will need to manually select the game from there. Note that the Android build of this emulator is named pandroid, but as the overall project name is Panda3DS it will be referred to as such in ES-DE. This emulator can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/wheremyfoodat/Panda3DS/releases

Pizza Boy GBA and Pizza Boy GBC

The Pizza Boy GBA and Pizza Boy GBC emulators used to be available on the Play store but have since been taken down. There used to be Basic (free) versions and Pro (paid) versions. It's unclear what the status is for these emulators and if they are still in active development. It's also unclear where they can be downloaded.

As of writing this, the latest available Basic version of the GBA emulator does not seem to be able to launch games from ES-DE, but the Pro version is working fine. Both the Basic and Pro versions of the GBC emulator are working correctly.

Play!

This PlayStation 2 emulator can be downloaded from their website.

https://www.purei.org/downloads.php

PPSSPP

The Play store version of this emulator is getting frequent updates and is therefore recommended. There is a paid Gold version as well which is functionally identical to the free version.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.ppsspp
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.ppsspp.ppssppgold

Make sure that you press the Browse button in PPSSPP when you're adding scoped storage access to your games directory or you will not be able to launch any games from ES-DE.

Ruffle

This emulator can be downloaded from their GitHub site.

https://github.com/torokati44/ruffle-android/releases

Real3DOPlayer

This 3DO Interactive Multiplayer emulator can be downloaded from their website.

http://www.arts-union.ru/node/23

Redream

This emulator can be installed for free from the Play store and can later be upgraded to the Premium version from inside the application.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.recompiled.redream

Skyline

This emulator is not in active development any longer, but the latest release can be found on archive.org.

https://archive.org/details/skyline-edge-all-versions

Speccy

This emulator can be installed from the Play store. There is a paid version as well named Speccy Deluxe (Speccy+ ZX Spectrum Emulator is the store listing name).

Although this emulator supports both the Sinclar ZX Spectrum and MGT SAM Coupé systems it can unfortunately not do both interchangeably. In order to play SAM Coupé games you need to go into the Emulation settings in Speccy and select Sam Coupe from the Computer Model selection screen. And likewise you'll need to change it back any time you want to play a ZX Spectrum game. This is true for launching games from ES-DE as well as starting them from inside the emulator GUI.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.speccy
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.fms.speccy.deluxe

Vita3K

This PlayStation Vita emulator can be downloaded from their GitHub site. Refer to the User guide for detailed game setup instructions.

https://github.com/Vita3K/Vita3K-Android/releases

Device compatibility

This is clearly not a complete list of Android devices, but rather those we know have been tested with ES-DE and for which there is a known status.

Manufacturer	Model	Android release	Supported	Known issues	Comment
Anbernic	RG556	13	Yes	None
Ayn	Odin	10	No	N/A	Android 10 not supported
Ayn	Odin Lite	11	Yes	None
Ayn	Odin 2	13	Yes	Can't launch some emulators, Can't have dots in directory names, Minor audio issues	Bugs in the firmware/OS image
Google	Pixel 4a	13	Yes	None
Google	Pixel Tablet	14	Yes	None
HONOR	Magic5 Pro	13	Yes	None
Nokia	5.4	12	Yes	None
Meta	Quest 3	12 ?	Yes	None
Nvidia	Shield Pro	11 (TV)	Yes	None	Limited RAM capacity on this device makes it unsuitable for demanding themes and large game collections
OnePlus	6T	11	Yes	None
REDMAGIC	8 Pro	13	Yes	None
Retroid	Pocket 2s	11	Yes	None
Retroid	Pocket 3+	11	Yes	None
Retroid	Pocket 4 Pro	13	Yes	None
Samsung	Galaxy Note 20	13	No	Fails at configurator/onboarding	Has a non-standard app permission screen, possibly this breaks the configurator
Samsung	Galaxy S10	12	Yes	None
Samsung	Galaxy S24 Ultra	14	Yes	None
Wiko	Voix	12	No	Fails at configurator/onboarding	Probably a bug in the firmware/OS image as a libc system call fails
Xiaomi	Pad 5	13	Yes	None
Xiaomi	Redmi Note 11	11	Yes	None

Supported game systems

All emulators are RetroArch cores unless marked as (Standalone)

The @ symbol indicates that the emulator is deprecated and will be removed in a future ES-DE release.

System name	Full name	Default emulator	Alternative emulators	Needs BIOS	Recommended game setup
3do	3DO Interactive Multiplayer	Opera	Real3DOPlayer (Standalone)	Yes
adam	Coleco Adam	ColEm (Standalone)		No
ags	Adventure Game Studio Game Engine	Placeholder
amiga	Commodore Amiga	PUAE	PUAE 2021	Yes
amiga1200	Commodore Amiga 1200	PUAE	PUAE 2021	Yes
amiga600	Commodore Amiga 600	PUAE	PUAE 2021	Yes
amigacd32	Commodore Amiga CD32	PUAE	PUAE 2021	Yes
amstradcpc	Amstrad CPC	Caprice32	CrocoDS	No	Single archive or disk file
android	Google Android	Placeholder
apple2	Apple II	Placeholder
apple2gs	Apple IIGS	Placeholder
arcade	Arcade	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), NEO.emu (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FB Alpha 2012, Geolith, Flycast, Flycast (Standalone)	Depends
arcadia	Emerson Arcadia 2001	Placeholder
archimedes	Acorn Archimedes	Placeholder
arduboy	Arduboy Miniature Game System	Arduous		No	Single archive or .hex file
astrocde	Bally Astrocade	Placeholder
atari2600	Atari 2600	Stella	Stella 2014, 2600.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
atari5200	Atari 5200	a5200	Atari800	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
atari7800	Atari 7800 ProSystem	ProSystem		Yes	Single archive or ROM file
atari800	Atari 800	Atari800		Yes
atarijaguar	Atari Jaguar	Virtual Jaguar		No
atarijaguarcd	Atari Jaguar CD	Placeholder
atarilynx	Atari Lynx	Handy	Beetle Lynx, Lynx.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
atarist	Atari ST [also STE and Falcon]	Hatari		Yes	Single archive or image file for single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
atarixe	Atari XE	Atari800		Yes
atomiswave	Sammy Corporation Atomiswave	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone)	Depends	Single archive file
bbcmicro	Acorn Computers BBC Micro	Placeholder
c64	Commodore 64	VICE x64sc Accurate	VICE x64 Fast, VICE x64 SuperCPU, VICE x128, C64.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or image file for tape, cartridge or single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
cdimono1	Philips CD-i	SAME CDi		Yes	Single .bin/.cue pair
cdtv	Commodore CDTV	PUAE	PUAE 2021	Yes
chailove	ChaiLove Game Engine	ChaiLove
channelf	Fairchild Channel F	FreeChaF		Yes	Single archive or ROM file
coco	Tandy Color Computer	Placeholder
colecovision	Coleco ColecoVision	blueMSX	Gearcoleco, MSX.emu (Standalone), ColEm (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
consolearcade	Console Arcade Systems	Placeholder
cps	Capcom Play System	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Depends
cps1	Capcom Play System I	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1	Depends
cps2	Capcom Play System II	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2	Depends
cps3	Capcom Play System III	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), FB Alpha 2012, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Depends
crvision	VTech CreatiVision	Placeholder
daphne	Daphne Arcade LaserDisc Emulator	DirkSimple		No
desktop	Desktop Applications	Placeholder
doom	Doom	PrBoom		No
dos	DOS (PC)	DOSBox-Pure	DOSBox-Core, DOSBox-SVN	No
dragon32	Dragon Data Dragon 32	Placeholder
dreamcast	Sega Dreamcast	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone), Redream (Standalone)	No	In separate folder interpreted as a file, with .m3u playlist if multi-disc game
easyrpg	EasyRPG Game Engine	EasyRPG		No
electron	Acorn Electron	Placeholder
emulators	Emulators	Placeholder
epic	Epic Games Store	Placeholder
famicom	Nintendo Family Computer	Mesen	Nestopia UE, FCEUmm, QuickNES, NES.emu (Standalone), iNES (Standalone), Nesoid (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
fba	FinalBurn Alpha	FB Alpha 2012	FB Alpha 2012 Neo Geo, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-1, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-2, FB Alpha 2012 CPS-3	Yes
fbneo	FinalBurn Neo	FinalBurn Neo		Yes
fds	Nintendo Famicom Disk System	Mesen	Nestopia UE, FCEUmm, NES.emu (Standalone), iNES (Standalone), Nesoid (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
flash	Adobe Flash	Ruffle (Standalone)		No	Single .swf file
fm7	Fujitsu FM-7	Placeholder
fmtowns	Fujitsu FM Towns	Placeholder
fpinball	Future Pinball	Placeholder
gamate	Bit Corporation Gamate	Placeholder
gameandwatch	Nintendo Game and Watch	Multi (MESS)	MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), Handheld Electronic (GW)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gamecom	Tiger Electronics Game.com	Placeholder
gamegear	Sega Game Gear	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, Gearsystem, SMS Plus GX, PicoDrive, MasterGear (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gb	Nintendo Game Boy	Gambatte	SameBoy, Gearboy, TGB Dual, DoubleCherryGB, Mesen-S, bsnes, mGBA, VBA-M, GBC.emu (Standalone), My OldBoy! (Standalone), Pizza Boy GBC (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gba	Nintendo Game Boy Advance	mGBA	VBA-M, VBA Next, gpSP, GBA.emu (Standalone), My Boy! (Standalone), Pizza Boy GBA (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gbc	Nintendo Game Boy Color	Gambatte	SameBoy, Gearboy, TGB Dual, DoubleCherryGB, Mesen-S, bsnes, mGBA, VBA-M, GBC.emu (Standalone), My OldBoy! (Standalone), Pizza Boy GBC (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gc	Nintendo GameCube	Dolphin	Dolphin (Standalone), Dolphin MMJR (Standalone), Dolphin MMJR2 (Standalone)	No	Disc image file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
genesis	Sega Genesis	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
gmaster	Hartung Game Master	Placeholder
gx4000	Amstrad GX4000	Caprice32	CrocoDS	No	Single archive or ROM file
intellivision	Mattel Electronics Intellivision	FreeIntv		Yes	Single archive or ROM file
j2me	Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME)	SquirrelJME		No	Single .jar file
kodi	Kodi Home Theatre Software	Placeholder
laserdisc	LaserDisc Games	DirkSimple		No
lcdgames	LCD Handheld Games	Multi (MESS)	MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), Handheld Electronic (GW)	No	Single archive or ROM file
lowresnx	LowRes NX Fantasy Console	LowRes NX		No	Single ROM file
lutris	Lutris Open Gaming Platform	Placeholder
lutro	Lutro Game Engine	Lutro
macintosh	Apple Macintosh	Placeholder
mame	Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator	MAME - Current	MAME 2010, MAME 2003-Plus, MAME 2000, MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone), NEO.emu (Standalone), FinalBurn Neo, FB Alpha 2012, Geolith, Flycast, Flycast (Standalone)	Depends
mame-advmame	AdvanceMAME	Placeholder
mastersystem	Sega Master System	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, SMS Plus GX, Gearsystem, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone), MasterGear (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megacd	Sega Mega-CD	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	Yes
megacdjp	Sega Mega-CD [Japan]	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	Yes
megadrive	Sega Mega Drive	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megadrivejp	Sega Mega Drive [Japan]	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
megaduck	Creatronic Mega Duck	SameDuck		No	Single archive or ROM file
mess	Multi Emulator Super System	Multi (MESS)
model2	Sega Model 2	MAME - Current		Yes
model3	Sega Model 3	Placeholder
moto	Thomson MO/TO Series	Theodore
msx	MSX	blueMSX	fMSX, fMSX (Standalone), MSX.emu (Standalone)	Yes except for fMSX standalone
msx1	MSX1	blueMSX	fMSX, fMSX (Standalone), MSX.emu (Standalone)	Yes except for fMSX standalone
msx2	MSX2	blueMSX	fMSX, fMSX (Standalone), MSX.emu (Standalone)	Yes except for fMSX standalone
msxturbor	MSX Turbo R	blueMSX	fMSX, MSX.emu (Standalone)	Yes
mugen	M.U.G.E.N Game Engine	Placeholder		Yes
multivision	Othello Multivision	Gearsystem	MasterGear (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
naomi	Sega NAOMI	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
naomi2	Sega NAOMI 2	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
naomigd	Sega NAOMI GD-ROM	Flycast	Flycast (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file + .chd file in subdirectory if GD-ROM game
n3ds	Nintendo 3DS	Citra	Citra (Standalone), Citra Canary (Standalone), Citra MMJ (Standalone), Panda3DS (Standalone)	No	Single ROM file
n64	Nintendo 64	Mupen64Plus-Next	M64Plus FZ (Standalone), Mupen64Plus AE (Standalone), ParaLLEl N64	No	Single archive or ROM file
n64dd	Nintendo 64DD	Mupen64Plus-Next	M64Plus FZ (Standalone), Mupen64Plus AE (Standalone), ParaLLEl N64	Yes
nds	Nintendo DS	melonDS DS	melonDS (Standalone), melonDS Nightly (Standalone), DeSmuME, DeSmuME 2015, DraStic (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
neogeo	SNK Neo Geo	FinalBurn Neo	Geolith, NEO.emu (Standalone), MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive or ROM file
neogeocd	SNK Neo Geo CD	NeoCD	FinalBurn Neo	Yes
neogeocdjp	SNK Neo Geo CD [Japan]	NeoCD	FinalBurn Neo	Yes
nes	Nintendo Entertainment System	Mesen	Nestopia UE, FCEUmm, QuickNES, NES.emu (Standalone), iNES (Standalone), Nesoid (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
ngage	Nokia N-Gage	EKA2L1 (Standalone)		Yes	See the specific Symbian and Nokia N-Gage section in the User guide
ngp	SNK Neo Geo Pocket	Beetle NeoPop	RACE, NGP.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
ngpc	SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color	Beetle NeoPop	RACE, NGP.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
odyssey2	Magnavox Odyssey 2	O2EM		Yes	Single archive or ROM file
openbor	OpenBOR Game Engine	OpenBOR (Standalone)		No	See the specific OpenBOR section in the User guide
oric	Tangerine Computer Systems Oric	Placeholder
palm	Palm OS	Mu
pc	IBM PC	DOSBox-Pure	DOSBox-Core, DOSBox-SVN	No
pc88	NEC PC-8800 Series	QUASI88		Yes
pc98	NEC PC-9800 Series	Neko Project II Kai	Neko Project II
pcarcade	PC Arcade Systems	Placeholder
pcengine	NEC PC Engine	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, PCE.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
pcenginecd	NEC PC Engine CD	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, PCE.emu (Standalone)	Yes
pcfx	NEC PC-FX	Beetle PC-FX		Yes
pico8	PICO-8 Fantasy Console	Fake-08	Retro8	No	See the specific PICO-8 section in the User guide
plus4	Commodore Plus/4	VICE xplus4		No	Single archive or image file for tape, cartridge or single-diskette games, .m3u playlist for multi-diskette games
pokemini	Nintendo Pokémon Mini	PokeMini		No
ports	Ports	ECWolf (Wolfenstein 3D)	NXEngine (Cave Story), OpenLara (Tomb Raider), Super Bros War	Yes for ECWolf
ps2	Sony PlayStation 2	AetherSX2 (Standalone)	Play! (Standalone)	Yes for AetherSX2
ps3	Sony PlayStation 3	Placeholder
ps4	Sony PlayStation 4	Placeholder
psp	Sony PlayStation Portable	PPSSPP	PPSSPP (Standalone)	No	Single disc image file
psvita	Sony PlayStation Vita	Vita3K (Standalone)		Yes	See the specific Sony PlayStation Vita section in the User guide
psx	Sony PlayStation	Beetle PSX	Beetle PSX HW, PCSX ReARMed, SwanStation, DuckStation (Standalone), ePSXe (Standalone), FPseNG (Standalone), FPse (Standalone)	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
pv1000	Casio PV-1000	Placeholder
quake	Quake	TyrQuake	vitaQuake 2, vitaQuake 2 [Rogue], vitaQuake 2 [Xatrix], vitaQuake 2 [Zaero]	No
samcoupe	MGT SAM Coupé	Speccy (Standalone)		No	Single archive or ROM file
satellaview	Nintendo Satellaview	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x EX+ (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, Mesen-S
saturn	Sega Saturn	Beetle Saturn	YabaSanshiro, Yabause, Saturn.emu (Standalone)	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
saturnjp	Sega Saturn [Japan]	Beetle Saturn	YabaSanshiro, Yabause, Saturn.emu (Standalone)	Yes	.chd file for single-disc games, .m3u playlist for multi-disc games
scummvm	ScummVM Game Engine	ScummVM		No
scv	Epoch Super Cassette Vision	Placeholder
sega32x	Sega Mega Drive 32X	PicoDrive		No	Single archive or ROM file
sega32xjp	Sega Super 32X [Japan]	PicoDrive		No	Single archive or ROM file
sega32xna	Sega Genesis 32X [North America]	PicoDrive		No	Single archive or ROM file
segacd	Sega CD	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, PicoDrive, MD.emu (Standalone)	Yes
sfc	Nintendo SFC (Super Famicom)	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x EX+ (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, Beetle Supafaust, Mesen-S	No	Single archive or ROM file
sg-1000	Sega SG-1000	Genesis Plus GX	Genesis Plus GX Wide, Gearsystem, blueMSX, MasterGear (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
sgb	Nintendo Super Game Boy	Mesen-S	SameBoy, mGBA		Single archive or ROM file
snes	Nintendo SNES (Super Nintendo)	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x EX+ (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, Beetle Supafaust, Mesen-S	No	Single archive or ROM file
snesna	Nintendo SNES (Super Nintendo) [North America]	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x EX+ (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy, Beetle Supafaust, Mesen-S	No	Single archive or ROM file
solarus	Solarus Game Engine	Placeholder
spectravideo	Spectravideo	blueMSX
steam	Valve Steam	Placeholder
stv	Sega Titan Video Game System	MAME - Current	MAME4droid 2024 (Standalone), MAME4droid (Standalone)	Yes	Single archive file
sufami	Bandai SuFami Turbo	Snes9x - Current	Snes9x 2010, Snes9x 2005 Plus, Snes9x EX+ (Standalone), bsnes, bsnes-hd, bsnes-mercury Accuracy
supergrafx	NEC SuperGrafx	Beetle SuperGrafx	Beetle PCE, PCE.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
supervision	Watara Supervision	Potator		No	Single archive or ROM file
supracan	Funtech Super A'Can	Placeholder
switch	Nintendo Switch	Skyline (Standalone)		Yes
symbian	Symbian	EKA2L1 (Standalone)		Yes	See the specific Symbian and Nokia N-Gage section in the User guide
tanodragon	Tano Dragon	Placeholder
tg16	NEC TurboGrafx-16	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, PCE.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
tg-cd	NEC TurboGrafx-CD	Beetle PCE	Beetle PCE FAST, Beetle SuperGrafx, PCE.emu (Standalone)	Yes
ti99	Texas Instruments TI-99	Placeholder
tic80	TIC-80 Fantasy Computer	TIC-80		No	Single .tic file
to8	Thomson TO8	Theodore
triforce	Namco-Sega-Nintendo Triforce	Placeholder
trs-80	Tandy TRS-80	Placeholder
type-x	Taito Type X	Placeholder
uzebox	Uzebox Open Source Console	Uzem
vectrex	GCE Vectrex	vecx		No	Single archive or ROM file
vic20	Commodore VIC-20	VICE xvic		No	Single archive or tape, cartridge or diskette image file
videopac	Philips Videopac G7000	O2EM		Yes	Single archive or ROM file
virtualboy	Nintendo Virtual Boy	Beetle VB		No
vpinball	Visual Pinball	Placeholder
vsmile	VTech V.Smile	Placeholder
wasm4	WASM-4 Fantasy Console	WASM-4		No	Single .wasm file
wii	Nintendo Wii	Dolphin	Dolphin (Standalone), Dolphin MMJR (Standalone), Dolphin MMJR2 (Standalone)	No
wiiu	Nintendo Wii U	Placeholder
windows	Microsoft Windows	Placeholder
windows3x	Microsoft Windows 3.x	DOSBox-Pure		No
windows9x	Microsoft Windows 9x	DOSBox-Pure		No
wonderswan	Bandai WonderSwan	Beetle Cygne	Swan.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
wonderswancolor	Bandai WonderSwan Color	Beetle Cygne	Swan.emu (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file
x1	Sharp X1	X Millennium		No	Single archive or diskette/tape file
x68000	Sharp X68000	PX68k		Yes
xbox	Microsoft Xbox	Placeholder
xbox360	Microsoft Xbox 360	Placeholder
zmachine	Infocom Z-machine	Placeholder
zx81	Sinclair ZX81	EightyOne
zxnext	Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next	Placeholder
zxspectrum	Sinclair ZX Spectrum	Fuse	Speccy (Standalone)	No	Single archive or ROM file

73 KiB Raw Blame History