Best Retroarch Cores

Last Updated on 26 December, 2021

Best Retroarch Cores – Game boy, Nintendo PlayStation, Sega, SNES, Atari, Neo Geo, PSP, PS2, Dreamcast, Game Cube, N64

RetroArch is a multi-system emulator that supports really much every video game system. Atari Lynx, Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NES, SNES, Virtual Boy, PC Engine/TurboGrafx-CD, PC-FX, Game Gear, Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega CD/Mega CD, Sega Master System, PlayStation 1, Saturn, PSP, and much more! It’s an open-source emulator available for every operating system and is also 100% free

Best Retroarch Cores – Full List

These are the best cores for each console

• Game Boy Advance – mGBA
• Game Boy/Game Boy Color – Gambatte
• Nintendo (NES) – Nestopia
• Nintendo 64 – Mupen64Plus
• PlayStation – PCSX-ReARMed
• Sega Genesis/Game Gear – Genesis Plus GX (PicoDrive from Sega 32X games)
• Sega Saturn – Yabause (very strenuous performance-wise)
• Super Nintendo (SNES) – Snes9X

Other Great Cores List

• Atari
  • 2600 – Stella
  • 5200 – Standalone kat 5200 (don’t use RA)
  • 7800 – Prosystem
  • Jaguar – VirtualJaguar
  • Lynx – Handy
• Sega
  • SG 1000 – Gens
  • MS – Gens
  • MD – Gens
  • CD – Gens
  • GG – Gens
  • 32 – Pico
  • Saturn – Mednafen (standalone still recommended)
• Dreamcast – Demul Standalone
• NES – Nestopia/FCEUmme
• SNES – BSNES accuracy/balanced or Snes9X
• Virtual Boy – Mednafen  VB
• N64 – Mupen64, Dolphin standalone for some games, PJ64 standalone for others (its a patchwork)
• Game Cube – Dolphin standalone
• PC Engine/Turbo 16/turbo CD – Mednafen PCE Fast
• Gameboy/Gameboy Color – Gambette
• Gameboy Advanced – mgba
• Nintendo DS – Desume/Desume standalone
• Playstation – beetle PSX hardware, with the software render (default vulkan, still experimental)
• PS2 – PCSX2 standalone
• PSP – PPSSPP standalone
• 3DO – 4DO core is good, 4DO standalone is supposedly a bit better (your choice)
• Wonderswan/Color – Mednafen wonderswan
• GCE Vectrex – Vectrex
• NeoGeo
  • Pocket – Mednafen NGP
  • AES – MAME
  • CD – MESS (Haven’t tried it myself)

Best Retroarch Cores – Is there a Best Core?

There is no best core, each has a different use case (accuracy, speed…). So try and find the Core that suits your needs. You can visit our forum here and read other users’ preferences. The libretro documentation site can also provide information that may be useful in choosing the right core for your needs. When selecting cores, the ones without a year after their names are the most up-to-date, while the ones with years (such as Snes9x2010) are snapshots from an earlier period of the core’s development when it was faster but less accurate. So, as a general rule, you should start with the latest version and, if your device cannot maintain full speed, try the next oldest core and repeat until you can maintain a solid, full-speed framerate.