If you’re unfamiliar with the term, emulation is the art of running apps and games designed for proprietary systems on unsupported hardware. Besides letting you use a single machine to enjoy your favorite console titles, emulation has the added benefit of preserving games that would otherwise remain locked on dead hardware.
Thanks to the constant efforts of ace developers, emulation has grown to the point where you’re no longer restricted to just outdated gaming systems. 2024, in particular, was a major year for the emulation landscape, and here’s a quick recap of all the good (and bad) developments that occurred over the past year.
At last, a working PS4 emulator
Tonight, PC gamers join the hunt!
Compared to the black magic needed to emulate the exotic Cell processor of the PlayStation 3, Sony’s last-gen console has a somewhat similar architecture to your average x86 system. Theoretically, this makes the PlayStation 4 easier to emulate than its predecessor, but the truth is that PS4 emulation has remained stagnant for years. The Linux-exclusive Spine emulator was discontinued eons ago, while the next best thing, fpPS4, can only run lightweight titles. Eventually, most emulation enthusiasts had put PS4 on the backburner, until ShadPS4 re-emerged a few months ago.
While ShadPS4 officially began its development in 2022, the emulator saw a massive set of updates throughout the year. Of course, ShadPS4 is still in its early stages of development, and there’s still a lot of progress to be made in fan-favorite 3D titles. But the texture pops, crashes, and lighting issues have slowly, but steadily reduced following each update – to the point where you can get Bloodborne running on a powerful system after enabling certain third-party patches and hacks!
PS3 games are finally playable on ARM devices
Including the Raspberry Pi… kinda
In stark contrast to ShadPS4, the PlayStation 3 emulator RPCS3 has evolved to the point where you can run a majority of PS3 titles on relatively modest devices. But the real game-changer was a recent update that added native support for arm64 devices to this incredible emulator. Of course, the in-game performance fluctuates vastly between the devices. In the RPCS3 team’s own tests, the old M1 chip delivered amazing results with the native arm64 build, especially against running the x86 version of the emulator using the Rosetta 2 translation layer.
Heck, you even get PS3 games up and running on a Raspberry Pi, though I’d be lying if I said they were playable. Having previously tested multiple RPCS3 titles on my Raspberry Pi 5, I can confirm that the graphics chip inside the SBC is too underpowered to run most games at anything above playable resolutions. Nevertheless, the very fact that you can boot into games on something as weak as a Raspberry Pi is a testament to the RPCS3 dev team’s success.
Major updates to x86 emulators
Believe it or not, you can even run 3D PC titles on Android
If running 2D PlayStation 3 titles on arm64 SBCs sounds intriguing, you’re in for a treat once you realize that it’s entirely possible to enjoy PC games on Android phones. So long as you’ve got a relatively high-spec Snapdragon processor and enough memory in your smartphone, you can even emulate some of the newer PC titles.
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What’s more, you also have the choice to pick between a handful of options. There’s the beginner-friendly Winlator, which combines solid performance with a simple UI and a straightforward controller-setup utility. Then you’ve got Mobox, which trades ease of access for extra performance, and Horizon-Emu, an x86 emulator that can combine the pros (and cons) of both rivals. As someone who tested all three with numerous 2D and 3D games last year, I can confirm that running PC games on Android is no longer a pipe dream.
Switch emulation takes a massive hit on the legal front
Pour one out for Yuzu and Ryujinx
With all the major developments in the emulation space over the past year, it’s easy to forget the Yuzu and Ryujinx fiascos. In a bid to curb piracy, Nintendo sued Yuzu developers, Tropic Haze LLC, in March 2024, with the latter paying $2.4M to the gaming giant and removing all distribution sources for Yuzu as part of the settlement. Over the next couple of weeks, Nintendo took down thousands of Yuzu forks on GitHub.
Unfortunately, Nintendo’s crusade against Switch emulators didn’t stop there. Months later, the company contacted the Ryujinx developer, who ended up ceasing development on the emulator. There’s no denying that piracy is a terrible practice in the gaming landscape, but suing small firms and forcibly shutting down emulators is just as unfair. If you emulate games to enjoy quality-of-life mods, superior graphics, and stable performance, it’s easy to get frustrated with Nintendo’s recent actions against emulation.
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What happened to the Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx?
Nintendo’s determined to end emulation of their gaming systems
How will 2025 pan out for the emulation industry?
All-in-all, the future looks pretty good for lovers of emulation and retro gaming. Just a few days ago, the geniuses at Winlator released a major update that adds a new graphics driver and improves the existing sound driver among other changes. Likewise, the latest ShadPS4 pre-release version went live just a day ago, with every release bringing us closer to running Bloodborne and other PlayStation 4 exclusives at 4K60FPS. Given the rapid development of modern emulators, we might even see a PS5 emulator before the end of the year!
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source: https://www.xda-developers.com/2024-in-emulation/
