Editor's Choice
Editor’s Choice emulators stand out for delivering a gaming experience unrivaled by any other emulators on their platform. Emulators in this category are professionally reviewed by our staff and are the recommended starting point for most gamers.
Recommended Emulators
Recommended emulators provide good compatibility, performance and stability. Emulators in this category are suitable for gaming.
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Megasis is a Genesis emulator written by J.T. and BORI. Megasis supports most standard features such as gamepad support, save state support and a slight form of graphical acceleration by allowing Surface Memory to be placed on and drawn from the video card. Compatibility on Megasis is quite good.
v0.06a for Windows (4/19/2001)
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Regen
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Regen is a Sega Genesis, Game Gear/SMS, SC-3000 and SG-1000 emulator for Windows and Linux. Regen was developed with a strong focus on accuracy. Regen has high compatibility for all of it's supported platforms and a plethora of features. An SSE2 optimized build is provided and recommended for anyone on a Pentium 4 or Athlon 64 or higher processor. A build with debuggers added is also provided for developers.
v0.972 for Windows (10/25/2009)
v0.972 for Windows (SSE2 Build) (10/25/2009)
v0.972d for Windows (Debugger Build) (10/25/2009)
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retroDrive is a Genesis and 32X emulator written by Tim Meekins. Genesis compatibility is quite good and 32X compatibility is excellent. retroDrive is one of the only emulators to capable of emulating the 32X BIOS, meaning it’ll work “out of the box” without any need for 32X BIOS images. The author is mainly focusing on the quality of the actual emulation and not features. At this point, there is currently no gamepad support. Despite the lack of features, due to it’s accuracy, this is an emulator that’s definitely worth a look.
Release 5 for Windows (3/2/2002)
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Xega is a Genesis, 32X and Sega CD emulator written by Michel Gerritse. Xega has good support on all three platforms. To make use of the 32X and Sega CD support, you’ll need to have the respective BIOS images. Also, if you’re running an NT variant of Windows such as 2000 or XP, you will likely need to install ForceASPI to make use of Sega CD support; however, it should be noted that running a Sega CD title directly from your CD-ROM can significantly slow down the emulation, for the best results, the author recommends using an ISO of the disc in question, which would also bypass the need for ForceASPI.
v0.10 for Windows (1/9/2002)
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Other Emulators
Emulators in this category are generally considered early in development or have not reached a level of compatibility, performance and stability that would be suitable for gaming. These emulators are considered works-in-progress.
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AGES is a Sega Genesis / CD / 32X and SMS / Game Gear emulator for Windows written by Quinntesson using Assembly and C++. Support for the Sega Genesis is fairly good, as is support for the SMS and Game Gear; however, support for the 32X and the Sega CD is somewhat lacking. Currently, AGES for the most part does not support any commercial 32X titles. Unfortunately, AGES is quite a buggy emulator at this point, especially on Windows XP where visual themes need to be disabled using EXE’s compatibility settings and ForceASPI will most likely need to be installed to make use of Sega CD emulation. Also, to run AGES, your desktop resolution must be dropped to 16-bit color mode, or else you will only be able to use it in full screen.
v0.30a for Windows (5/7/2002)
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Genesis Plus is an Open-Source Sega Genesis emulator for Windows written by Charles Mac Donald, the author of SMS Plus. Genesis Plus is in it’s early development stages and at this point the Windows version does not support sound or the use of a gamepad. The Windows version is also only capable of running in a windowed mode unthrottled. To use Genesis Plus, you’ll need to download the Windows SDL library. If you’re going to use Genesis Plus, it would probably be in your best interests download the DOS version instead.
v1.2a for Windows (6/22/2003)
v1.2a for DOS (6/22/2003)
v1.2a Source (6/22/2003)
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- 1GHz Single Core Processor
- On-Board or Entry-Level Dedicated Video
- 512MB of RAM
- System BIOS (32X and CD Only)
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