Go to drinkag1.com/modernvintagegamer to get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 and 5 AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. Thanks to AG1 for sponsoring today's video!

The GUI update for PCSX2 has got to be the single greatest update for any emulator in history, since it corrects the biggest flaw with the emulator being that you weren't able to set per-game configs previously which made switching back-and-forth between different games and updating the emulator a huge, tedious hassle. If you happen to come across this comment then thank you Stenzek!!!!

Rip Yuzu

Setting up an 8-player Halo match between two computers on Xemu using virtual networking with minimal effort and having the game Just Work Perfectly was one of the best moments in emulation I've had in a long time.

the whole concept of an emulator is still so amazing. being able to run console specific code on a totally different machine, sometimes just about flawlessly and with significant improvements

PCSX2 1.7 night builds have been a Godsend for PS2 emulation. The new builds runs so much better and always getting updated.

Stenzek really pushed PSX and PS2 emulation to another level. Formally worked on Duckstation and now joined the team on PCSX2 which really woke up PS2 emulation.

I started emulating back in 97 with ZSnes 0.4.3. It was amazing that I could play snes games on my 233Mhz Pentium 2 pc. Of course, the frame rate wasn't that great and the sound if you could even get it to work was stuttery. It's crazy to see how far emulation has come.

RIP Yuzu and Citra

RPCS3 is an amazing feat of engineering, but so are all the other emus on the list. Let's hope emulation continues to evolve the way it has, game preservation will be even more important in the near future.

What I like about emulator videos is finding out what games are stuck on a particular console. That also makes me curious to try it on the original console.

Shoutouts to Emudeck for making setting all this stuff up super easy on the Steam Deck. I just got mine a couple weeks ago and there's a quick setup wizard and an easy tool to import your rom library and make it all available (and very customizable) via Game Mode. Definitely worth checking out.

RPCS3 is ridiculously impressive considering the PS3 has such a weird and confusing architecture. Ryujinx is also my personal pick for Switch emulation on Windows, it's just more accurate.

would love to see you doing an interview with the RPCS3 team..

Game awards: 🥱 Emulator Awards: 🤯

When I first delved into emulation in the early 2000s, my young high school mind would’ve never imagined the landscape we have now - excellent handhelds that can play GameCube in your pocket, the Steam Deck, playing PS2 games at 4K and beyond. Absolutely mind blowing.

*Nintendo was Here*

Great video as always! Love the callout for Vita3k's compatibility growing!

My hopes for emulation in 2024: - More improvements for Xemu, RPCS3, Xenia, Vita3K, Yuzu, Ryujinx & PS4-based emulators - Emulator support for ARM-powered Windows PC - Stratos (formerly Skyline) to be optimized for Mali GPU drivers since Yuzu for Android is optimized for Adreno GPU drivers - Higher compatability when emulating PC games prior to Windows 7 era on Android - Improvements for playability for PS2-based Play emulator on Android etc

The biggest hurdle in emulation for me was always the convenience factor. Getting a steam deck this year and going through all of the setup with that which was a breeze completely changed the game for me. I had done plenty of emulation in the past on PC as well, but steam Deck support from the community is insane.

One thing to note about the PCSX2 emulator is that its the first emulator for the developers of said emulator to add RetroAchievements support into a build. Gets more eyes on the emulator while also having more people actually wanting to play through an entire game on said emulator.

vita3k's progress is really something to behold, i remember watching a couple videos about it back when it only ran persona 4 golden and a couple of other minor titles, and then i kinda forgot about it, only to look back and find it now runs a little over 2000 titles. i've been using it myself to play gravity rush these past few days, it runs really well, with the exception of some slowdown on some bossfights where alot of stuff gets destroyed or thrown around at once, but it's still completely playable. it does have a pretty major weak point right now though (at least on PC) which is the controller options, as far as i know there's no way to set up macros for the touch screen or tilt controls, which makes some actions like sliding on gravity rush just not possible on PC, though that in no way takes away from how impressive the emulator is, i'm excited to see how it'll develop further.

22:55 Thank you for telling me about DuckStation . I only remembered that I used Bleem! and Connectix VGS as PS1 emulator in my childhood days 😂. Decades have past

PCSX2 has to be one of the most improved emulators of this decade. We went from needing 8th gen intel @ stock resolution, to only needing 6th gen intel. 8th Gen intel can pump out 3x resolution without even breaking a sweat. You can pick up 8th Gen intel systems for less than $100... it is crazy how good their team has pushed the platform.

My favorites are definitely PCSX2 & PPSSPP, I have revisited many nostalgic games using these. And compatibility is great on both of them, at least so far , every game I have tried has worked on them.

I love emulation. It has led to me needing so many hard drives! Too many full catalogues. I will never play everything but I collect it all anyways. It's an interesting addiction haha

There are many more games running on Ryujinx at release than on Yuzu. With Yuzu there are often graphics errors with new games. Yuzu's focus is on commercialization while Ryujinx's focus is on compatibility. It also happens more often that emulation solutions are simply transferred from Ryujinx to Yuzu and then sold behind the playwall. The solution for the graphics errors in red dead redemption was simply taken from Ryujinx.

Speaking about making a game feel remastered, I think HD texture packs are a great option. Both projects that remake the textures by hand and those that use AI upscaling. Some games work better than others with AI upscaling and quality can vary by texture, but generally it adds detail into the game while remaining pretty faithful to the original artstyle. Of course doing it by hand by a skilled team will always be better but we're talking about thousands upon thousands of games that need HD texture packs and the man hours just don't make sense to do all of them by hand. One main problem with HD textures is the fact that textures are usually dumped by the emulator as the game is being played, which means you need to complete the whole game, being meticulous to go everywhere, do everything, and load every texture to be dumped as best you can. Then at that point it's pretty trivial to run the images through an AI upscaler, but you already played the whole game and you're unlikely to want to play it again in its entirety just to enjoy the textures. I think what we need is AI upscaling built-in to the emulator, so as soon as the texture is loaded it can be automatically upscaled and replaced. Then people don't have to go through the whole process above or distribute copyrighted content online when sharing their packs.

Something I would love to see and this world most likely have to become a video series of sorts. But a video going over the Emulators available for each system starting from the 80s to the modern day. With pros and cons for each emulators if there are multiple for one system that are widely used etc.

Ryujinx is my personal pick in relation to Switch emulation, because I think a person from early 2010s would go mad if I told them it is possible to emulate Red Dead Redemption not just on any PC, but on a MacBook. The Mac ARM64 port is an absolute delight, and short of being in direct possession of a Switch (or owning Steam Deck), I can enjoy game on a go via the rather thin productivity tier package that is the modern MacBook Air.

RCPS3 has come SO FAR since I first used it a decade ago! I'm blown away

honestly my favourite part of emulation this year has to be me discovering what retro achievements was and getting it linked up with the playstation emulators. i beat spyro 1 and started going through medievil and it sure does add a new reason to play through a game to the end.

I have recently played Resident Evil Outbreak online Co-op multiplayer using PCSX2, and it was so awesome that I could hop online using that emulator and still find quite a few players in several different lobbies. I was surprised how many PS2 games are still online overall.

At some point I compared Yuzu and Ryujinx on several games and Ryujinx turned out to be the best (I was using Yuzu before) but it was like a year ago so I wonder how things are between those two right now. I simply have no beef against Ryujinx so that's why I stuck with it through TotK.

RPCS3 has been my emulator of the year. Ive been able to play elder scrolls Oblivion on the steam deck OLED at 60fps, giving me the best "vanilla" Oblivion experience since the PS3 has better textures, normal maps and distant LODs than both vanilla PC and 360 and also loads faster than the Xbox 360 version. On RPCS3, it feels good, looks good and runs like a dream on steam deck

RIP Yuzu

It’s like you read my mind, recently I started messing around with emulation on my Steam Deck mainly been playing PS2. I had an itch to play through God of War, and seeing GOW running on my SD upscaled, just made me smile a ridiculously happy. I used to try and collect retro games and systems. But it really doesn’t make sense, I’ve been come a fan of emulation. SO thank you for making this video. Oh I should try 3D Dot Hero on RPCS3. Great little love letter to LOZ fans, never got to finish it on my PS3.

Amazing video MVG :) This month I finally played Tokyo Jungle in RPCS3, and it's incredible!Being a ferocious Pomeranian dog is something to try once.

Looking forward to Xenia improving. I’ve played through the original Fable (Anniversary, to be specific) several times on PC and have been itching to try Fable 2 and 3 on PC And before someone mentions it, I know Fable 3 has a PC version, but not only is it delisted from Steam but supposedly has tons of issues running on modern Windows

While I suppose it's not exactly impressive in the same way the emulators mentioned in the video are, BigPEmu the Atari Jaguar emulator is moving at an incredible pace considering how the console's emulation development languished for decades. Not only did it launch with 100% retail game compatibility, it rapidly added support for the Jaguar CD (IIRC completely unemulated until BigPEmu did it) and the Jaguar VR headset (an unreleased peripheral that _definitely_ wasn't emulated before BigPEmu), and the scripting module system seems to be utterly insane for enhancement and modding opportunities; the demo scripts provided with the emulator allow running Cybermorph in HD and with anti-aliasing, and playing Alien vs. Predator as I shit you not _a 32-player multiplayer game online._ I'd really love to see the developer look into doing some of the other consoles he mentioned as being interested in, especially the Sega Saturn.

You said you cant play mgs4 on steam deck with playable performance, however with specific settings, patches, and overclocking it actually is possible to get a close to native experience, which to be clear isnt really acceptable by modern standards i get that, but to say its unplayable on steam deck isnt necessarily true

One thing that I'd like to highlight is how quite a lot of these now has a good Flatpak port, which makes it very easy to use on Linux and Steam Deck. The ecosystem there overall has improved a lot too, with even Lutris gaining more integration with Flatpak and now able to launch games with existing Flatpak runners. It's a great time to be a gamer on Linux

im quite glad rpcs3 exists. being able to replay my games from my youth was pretty great. i missed little big planed quite a bit since it must have been like 10 years since i played it.

I LOVE this format. Feel free to upload more stuff like this at this length any time :). I used to watch Simply Austin for emu updates and now I need to fill that void!

thanks for showing the 'diff' of each emulator. kinda reminds me of the early emulation days seeing things like sound emulation getting better, or transparency effects being implemented properly as each emulator got updated lol.

Fantastic video! I'm on PC and the 2 I use most are *Ryujinx* and *Cemu* . The game compatibility of Ryujinx has made it a go-to for me - also that it's easy to setup portably and update.👍 What Cemu does on Xenoblade X with a decent system cannot be overstated. Absolutely showstopping!😍👏

This was a great episode👍🏻 I use emulation on devices like Miyoo Mini or Anbernic RG353m. The emulation app I use the most is Adrenaline on my PS Vita and Vita TV. For me this is a very good way to play PS1 and PSP games at home or on the go😁

Amazing video as always sir . The best thing I love about most of these emulators is the run ahead/preemptive frames feature that is sadly lacking in PCSX2 .

Well, this video is gonna need an update. RIP Yuzu.

One thing I love about ps1 emulation is core overclocking feature, a lot of games had choppy framerates so a little boost there works like magic. Combined with 60fps patches and geometry correction the games look and run so much better than ever before.

With the year coming to an end, I wanted to thank you. Your videos are awesome and I always get excited when I see your videos pop up in my feed.

Awesome video! I have been missing this kind of content and I would love if you could cover even more emulators but with a bigger focus on the Deck.

Suprised that BigPEmu didn't make the list. Awesome Jaguar emulator.

I think it was about 5 years ago I tried PCSX2 and stopped because of all the emulation issues and just lack of overall polish and for a while it looked like that was it. Then a couple of years ago things started to change rapidly and last year I gave the nightly builds ago. It was good but still had issues, my settings wouldn't save and the new UI was not long released and had some bugs. This year however I gave it a go again and my god has it come a long way, I went from playing PS2 games on my launch PS3 to transferring all my saves over and converting them back to the PS2 format so I could use PCSX2 and it has been my main way of playing PS2 since. Constant updates and a super polished experience. The UI is great, The compatibility and performance is amazing and all the options it gives you is just incredible. Even having separate settings per game. Super useful. The people working on it and that dev that came in deserve a lot of praise. As a fun fact the guy responsible for the UI in PCSX2 is also responsible for the same UI on duckstation.

Great info! Thank you! Found the video very, very enlightening.

Been on youtube recently? We love the long form vids! Great work

I will never stop thanking the developers of emulators! You guys are preserving art and i love you 😍

I really love the way new emulators are shaping of. Xemu is becoming really great. I just wish they implement the way to list all games on the emulator itself like pcsx2 did. Or even implement the menu of the og Xbox. But this is just a really minor thing.

I love all your content MVG! Thank you as always, you are one of my favorites on this whole platform. Great work mate 😎

Great video brother. Keep up the good work. Love emulation. Length of video is not an issue, time flew watching this video. Great just great.

Fantastic list & truly a showcase of some incredibly talented coders throughout the users. I would personally also add Citra to this list as the premiere 3DS emulator.

This year I've definitely been impressed with the improvements made to RPCS3, DuckStation, PCSX2, and Citra. When i first installed Citra about a year or two ago, i had a major issue with the Fire Emblem games where it was like watching a slide show and the audio was really bad. No adjustment of settings could fix it. I tried it again a few months ago and suddenly it was flawless. Kudos to the Citra team. I'm really looking forward to RPCSX, the PS4 emulator from the RPCS3 team or at least a creator of it. Shame its being initially built on Linux instead of Windows so it'll probably be an even longer wait for me. But there are a lot of PS4 games that likely won't be ported to PC by Sony like The Order: 1886, Until Dawn, The Last Guardian, Gravity Rush 2, or the Uncharted HD Collection which does look better than the emulated PS3 versions. Xbox One emulation would also be nice to see as I dont expect Halo 5 or a select few other games to be brought to PC. I will say though that i feel the eighth generation will be the last where emulation is truly necessary. With Sony and Microsoft comitting to PC ports of their first party portfolio and far less devs making pure console exclusives, the need to preserve the one or two exclusives is less pressing. Nintendo though will likely remain necessary as i dont see them branching to PC any time soon. But with more and more mandatory NVIDIA features Switch 2 emulation might become more difficult for those on AMD hardware or at least GPU's.

Hey MVG, thanks for the great video. I loved to see Onimusha 3 in one of your vids as I have a special relationship with it. Keep up the good work, I enjoy every single of your videos.

Fantastic video, thanks for summing things up. Emulation is fantastic, and to me one of the best case one could make about buying a high-end PC (other than running latest gen games of course). I totally agree with what you said about game preservation. I would still add arcade emulators. Supermodel 3 for Sega Model 3 arcade games is a total beast, which runs stuff like Daytona USA 2 flawlessly (resolution upscale + 60fps) on a very mid-spec PC. MAME emulators also could be discussed, especially considering software like LaunchBox which try to make the experience a bit less daunting.

Honestly been using many emulators this year but for some reason the most fun I had was with the frontend Retroarch. Mainly for the CRT shaders. Just seems to have renewed that nostalgia magic for me.

Been ryujinx and it is an amazing achievement , I did wonder how Sega Saturn emulation was coming along

Thanks for this video, I’ve been wanting to play through some of my old PS3 games recently and have been keen to do it via emulation, so this is a really nice starting point.

Highly appreciate the information on steam deck compatibility, thank you!

Do you plan on making a part 2 of this? There has been a lot of improvements for PPSSPP, Citra and certainly for classic consoles, such as 3DO (Opera), Saturn (Mednafen/Beettle), Dolphin, FBNEO, MAME, BSNES (widescreen) Genesis Plus GX (MD+ and even Wide), DOSBox Pure and more. For instance, on Opera (3DO), we can run the best and original version of Road Rash (1994) in a steady 30 FPS, it was the weakest port in performance, but it's now fixed with overclocking the CPU. Same goes for Genesis Plus GX Road Rash titles which received enhanced patches and benefit from overclocking the CPU and supports MD+, there's a lot to explore with these emulators.

emulation is the way forward for preservation of some of great games and combining it with the ease of the steam deck I'm having a blast with a huge library of modern and old games in the palm of my hands. Honestly can't wait for steam deck 2 to finally have a portable ps3 library in 2 years

Great video and really good round up of emulators!

The shift to QT on PCSX2 was phenomenal, it went from one of the clunkest messy emulators around to one of thee best experiences in emulation... and the fact that it brings us the ps2 library in the process... I seriously can't get over it's transformation, Paired with Duckstation you turn your PC into a dangerous nostaligia machine... The original xbox and ps3 emulators are coming along great, there is serious potential there. The emulation scene is one of my favourite places on the internet, truly amazing people...

Sad to see Ryujinx not making an appearance on here, the entire team worked incredibly hard this year on macOS support and texture replacement alongside having majority of games work day 1 without needed updates.

Emulation's future is looking bright 😎

Christmas came early!!! Love these videos. Thanks so much MVG for everything you produce. Hope you have a great new year with more great content!

Great summary, thank you!!

It would be very helpful to know your pick on the hardware specs for a PC to have in order to run most (if not all) of these emulators. Like what type of processor, graphics card, even OS in order to make the most out of these emulators and have the best gaming experience possible. I know most hardware is compatible but it would be great to know your opinions.

I'm so glad that the Vita finally has a working emulator. People really need to discover the great games on that underrated and overhated handheld console.

Great video subject!

Nice list didnt know about some of these

DuckStation is so great! I used to have so many issues with other PSX emulators in the past, but DuckStation just works. The UI is nice, and I guess it's a common feature nowadays, but the auto-update feature in the software itself is such an improvement for the UX. I know Dolphin has had it for some time, but moving to DuckStation from previous emulators and being able to update it with such ease (similar to how the UX is for most paid applications) blew my mind. Together with Dolphin, it's my favorite emulator.

Yuzu's a weird pick over Ryujinx in my opinion. The latter has done far better with running games day one this year, and is generally just a more accurate emulator. Yuzu's only real plus point at this point is better performance on low-end hardware. It's sad that the support (financial and otherwise) is so skewed in one direction when it comes to Switch emulation.

I'd like to mention Mesen. It was initially a NES/SNES emulator, but it recently added support for GB/C and even PC Engine. With time, it could probably become the easiest and most convenient PCE emulator around. Plus it has lots of debug tools for each system.

Awesome info, thx for putting this together.

It's such a great time to be a retro gamer and it'll only get better from here

I think you should be more specific about specs: beefy, mid, low-end pc is not a good reference in the present, it'll be horrible even in the really near future. Obviously even the emulators will change, but a more strictly frame of reference "in the moment" is beneficial to fix where we are.

My first time emulating games was from 2009. I emulated ps1 games on my galaxy tab playing ff9 and chrono cross. Two of my favourite jrpg ever and what made me felt in love with the genre.

I used PCSX2 recently, and was shocked at how much it improved since the last time I used it

I don't have Yuzu but I do have Duckstation and PCSX2. those emulators are amazing and quite frankly, I'm glad I downloaded Duckstation over ePSXe. One thing about those emulators is that you need the bios otherwise they won't work. I think with Yuzu you need a Nintendo Switch product key. I may be wrong though because of later updates. One emulator I also like is Cemu. I also tried out Xemu but I would rather play those games on an original Xbox. But PCSX2 is hands down a great emulator and for sure Duckstation.

Don't sleep on Flycast. It is now head and tails superior to Redream graphically, is free (as opposed to Redream asking for $5), and even runs Arcade Naomi games well. And it does a far better job running arcade games than Demul ever could.

Thank tou for that "internal resolution" tip! Is there any your vids which do in-depth "settings" guide?

I started using duckstation recently to play my physical ps1 library on my pc and I love that I can do it with duckstation it does have audio and visual issues running straight off the disc but loading it all into ram at the start no issues whatsoever and it's great

I love these kinds of videos, even tho I prefer Ryujinx to Yuzu they're both excellent for Switch. I got these running on the Ally, they run great :3

The redream emulator for dreamcast games is absolutely incredible. 💯

Nice to see these emulators get the attention they deserve in this round up video and I completely agree with everything said. I've been on a MASSIVE emulation kick this year. I had only dabbled before but this year I got fully obsessed with it. Specs: 6700k @ 4.5 all cores and 1080ti OC'd with GPU Tweak. PS1: Used to use PCSXR but I've since swapped to Duckstation as the GUI is way better and the same as PCSX2 Nightly. Games run very well, I just need to work on getting my saves transferred now. PS2: I use PCSX2 nightly. I used to use the stable version but then swapped to Nightly because of the improvements you get from it. I've been cataloguing my game disks into my ROM collection and I've transferred most of my game saves over. It's been an insane trip down memory lane to play my old PS2 game saves again on a emulator. I've also recently got a Sinden lightgun so I can play Time Crisis again. Games for the most part have run flawless and it's been so much fun playing my PS2 games in 4K60. PS3: Been using RPCS3 however it's a bit of a struggle on my current rig. I've mainly been focusing on PCSX2 but once I get my new rig I'll spend more time with RPCS3. I've got my saves transferred but getting them to work will take a little more work as I'll have to modify them all to make them compatible. PSP: Been using PPSSPP for awhile now and works very well. The saves transfer process was a simple drag and drop from my PSP memory card. Games run very well now., They used to struggle with some games but the improvements have made a huge difference. Xbox 360: Only dabbled a little with Xenia as it is currently the best way to emulate Red Dead Redemption on PC. It plays fairly well but my PC struggles with it. Wii U: Been using Cemu and runs BoTW very smoothly. I've played the game from start to finish. Switch: Tried both Ryujinx and YuZu with YuZu being the best for me performance wise. Been playing ToTK and it runs very well although does struggle a little on my PC. I'll likely give Vita 3K a go soon and i'm looking forward to see how the PS4 emulators progress in the future.

Was kind of surprises you didn't talk about Cemu, love playing breath of the wild with enhanced graphics and such. Great video, brought a bunch of attention to emulators I haven't even heard of.

I'm a huge fan of Ryujinx because it allows for local multiplayer with hacked Switch consoles but Yuzu is just as important. Still need to rip one stack of my PS1 games with 50% being done but Duckstation really seems cool. Seeing Vita3k makes me always wish I was into the Vita but Sony totally botched that system for Europe.

There's an RPCS3 CPU tierlist out there, that's a great resource to figure out where your system lands. I run a Ryzen R7 5700X, it's A tier and I get pretty good performance, and that's a sub $200 8 core CPU. You'll get the best performance with Intel 12th and 13th gen, the 13600KF is a $250 gaming and productivity monster and you can run it with DDR4 memory if you wanna save some cash. Tons of great, cheap options for building a PC that has emulation potential, ESPECIALLY with modern Vulcan compatibility - means you don't have to give money to Nvidia XD I use a RX 6650 XT and that's a great budget 8GB card, Intel ARC A750 and A770 are amazing value for money as well. This year may have been crap for PC optimization of AAA titles, but emulation has just been going from strength to strength!

I'll be looking forward to this every december if you decide to make it a series! Amazing video as always

I've been having a lot of fun with xemu this year! I rebuilt my xbmc box from high school and college on a tiny elitedesk. Thanks for all your work sir!