Best emulators for Android in 2023

If you grew up gaming in the nearly 2000s, you probably have memories of your PS2 and games like Ratchet & Clank and The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Thanks to AetherSX2, you can relive those experiences on the go with any modern flagship Android smartphone. Best of all, it works with touchscreen controls, so you don't need to invest in a separate controller.

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2

Yuzu

With Skyline now out of the picture, as the developer team behind it is finished with the project, Yuzu has come in right on time to continue providing users a way to play Switch games on their Android phones. It's in its first iteration, and therefore, your mileage will very much vary, but it's a great first step and bodes well for the future. We noticed a number of graphical glitches that made it unplayable on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but other devices apparently fare a lot better, and we expect that it will improve in the future.

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3

Skyline Emulator

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4

melonDS

The Nintendo DS has such a wide back catalog of games to play, many of which are both incredible and not very computationally taxing. melonDS is the best way to enjoy those games on the go, and that's thanks to its ease of use. It's a free emulator that you can download from the Google Play Store, though it's not an official port (as melonDS is made for PC originally), and it's never updated there. Instead, you'd do better to check out GitHub.

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5

Citra

Citra hasn't been updated in a while on Android, and users on Reddit have spotted that another port called Citra MMJ tends to have better performance. Your mileage may vary, so give the MMJ fork a try if the performance isn't great on your device.

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6

Dolphin Emulator

Dolphin Emulator is one of the most famous emulators on the planet thanks to its compatibility with pretty much everything on the GameCube and the Wii. It runs on many devices, the development team is very transparent in what they're working on with blog post updates every few months, and the team even worked to preserve Nintendo Update Server (NUS) support by creating a fake Dolphin URL to act as a go-between for users who need to download system files for the emulator from Nintendo.

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7

DuckStation

If you want to emulate PSX games, look no further than DuckStation. It's lesser known (or at least was) than ePSXe, but it focuses on accuracy and new, useful features. It supports the Vulkan graphics API, upscaling to 4K, and even upscaling to 8K. There's also a libretro core that you can add to RetroArch, and, best of all, it just has a ton of settings.

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8

RetroArch

RetroArch is a popular open-source front-end for emulators. If you’re into playing retro games, RetroArch is your one-stop shop for all your emulating needs. It's not an emulator by itself but instead allows you to add "cores" that act as the backend to emulate several legacy consoles. While most of its most popular emulators are already covered here by dedicated apps, it has a large variety of retro consoles that you can think of.

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