Introduction: How to Install and Use OpenEmu
Finding a solid emulator can be very difficult for newcomers, yet it is incredibly useful once obtained. With this emulator, you can play any Gameboy (Color, Advance), DS, PSP, etc.. game if you can find its file! This means you can play any Pokémon game from first generation to Black/White 2!
Other old game consoles can be found such as the Nintendo 64, and if you have the correct plugins you may be able to add more!
OpenEmu acts as a one-stop hub for everything involving emulation on your Mac, allowing you to emulate a variety of classic consoles, organize your games into collections, map your controllers, and more. The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past Four Swords Super Mario Advance 4 - Super Mario Bros. Using ROMs from cartridge-based games is easy but CD-based consoles, like the Sony Playstation, are a bit harder; OpenEmu provides a warning about extra dependencies needed to each system. I was curious as to how to difficult it would be to get a CD-based game going so I gave it a shot, and it was much easier than expected. What is up guys, Espy comin' at ya with an OpenEmu tutorial on how to get PSP games to run within OpenEmu. If you have any questions, please feel free to sta.
Let's get started.
Step 1: Download OpenEmu
Below is a download link for OpenEmu's zip, and a .nds file for Pokémon Platinum, my favorite DS Pokemon game.
( You can download more games here: www.emuparadise.me )
Unzip the file entitled 'OpenEmu_2.0.5.zip', and OpenEmu should appear. Open OpenEmu and run it's setup process.
Step 2: Add Games to Your Collection!
Drag your game file, (for example: '3541 - Pokemon Platinum Version (US)(XenoPhobia).nds') to your OpenEmu browser. It may take a minute or two to scan, but afterwards the game will be ready to run! To launch the game, double click the game icon, or rt click > Play Game.
Step 3: Edit Your Controls!
To edit controls, hit the gear button in the bottom menu, and then hit 'Controls'. Timeline template omni graffle for mac. You can save your controls for every individual console you use. You can also access this menu via Preferences.
Now you're all set! Play almost any game you can find with OpenEmu! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I hope this helped - more tutorials coming soon!
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Updated 4/21/20
I've written in the past about emulation and OpenEmu, a multi-console emulator front end that uses multiple emulation cores to provide a unified experience to macOS (OS X) emulation.
OpenEmu also sports MAME Arcade emulation support, but its a bit tucked away.
Step 1: Download OpenEmu Experimental
Go to openemu.org and click the swatch and download OpenEmu Experimental, and install it.
How To Get Games For Openemu Mac
This scfeenshot of the OpenEMU site is old. The design on the OpenEMU website has slightly modified to make the experimental version easier to find
Step 2: Install the MAME core
Once installed, launch OpenEmu, open preferences, and select cores. Click the install button next to MAME.
Step 3: Install games
Games For Openemu Download
Games can be nabbed from the usual suspects like emuparadise (defunct), the legality of this is fairly grey. OpenEmu only supports zipped ROMs, so if the ROM comes in a .gz or .rar, be sure to decompress its contents and rezip it. Name it the exact name as before (but with the new extension of zip). OpenEmu's MAME core is version 0.149.1, so its significantly behind the windows version (from 2013 to be exact). Some sites will list the earliest known support needed for the rom in question.
Notably, you'll want access to the dipswitches, hitting F2 repeatedly while the game is launching will take you to most ROM bios screens that enable modes like free play. Note, I had issues resuming games and had to force quit MAME resuming so you may want to hold off resuming games.
Optional: NeoGeo Emulation
Emulating NeoGeo games requires one extra step, you'll need to get the NeoGeo ROM, the one I used is from emuparadise which is now defunct, try a popular search engine and search 'Neo Geo BIOS'. Drag the Neo Geo zip into OpenEmu. You'll see the NeoGeo ROM in your game list, but ignore it and double-click the games as you normally would.
Good luck with OpenEmu. I suggest checking out the Dolphin Emulator as it has a great macOS port for GameCube and Wii, and PCSX2 for Windows for Playstation 2 emulation. Both are able to play old games in HD and UHD depending on your CPU/GPU.
Other recommendations from this blog:
- Running up MAME Arcade emulation with MAME/MESS - How to set up the most current version of MAME on MacOS. OpenEMU's MAME core is 7+ years old, and there are quite a bit of newer arcade games supported in more recent versions.
- Installing Provenance on iOS 11 with a Jailbreak - Provenance is an iOS multi-console emulator based off of OpenEMU, supporting consoles from the 8 bit and 16-bit eras. The step process hasn't changed for iOS 13.
Updates: 4/21/20 - copy editing, note about layout change on OpenEMU's website, striking out emuparadise as its now defunct.