Supported emulators

A spreadsheet with what emulators are on which platform can be found here.

Most commonly, the answer is just “No one has implemented it yet.” But there may also be another reason; Batocera's old slogan is “Only cores that matter”. To a certain extent, superfluous emulators that are redudant (ie. already have another emulator for that system) may be intentionally not included. With that said, if there's a good reason to include multiple emulators for a single system, such as additional options, extended compatibility, major difference in performance (such as on a weaker platform), it is a good candidate. From early 2021, the “focus on one emulator per system” guideline has been loosened up, and Batocera currently features more emulators/cores than ever before!

One thing that Batocera will not budge on is implementing emulators for systems that are “current generation”. Batocera is a retro-gaming focused OS, first and foremost. With that said, there in nothing in Batocera that would block you from implementing your own emulator system if you know how to set it up correctly; the various community resources and the notable files page might help you get set up. Just note that emulators added manually this way are not officially supported and we cannot offer help from either our forums or Discord if you choose to do this.

That's cool. Check the question above and also consider that Batocera is its own operating system, ie. has different libraries/compilation methods available to it from most other distributions. For instance, a lot of scripts that rely on the entirety of Raspberry Pi OS running in the background (like RetroPie does) may not work in Batocera.

Check the above reason, but even more so. Programs running through WINE tend to have even stricter library/backend requirements, not to mention the whole mess that is setting up Windows programs correctly in WINE in the first place. Cemu being perfectly WINE compatible is nothing short of a miracle.

• Steam is a x86 based program, and thus only available on x86/x86_64 builds. This Github post explains why Steam on ARM isn't currently feasible.
  • In the meantime however, you can use Moonlight to video stream your PC games to your SBC.

• For the same reason as above, WINE is x86 and only compatible with x86/x86_64 builds.
• Even if WINE itself could be theoretically ported to other platforms, most Windows programs themselves are still x86 only/depend on x86-based libraries. The same applies to Proton.
  • In the meantime however, you can use Moonlight to video stream your PC games to your SBC.

• Current versions of Dolphin only have x86_64 and arm8 JIT.
• Older versions supported arm7 (Odroid XU4 is arm7), but they are no longer maintained.
• Dolphin requires a 2Ghz CPU (Odroid C2 maximum is 1.9 Ghz).

In other words, it could be supported for specifically older handhelds, but only through an older version of Dolphin. Batocera maintains only the current/latest versions of most emulators. If you'd like to port over and maintain an older version of Dolphin for your particular platform, feel free to open a pull request. Do note that expected performance would still be pretty low even if achieved.

• The Reicast code is not ready for the aarch64 architecture yet.

Good news: Apple II is back (along with a brand new Apple 2GS emulator) when you upgrade to Batocera 32 or later.

Why was the Apple II emulator removed at some point?

• The previous Apple II emulator, LinApple, required SDL v1 to work.
• SDL v2 was patched to support GPUs on recent SBC or 64-bit PC, but SDL v1 never was.
• In other words, LinApple has been removed as it required an upgrade to SDL v2, that never happened.

GSPlus, an Apple II+2GS emulator, has been included in Batocera since v32.