OpenEmu is a 4-button, 6-button tape electronics emulator. Childhood with games Contra, Mario Dwarf Mushroom, Ninja Save Mom… is probably no stranger to many of you. But now I have to travel a lot, TV screens are not available everywhere, and I can’t carry the game console with me everywhere, cumbersome and inconvenient.

If you want to find your childhood quickly and conveniently, the best solution is to install an emulator on your computer. However, each emulator usually only supports 1 game system. On Windows, I have not found any emulator capable of synthesizing many game systems, if you want to play, you must install many different types of emulators. On MacOS that problem is solved with OpenEmu:

• The emulator supports multiple game systems at the same time.
• Smart game system classification, convenient interface, easy to use, easy to manage games.
• Install ROM 1 time is okay, then delete ROM, you can still play in the emulator. It is recommended to store the ROM again just in case.
• And especially it’s free. Of course, if you want, you can still donate to the OpenEmu team, the donation link is right on their homepage.

How to play 4-button games with OpenEmu

Read the instructions carefully to install all Cores of supported game systems:

Install OpenEmu

OpenEmu interface. The left column is a classification of supported game systems. Convenient for finding games.

Prepare game ROM. Each game has from 1 to many ROM files, depending on the weight of the game. Throw the ROM in the emulator and it will read the game for you. For games like Contra, Mario… the ROM is usually in the range of tens to several hundred Kb/ROM. There are many sites that provide free game ROMs on the internet.

As for the controller, you can use the ones that have a jack into the Mac. Or the controller has Bluetooth, currently I use the DualShock PS4 controller. Mac catches Bluetooth pretty well, I can connect 5 hands at a time. List of supported controllers:

• PlayStation Dualshock 3 and Dualshock 4
• Wiimote and Wii U Pro
• Xbox 360 and 3rd party (driver required)
• Sega Saturn USB
• PS3 Neo Geo Pad USB
• Logitech Series (Dual Action, Rumblepad 2, Gamepad F310 / F510 / F710)
• Gravis GamePad Pro
• Retrolink SNES and N64
• RetroUSB SNES RetroPort and RetroPad
• Retrode (SNES)

The experience of 5 kids putting their heads together on a computer playing Bomberman wasn’t bad at all. Actually, I haven’t tried more than 5 controllers because I don’t know any game with more than 5 players at once.

The game systems that OpenEmu supports (I will bold the ones I often play).

• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200
• Atari 7800
• Atari Lynx
• ColecoVision
• Famicom Disk System
• Game Boy / Game Boy Color
• Game Boy Advance
• Game Gear
• Intellivision
• NeoGeo Pocket
• Nintendo (NES) / Famicom
• Nintendo DS
• Nintendo 64
• Nintendo GameCube
• Odyssey²/Videopac+
• PC-FX
• SG-1000
• Sega 32X
• Sega CD / Mega CD
• Sega Genesis / Mega Drive
• Sega Master System
• Sega Saturn
• Sony PlayStation
• Sony PSP
• Super Nintendo (SNES)
• TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine/SuperGrafx
• TurboGrafx-CD/PC Engine CD
• Virtual Boy
• Vectrex
• WonderSwan

Any other games you would like to recommend to bring people back to their childhood?