The tendency of emulation projects to be free and open source works in OpenEmu's favor here. OpenEmu's modular nature means that more cores can easily be added as development continues-the project's wishlist indicates that support for several of Atari's consoles, MAME, and newer consoles like the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation are all on the docket. The following systems are supported out of the box as of this release and are almost universally Nintendo or Sega systems (with a couple of exceptions): NES, SNES, Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, Virtual Boy, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Sega's 32X, the TurboGrafx-16, and the NeoGeo Pocket Color. The 1.0 release of OpenEmu offers up 13 cores that support a total of 12 systems (there are several duplicates, which should ensure that emulation enthusiasts can get a good experience no matter what they're currently using).

When you install and run the application, you'll also need to download the 'cores' of a number of different open-source emulation projects in order to actually play games. OpenEmu is a game console emulator, but it's perhaps more accurately described as a frontend for a whole bunch of different emulators. This week’s release marks the first time that a ready-for-prime-time binary version has been available for download, so we’re taking it for a spin using some homebrew games (available free of cost from the OpenEmu site) and a few game backups, which you can grab from your own cartridges with a gadget like the Retrode. OpenEmu won’t be new to emulation enthusiasts-the OS X-only software has been in development for several years, and gamers have been welcome to download and compile its work-in-progress source code for quite some time. This year, gamers got an early Christmas present in the form of the long-awaited 1.0 release of OpenEmu. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions, particularly for Mac users: last year we took a look at Boxer, which combines classic MS-DOS game emulation with a spiffy and easy-to-use UI. Regardless of what they prioritize, user interfaces are not their strong suit, and most of them haven’t evolved beyond a basic settings panel and a file picker that wouldn’t look out of place in Windows 95. Game console emulators have typically concerned themselves with either speed and compatibility, or accuracy.

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