XBOX 360

The Xbox 360 is Microsoft’s most successful console. It sold over 86 million units worldwide and has many excellent exclusive games like Halo, Gears of War, and Forza Horizon.

While most people think 12 or 11 people are required to update or create the emulator, it took three people to run the emulation for the 360. They would emulate many games for the 360 and succeed in doing so. Some games can even work better than the RPSC3 emulator for the PS3.

Created in 2013, they wanted to emulate it because some games were region-locked, and they wanted to play the game in all areas. It was also created because several games for the 360 aren’t backward compatible with the Xbox One or the series x/s. The only problem is that it isn’t user-friendly to configure. The configuration is left with a notepad app. Deleting one of the notepad’s words or sentences could crash the emulator. However, the Xenia Manager solves the problem quickly with a user-friendly way of configuring the settings for each game.

There are two versions of Xenia: the Stable and Canary versions. Regardless of which version you choose, you can play Xbox 360 games on it. 

The emulator became very popular when the Xbox 360 Marketplace was shut down. In its place were many games that weren’t backward-compatible with the Xbox One or Xbox Series X/s and, therefore, must be emulated to play them. 

Xbox Live arcade games can be emulated, but the process has many bugs. And Xenia doesn’t support Xbox Live indie games so far. 

I’m glad that even with the Xbox 360 store shutdown, an emulator does it all, and efforts will be made to preserve all the Xbox 360 games. Hopefully, someday, Microsoft will have all of the Xbox 360 games backward compatible with the Xbox One.

PlayStation 3

The PS3 was a seventh-gen console that failed at launch because it cost too much compared to the Xbox 360 and wasn’t developer-friendly. However, because the price dropped and made it developer-friendly, the PS3 barely outsold the Xbox 360, selling 88 million compared to 86 million Xbox 360s. It lost to the Wii, which sold over 106 million. 

Despite this, many people have claimed that the PS3 cell architecture made emulation nearly impossible. This didn’t stop a group of people who tried to make it happen. The team was called rpcs3, and the first test footage proved the point. But that didn’t stop them. 

It successfully emulated homebrew apps, but later breakthroughs made it play Triple AAA games. It received media attention after it announced it could emulate Persona 5, proving the people who initially thought it was impossible to emulate it wrong.

Additionally, people could play online by creating an account called rpscn. Following instructions, you can play popular multiplayer games like Killzone 2/3, Call of Duty Modern Warfare series, Little Big Planet, etc. 

As of August 2024, nearly 70 percent of games are classified as playable, and none are classified as broken, meaning they are focusing their efforts on improving the games that were already at least in-game or more.   

If you had told me 14 years ago that PS3 emulation would happen, I would have said you were crazy. Still, rpsc3 has proved that nothing is impossible in emulation, regardless of how robust the cell architecture is. 

GameCube

Most emulators focus on one console, like Rpsc3 for the PS3 and Xenia for the Xbox 360. But the crazy thing is that Dolphin can emulate both GameCube and Wii games. It all started in 2003 when Dolphin was created. The Original goal of the emulator was to emulate the GameCube games. However, backward compatibility was effortless because of the similar architectural reaction ship. It was even ported to Android in 2013. 

The Dolphin emulator also managed to get several classic games available for the Wii shop working in the emulator. The Dolphin emulator is a game changer because it can scale games from 480 resolution to 4 K resolution, which makes lots of games cooler and prettier. 

This is especially true since the Nintendo Switch couldn’t emulate Wii games because they use cartridges. If you want to play Wii and GameCube games, use the Dolphin emulator. 

PlayStation 2

Of course, Sony’s most successful console was the PS2. With slightly stronger specs, backward compatibility, and the ability to play Blu-ray discs, it sold over 160 million units, making it the most sold console on earth. Of course, because of this, emulation was in development. 

Of course, the most popular emulator is the PCSX2 Emulator. It can emulate PS2 games that are popular during the year, such as Ratchet and Clank, Crash Bandicoot, Sonic Heroes, Tom Clancy Ghost Squad, and GTA: San Andreas. 

As of September 2024, over 97 percent of the games are classified as playable. If you want to play the PS2, then using the PCSX2 is the best option because you can go all the way to 4k and use 60 fps for certain games. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is one of the most popular handheld gaming consoles. It sold over 140 million units and had perfect exclusive games. However, many people have been disappointed in the resolution drop from 1080p to 720p for the Nintendo Switch and the hardware reductions. There had been emulators just a year after the release, with two of them at first.

Yuzu was the first Emulator. Emulators began working on January 14, 2018, to emulate the Nintendo Switch games on the PC. They could emulate titles including Super Mario Odyssey, Pokemon Sword and Shield, and Metroid. While Nintendo considers piracy, the Yuzu team believes it is essential to preserve video games.   

Popularity increased once the Steam Deck was released, and it was easy to run an emulator. However, Nintendo began copying, striking several YouTubers who made video tutorials using Yuzu or other Nintendo Switch emulators. On February 26, 2024, Yuzu’s parent company, Tropic Haze LLC, was sued by Nintendo of America claiming it violated Copyright laws and encouraged mass piracy.

Several days later, on March 4, 2024, Tropic Haze settled with Nintendo and would take down the Emulator after the takedown of Yuzu, a fork of Yuzu called Suyu was created. Suyu was a pun name for Sue Us, a jab at Nintendo because they sued them to take them down. While Suyu is still active, another fork of Yuzu, Torzu, was taken down by Nintendo later that year.

Another Switch emulator is Ryujinx. Ryujinx was created nearly a month after Yuzu. Ryujinx made a lot of progress, and by the end of 2023, over 3,000 games were playable on the emulator. The Emulator Emulator was the first to be brought to macOS and eventually considered the primary emulator. The Emulator Emulator was taken down. As popularity grew, there were forks of Ryujinx in case they were taken down.

Sudachi and Citron are Ryujinx forks, and people began using them to emulate Nintendo Switch games. Unfortunately, many people’s worst fears came true on October 2, 2025, when the lead developer posted a Discord message that Nintendo contacted them. They agreed to shut down the project due to piracy concerns. They also revealed plans to port it to iOS and Android, but they canceled it because of Nintendo’s request. 

Despite this, Nintendo made the switch emulation scene worse because people would emulate them to preserve the games we all loved.