OpenEmu: Beautiful Emulation for Macs

Mac people usually expect two things when it comes to software: the it just works factor and beautiful interfaces. One genre of software that has never gotten much Mac love is video game emulators. Often, they have ancient UIs and are buggy as hell. Well, after years of work, OpenEmu 1.0 is finally available for download, and it’s great.

Much like the XBMC media center software I’m obsessed with, OpenEmu automatically scans your system for games and downloads the box art and information, and presents it all in an easy-to-use and gorgeous interface. There are a ton of options for controllers, and I’m hoping to get a Wii U Pro controller sometime soon to use. I’ve had an old 24″ iMac sitting in my desk for about a year not getting used, and I think I’m going to turn it into a dedicated emulation machine now.

I briefly got into the world of retro game collecting over the summer, but my shelves are too packed as it is, and the cost of old games and systems just seems silly when you can play ROMs instead. I think I realized that my favorite thing about buying old games was the packaging anyway. I’m perfectly fine emulating games, and I’m glad to have a good way to do it on my Macs now.

PS – Sorry for being MIA over Christmas. The combination of getting super busy with work and my grandpa dying kind of made me forget about the site for a while. I hope you all had a great holiday and I’m looking forward to the new year!