Best SNES Emulator for Windows
She may be 25 years old, but Super Nintendo still boasts some of the best video games of all time. If you are looking to install SNES on your Windows computer, we think the best emulator for the job is RetroArch with bsnes core.
RetroArch (with Bsnes-Mercury Core)
Platform : Windows / Mac / Linux Price : Free download page
Functions
- Plays games from the Super Nintendo Nintendo Entertainment system as ROM.
- Play games with virtually any USB gamepad and customize button layouts
- Save and load your state anywhere in the game
- Rewind the game in real time
- Adjust many video settings, including shaders that add old-school effects or anti-aliasing to your graphics.
- Record walkthrough videos or record button presses to BSV file
- Play online with friends using Netplay
How to set it up
RetroArch is a little more complex than Install, File> Open. We’ve got a complete tutorial on how to use RetroArch , but here’s a quick guide to setting it up with bsnes:
- Download the latest version of RetroArch from the download page . It comes as a 7z file, so you need to install 7-Zip to unpack it.
- Open the 7z archive and extract the files wherever you want (I recommend C: \ Program Files \ RetroArch).
- Double-click the RetroArch exe file to run it. You can navigate the interface using the arrow keys, pressing X to select or Z to return. It also supports multiple USB gamepads out of the box.
- To load an emulator into RetroArch, you need to install the emulator “kernel”. Go to Online Updater> Core Updater and scroll down until you see bsnes-mercury kernels. If you have a very powerful computer (with a processor above 3 GHz), try bsnes-mercury-precision. If your computer is less powerful, choose bsnes-mercury-balanced or bsnes-mercury-performance instead.
- Return to the main menu and select Upload Content> Choose File and Define Core. Select the ROM file on your hard drive to start playing.
You can also tweak a lot of video, audio, and gamepad settings , but this will get you started.
Where is it best
The biggest advantage of RetroArch is the sheer amount of customization. This can be overwhelming for some users, but it allows you to create the best possible emulation experience by enabling GPU sync to reduce input lag, or by adding shaders for this classic kind of CRT.
The bsnes core is the most accurate SNES emulator, which means there should be no bugs or glitches in any game. If you have the resources to run it, it should be nearly perfect.
Also, while RetroArch can be tricky, it’s a little easier to set up than Higan, the desktop version of the bsnes emulator.
Where it fails
As we mentioned above, RetroArch can be quite tricky. Installing kernels and tweaking options is really confusing if you’re not familiar with RetroArch, and since there aren’t many tutorials on it, you’ll have to google a lot to figure it out, especially if you’re using it for more than one emulator. But it’s less work than trying to set up Higan (especially if you’re already familiar with RetroArch from other emulators).
Second, bsnes kernels require a fairly powerful computer to run – unfortunately at the expense of precision – so if you are running a particularly weak machine it may not even perform very well with bsnes-mercury-performance. In that case, you may have to settle for Snes9x.
Competition
Snes9x is arguably the most popular SNES emulator, and for good reason. It is durable, multifunctional, and very easy to use. It has a much simpler interface and setup than RetroArch, although it’s not as accurate as the bsnes core that RetroArch provides. If you have a computer that doesn’t support bsnes, or if you just want to start playing right now without trying to get perfect fidelity, Snes9x is a great choice. (RetroArch also has a Snes9x core if you want all your emulators in one place.)
ZSNES is another popular SNES emulator that was once popular. These days, however, it is considered old, outdated, and imprecise, although it is also believed to have the lowest input latency of the group . Unfortunately, this is accompanied by sound problems and serious bugs in some games. ZMZ is an emulator based on the ZSNES interface that can use the RetroArch libreto cores. With it, you can play games with higher fidelity than ZSNES, but with lower input lag than other emulators. However, it has the same audio issues as the ZSNES, so the Snes9x is better suited for most people.