The interaction metaphor used here is similar to inserting a cartridge and then turning on the game system.

An emulator imitates a console gaming system, allowing you to play console games on your Mac.

With the instructions below, you can play retro games on macOS from NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy, and a ton more.

If you want to play NES games, for example, youll need an NES emulator.

If you want to play PS1 games, youll need a PS1 emulator, and so on.

Some emulation systems can handle more than one console, but most are individualized.

Emulator Zone provides the largest collection of functional emulators to download, but it can be light on Mac emulators.

If you just want to emulate one platform, you can download a single emulator from here.

OpenEmu is a free, open-source project that can emulate multiple systems on macOS.

Its like an emulation hub for the most popular retro game platforms.

It can run games from popular systems like NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Game Boy, and dozens more.

As you can imagine, this wasnt exactly kosher from a legal perspective.

While this was once overlooked by companies owning the copyright of emulated games, publishers have become less lenient in recent years.

As a result, major emulation sites have voluntarily shut down to avoid legal repercussions, removing a major resource for ROM downloads.

As far as the ROM is concerned, the emulator is the operating system.

So dont worry about finding macOS-compatible ROMs, since such a thing doesnt exist.

Some emulators will automatically assign the appropriate file extensions, while others will not.

OpenEmu will automatically grab all the common ROM file extensions, so you can simply double-click on ROMs in Finder to launch the associated games.

You can use the Open With menu to open a ROM file with the correct emulator.

Simply select the ROM files in Finder and drag them into the OpenEmu window.

Theyll also be copied to a separate library on disk by default, which is maintained by OpenEmu.

If you dont like this behavior, it can be disabled in OpenEmus preferences.

How To Get Rom To Run In Emulator Mac