If you are a gaming enthusiast and looking for good NES emulators to revisit your childhood games by Nintendo, then you need access to top-notched NES Emulators. A good NES Emulator will help you get the best gaming experience with the quality of your modern HDTV.
The NES or Nintendo Entertainment System has primarily been one of the most iconic game consoles of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Although the NES is no longer active, many of us keep reminiscing about the great games we used to have a few years back. Starting with Super Mario and Pac-Man to Duck Hunt, we have all tried our hands at them at least once.
7 Notable NES Emulators for Windows 10
There is a common myth that emulators are illegal to use, which is not completely true. Downloading and using emulators are quite legal and every gamer does it. What is not legal is that of sharing copyrighted ROMs online.
Now, NES emulators, in general, are pretty stable and most of them work extremely well on non-authorized platforms like your PC. They have high gaming compatibility and have customized controls with very few bugs.
You can find the best NES emulators that have been listed out for you in this article. These emulators can be used on your PC for playing the old classic Nintendo games.
While the most popular NES emulators will support more or less any version of Windows, there are some that won’t work on the older versions. But, if you are one of those working on the Windows 10 version of your PC then you are lucky. Because the best of the NES emulators primarily support Windows 10 and usually run flawlessly on them.
So, here’s a list of the 7 best NES emulators that work without any technical glitch on Windows 10.
1. Nintendulator
Nintendulator is a great and reliable NES emulator that is compatible with Windows 10. It is written in C++, which is one of the most commonly used programming languages. That is why it is known for providing the best possible experience to its users and is available completely free.
Nintendulator offers realistic gameplay and comes with remarkable handy features. It has an in-built Game Genie support for USB Gamepad that also initiates auto-play. Another cool thing about this emulator is that it features soft-rest and hard-reset as seen on the original console.
Thus, these features make it an accurate Famicom (NES) emulator.
2. FCEUX
FCEUX is a very popular NES emulator that you can currently find. Especially among the gamers in the NES community. This program offers such customization options and features that satisfy both the players as well as the developers’ gaming needs.
It is reasonably easy to use so you will surely get a hang of it pretty fast. FCEUX has got interesting tools for ROM-hacking, video recording, debugging and also for creating speedruns.
For the ultimate gaming experience, FCEUX renders joystick support along with full-screen support too. The customization settings include many options for controls and input configuration.
3. VirtuaNES
VirtuaNES is one of those emulators that is not supported by its developer anymore. But do not worry, that does not stop it from working on your Windows PC. It still runs perfectly on pretty much any version of Windows. It actually does not need any further development to support NES games and making them compatible with your computer.
Despite this fact, VirtuaNES makes its way on the list of one of the best emulators at hand. It is highly customizable and comes with some excellent features. It supports external joystick and gamepad and has an adjustable screen including the full-screen mode.
4. Mesen
Mesen is the only emulator that single-handedly supports all games ever made for NES. It is the most accurate NES emulator and comes with many handy features with a simple interface. This makes the user experience flawless and things run quite fast and smooth.
The most well-known aspect among all its numerous handy features happens to be a cheat finder, an equalizer, video and sound recorders, netplay, etc. Also, Mesen has this really cool feature that happens to remember your last used ROM files when you exit the game.
So, the next time you return, it will display a screenshot of the file and your last played game time.
5. RetroArch
RetroArch with Nestopia UE Core is probably one of the most advanced multi-console emulators you can currently find online. This one comes with a great variety of features and customization and can pretty much emulate any device.
Although it has a bit of a learning curve so you have to use the official websites and download cores. These cores are meant to open up emulation for a specific console.
Because of this, it does not run any games out of the box and requires some additional setup. This app is completely free and you can find the open source for other consoles too. It is one of the best options for you unless you need to work to set it up.
6. Nesbox/Universal Emulator
Nesbox is currently known to be the most modern NES emulator that you can find right now. It actually offers two possibilities for players, you can play NES games directly in your browser or Nesbox’s website, but the developer also offers aUWP app for Windows 10.
If you don’t want to go through the process of downloading any emulators, just visit Nesbox’s official website and load your own ROM and instantly start playing. You can have a smooth experience and should not face any lagging or any other performance issues.
Nesbox’s online emulator supports NES, Sega, GameBoy, and Super Nintendo formats. Although when it comes to the Universal Emulator app for Windows 10, it is ultimately the best NES emulator in the Windows Store that works perfectly for Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile and even Windows Holographic.
7. RockNES
RockNES is a fast and stable emulator that also comes with a lot of features. It is, to some extent, slower than the rest of the NES emulators but the difference is not very huge. In fact, it is so negligible that most amateur gamers would not be able to feel any difference.
It supports pretty much all the games including NES games. RockNES has an Eagle Mode that helps with providing great in-game graphics and game sounds. Even if you want to set your own sound, video or game controller it will save all the data in ROCKNES.CFG. RockNES creates this file after the first run which can be easily edited.
Also just like Nintendulator, RockNES too has a Game Genie support but the only difference is that it is not in-built and needs to be externally located in the ROCKNES.TXT file.
Every Emulator is not always best for you. Choose Wisely!!
Each of these NES emulators in this list is unique in its own way. Thus, it varies from person to person which emulator would be the best for choice and meet the requirements. It actually depends on a lot of factors, especially your user preference.
If you want simple emulators without too many features that are not going to be of much use to you, then you should not opt for the ones with advanced features. It is always advisable to choose a decent NES emulator that serves you right out of the box.
