OpenEmu is a game console emulator, but it's perhaps more accurately described as a frontend for a whole bunch of different emulators. This week’s release marks the first time that a ready-for-prime-time binary version has been available for download, so we’re taking it for a spin using some homebrew games (available free of cost from the OpenEmu site) and a few game backups, which you can grab from your own cartridges with a gadget like the Retrode.
OpenEmu won’t be new to emulation enthusiasts-the OS X-only software has been in development for several years, and gamers have been welcome to download and compile its work-in-progress source code for quite some time. This year, gamers got an early Christmas present in the form of the long-awaited 1.0 release of OpenEmu. That doesn’t mean there aren’t exceptions, particularly for Mac users: last year we took a look at Boxer, which combines classic MS-DOS game emulation with a spiffy and easy-to-use UI. Regardless of what they prioritize, user interfaces are not their strong suit, and most of them haven’t evolved beyond a basic settings panel and a file picker that wouldn’t look out of place in Windows 95. Game console emulators have typically concerned themselves with either speed and compatibility, or accuracy.
