Steam has been the de facto home of PC gaming for years, and emulation is one of the coolest reasons to game on PC, but there aren’t many emulators on Steam. RetroArch aims to change that. The emulation front-end has been slowly bringing some of the most popular emulators to Steam over the past few months, and the platform has recently added seven more, including bsnes, Snes9x, DeSmuME, and PPSSPP.
Super Nintendo emulators Snes9x and bsnes, Genesis/Mega Drive emulator BlastEm, DS emulator DeSmuME, NES emulator Nestopia, Dreamcast emulator Flycast, and PSP emulator PPSSPP are all now available through the Steam version of RetroArch. You can download each of them as free DLC for the software.
Valve restrictions prevent the developers from offering in-app downloads of the various emulator cores in the Steam version of RetroArch. That means it’s much less fully-featured in general than the standalone version of the software, but there is one big advantage coming up – you’ll be able to easily install RetroArch on a Steam Deck, which might make it the easiest solution for emulation on the upcoming portable.
The RetroArch devs are continuing to add new emulator cores on Steam as time goes on. The current total is up to 19, covering a wide selection of old games you might be interested in.