To play your favorite Pokemon games on your Android, iOS, Windows, or Mac device, you’ll need an emulator. Now, there are a lot of great emulators out there, most of them are free, and some of them are not.
Below, we’ve listed the most known, recommended, and top-rated Pokemon emulators categorized according to device category (PC, MAC, Android, iOS) and the type of games they emulate. (GBA, NDS & 3DS)
Pokemon Emulator List
# | Emulator | Platform | Type | Download |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | RetroArch | Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi, Haiku, Xbox Series One, Switch, Wii U, Wii, Gamecube, 3DS / 2DS Family, Steam, Web Browsers, and more. | GBC, GBA, NDS, etc, etc. (basically, every retro console you can imagine) | Click here |
2 | mGBA | Windows, MAC OS, Ubuntu | GBA | Click here |
3 | My Boy! Lite – GBA Emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
4 | My Boy! – GBA Emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
5 | John GBA Lite – GBA emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
6 | OpenEmu | Mac | GBA/NDS/GBC | Click here |
7 | Visual Boy Advance | Windows | GBA | Click here |
8 | GBA4iOS | iOS | GBA | Click here |
9 | DraStic DS Emulator | Android | NDS | Click here |
10 | John GBA – GBA emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
11 | My OldBoy! Free – GBC Emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
12 | John GBC Lite – GBC emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
13 | My OldBoy! – GBC Emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
14 | John GBC – GBC emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
15 | VBA-M for Mac | GBC, GBA, NDS, etc. | GBA/GBC | Click here |
16 | VBA-M for Windows | Windows | GBA/GBC | Click here |
17 | DeSmuME | Windows | NDS | 32-bit (x86) |
18 | No$GBA | Windows | NDS | Click here |
19 | iNDS | iOS | NDS | Click here |
Also, If you watch anime and/or read manga/webtoons/webnovels, visit OtakuHarbor for recommendations, news, and all the other good stuff!
Best Pokemon Emulator for PC
There are a great many good Pokemon emulators for PC, but we recommend using either Visual Boy Advance or mGBA if you want to play GBA ROMs on your PC and DeSmuME if you want to play NDS ROMs. These emulators are being used by the vast majority of players and fully support cheats. So, we highly recommend you stick with these.
Best Pokemon Emulator for Android
For Android, the best emulators out there are MyBoy! and JohnGBA for GBA & GBC ROMs and Drastic for NDS ROMs. They both support cheats and fast-forwarding.
Best Emulator for iOS
Now, there’s not really a proper emulator for iOS yet, because of obvious reasons, So if you want to play your favorite pokemon ROMs on your iPhone you’ll need to use EclipseEmu which is a web browser-based emulator. It works with most ROMs we’ve tested so it should be fine with most of them.
Best Emulator for Mac
For Mac users, we’d highly recommend using OpenEmu. It is the go-to choice for playing pokemon ROMs on your Mac device. It supports GBA, NDS, GBC, N64, NES, PlayStation, and various other formats.
Free VS Paid Emulators (For Android Users)
While the free versions of the emulators are already enough to play your favorite Pokemon Games, if you want to enjoy all that the emulator offers and get rid of ads, you might need to buy the premium version of the emulator.
It doesn’t make that much of a difference in most cases but sometimes, ads can be really annoying.
Though, at the end of the day, it all depends on your personal preference.
what version of the emulator should i get for my miyoo mini plus?
I’d like to suggest another GBA emulators for android; Pizzaboy Basic (free), Pizzaboy Pro (paid) and Multigba S (free). Pizzaboy Pro and Multigba S are the only GBA emulators that supports online multiplayer feature without extension app
Citra is also available for Android
added it
There’s also this emulator that i play on called gametime, it’s a web emulator that can play GBA and GBC games
Can I ask what is rpgxp
rpgxp games are fan games made for PC using pokemon essentials and RPG maker xp and the joiplay emulator allows you to play a lot of those games on android.
Which do you use for pc
rpgxp games are made specifically for pc so they don’t require an emulator.