For a good while, there was a bit of hype built around the Xbox Series S, in particular for the retro gaming scene. It was a cheaper device that offered a small form factor. Likewise, it allowed consumers to download emulators and enjoy various retro video games. But while this process was available, some consumers were skeptical. Of course, it didn’t take Microsoft too long before they outright banned emulators from being available in the marketplace, making it impossible to download and enjoy. That’s just the emulators being used in the Xbox Series X/S retail mode.
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RETAIL MODE ON XBOX IS DEAD!
- 15-day suspensions handed out to users of retail emulators as a warning shot from Microsoft.
- Devs warning users to delete emulators
- Retail Mode team disbanding and shutting down the Patreon. Sorry to bear the bad news. RT to warn others
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Many emulators run on mac or Linux and you can buy usb-ended controllers for damn near every console that has ever existed.
Oh shit, really? I didn’t know that. Mac hasn’t been good for gaming historically, and I basically gave up trying ages ago.
I think you’ve just destroyed my week.
https://www.retroarch.com/index.php?page=platforms
RetroArch has versions for both ARM and Intel based Mac’s. You shouldn’t have a problem playing up to Dreamcast, possibly later. There is a bit of a learning curve, but RetroArch is on pretty much everything now, and it’s worth learning.
I haven’t owned a mac in a long while, but I had one around 2012 and back then I was happily running N64 and SNES emulation and was somewhat active in the Super Mario World romhacking scene. I can only imagine it has improved since then. I know for a fact you can run tons of emulators on Linux because I have them all installed on my steam deck.
If you can do it on Linux, you can do it on Mac, right?
It’s a Unix system.
There are some programs where this isn’t true thanks to Apple’s M1 chip design not being compatible natively with x64/x86 applications. But most emulator projects support the M1.
On Intel Macs this is always true.
Can confirm - used to run Windows 11, got a steamdeck -> installed all the emulators - switch emulation is OP, was so impressed I ended out switching gaming pc over to linux. 90% of titles run just fine, the remaining 10% seem to be certain EA titles (and apparently that’s just due to their crappy launcher).
Emulators to check out:
Linux-specific gaming (outside of Steam - Valve’s Proton compatibility layer seems to make almost all titles work):
Take a look at the video from Retro Game Corps going over retro gaming on Mac.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XohIHgpe1NI
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=XohIHgpe1NI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.