How To Play Emulator Games Online 2024 | Tested & Safe!

If you’re looking for how to play emulator games online without having to download additional emulation software, you’ve found the right article. In this guide, we’ll be breaking down the different options available to play retro games online directly in your browser with no additional downloads required. All of these tools will be services that offer free online games, so if you’re looking to play some classic games and do some online retro gaming, you’ll be ready to play in no time.

There are lots of services available, but not all are created equal. Some websites are definitely going to be shadier than others and while many are littered with sketchy ads, we’ve done our best to recommend the ones that have a somewhat decent user experience and offer most if not all the retro games users might be looking for.

Do keep in mind that when it comes to games, most of these sites will have most of the popular games, but may be missing some more obscure titles.

What Are The Best Sites To Play Emulator Games Online?

PlayRoms.net

• Price: Free
• Ads: While browsing the site and visiting different sections and play testing some games, we never encountered any ads even with an ad blocker turned off

PlayRoms.net has tons of games available to choose from and also allow you to play emulator games online right in your browser. Their site is structured in multiple ways, making finding games you’re looking for pretty simple. Their search function is very quick and doesn’t take long at all to load results.

The games themselves also load rather quickly too and don’t require sitting around for long periods of time while they finish. They have every popular console available including GBA, SNES, NES, N64, Genesis, PS1, Game Boy Color, DS, Master System, and even the Virtual Boy!

Not only do they have just about every classic retro game you can think of, but they also have plenty of the best Pokemon rom hacks as well which is a nice touch. You can browse games by console and system or you can take a look through the various different genres and series, for example Pokemon ROMs, Mario ROMs, Sonic, ROMs, Racing ROMs, etc.

The site’s emulator allow you to connect an external controller and use it to play with, download and upload save states, reset games to start over from the beginning, and mute the game’s sound.

It’s unclear if the site usually has ads on it, but during our testing we were not shown any banner ads or video ads whatsoever even with an ad blocker completely turned off.

PlayRoms.net loads extremely quickly and everything we tested performed beyond our expectations. The selection of games they have is very vast and the fact that they also have a wide selection of ROM hacks makes this our top pick.

MyEmulator.online

• Price: Free
• Ads: Banner ads across all pages of the site, video ads play before the game starts, and banner ads appear on the emulator window when you pause gameplay

MyEmulator.Online allows you to play retro games right in your browser without needed to download or install any other applications. The homepage of the website shows the most popular games and each section of the site is further broken down by console, series, etc.

The site has some main categories for Super Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, NES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and Neo Geo games. It also separates available games by game tags that you can use to search for genres and series. They have tons of classic retro games and even have the ability to connect your gamepad controller and use it directly with the emulator on the website.

The search function on the website is pretty slow and takes a very long time to load, but aside from this, most of the other areas of the site load pretty quickly. Some games are missing box art images which can make it a bit difficult to find the game you’re looking for at times.

The site describes itself as having the largest collection of games for the most popular consoles.

You can save your progress in games that you play and reload that progress later to resume where you left off by download your save state and reuploading it when you return. You can also enable shaders, adjust the aspect ratio (by default it shows as 4:3), and change the image settings (saturation, brightness, and contrast levels).

The site’s emulator also allows you to enable smoothing for the games and show FPS information on the screen to see performance numbers. You can also mess around a bit with the overclock settings while playing games to see if you can boost performance for certain games that might need it.

This site is extremely fairly to use and navigate and makes it very simple to jump right in and start playing your favorite retro games online right in your browser.

RetroGames.cc

• Price: Free
• Ads: Banner ads appear in multiple locations of the site including overlaying the emulator’s gameplay when you first start up a game, interstitial ads also appear when moving between pages of the site

RetroGames.cc have a solid collection of retro games to play and use with their emulator online. One very nice touch is that when hovering over a game’s image on the homescreen, a video will play showing you gameplay, allowing you to see what the game is like before having to click through to go and test it out. This is a great user experience as it allow you to get a feel for popular games when browsing for new ones to jump into. The gameplay preview videos even have sound!

There’s a decent variety of consoles to choose from, with companies like Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Playstation, and more. Each company’s consoles appear when hovering over them in the top menu, allowing you to choose a system to browse games for. The site’s search works nearly instantly so browsing the site to find certain games to play is a breeze.

Along with classic retro favorite games, the RetroGames.cc also has plenty of ROM hacks available, by far the highest number of ROM hacks of all the sites on this list. You can tell that the developers of the site worked hard to curate the games available and went above and beyond to include a good amount of variety and replayability.

The site’s emulator lets you download your game’s save states and upload them to save your progress. They also have the option to connect a controller to use and even have the ability to use Netplay to play online with friends. The Netplay feature is a really nice touch and is very simple to use. You simply choose a username and then create a room by giving it a room name and selecting a server location and choosing the number of players. After creating a room, a friend can load the game and join your room to play the perfect game session together.

This site feels high quality and the ads don’t detract from the overall user experience. The games load fast and perform well for being run in a browser. The Netplay feature is a unique touch that the other emulators in this list don’t offer. Definitely worth checking this site out!

You might also enjoy this guide on the RetroArch emulator, the best emulator frontend to play any classic game from any system you can think of.

While playing games online is awesome, it can be a bit limiting in terms of customizability. If you’re interested in emulating games in other ways, be sure to check out our list of the best sites for ROMs.