Emulation

Originally posted on May 2nd 2026

Last updated May 4th 2026

by Marco “eukara” Cawthorne

Emulating videogame systems on another computer is nothing unusual or scary these days. Even the big publishers have used emulators in various re-release packages, but there’s still a stigma in the air regarding what people do with their own games. There was a time where it absolutely was a scary legal gray area, but with companies like SEGA even distributing ROM files with your Steam purchases, people have gotten pretty cool about it.

And similar to the retro computer scene where people still target old hardware, you can find various homebrew scenes for game systems that no longer receive support by their original manufacturer. You’ll find many of them for free (or for sale) on sites like itch.io.

Did you know that besides legally obtaining ROM files, you can play them online these days with relative ease? You don’t even need to forward ports on your router if you’re using a relay. More on that below.

Recommended Emulators

We can confidently recommend two emulators that are very portable and support great netplay via relays.

Those two emulators are Mednafen and Flycast-Dojo). Mednafen supports most 8-16 bit consoles (as well as a few other ones, like the GBA) in one emulator. Every system supports netplay. Other emulator collections and frontends (this includes libretro) don’t necessarily do and it requires per-core research.

Flycast supports the Dreamcast, and also NAOMI/Atomiswave arcade counterparts. The support is indeed very good. It sports a easy-to-use GUI as well. If you need one for Mednafen there’s one available as a flatpak named Mednaffe. Those two emulators combined give you access to these platforms:

• Apple II line of computers
• Atari Lynx
• NEO GEO Pocket (Color)
• WonderSwan
• GameBoy (Color, Advance)
• Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom (Disk System)
• Super Nintendo Entertainment System/Super Famicom
• Virtual Boy
• PC Engine/TurboGrafx 16 (CD, SuperGrafx)
• PC-FX
• SEGA Dreamcast (Atomiswave, NAOMI)
• SEGA Game Gear
• SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis
• SEGA Master System
• SEGA Saturn (64-bit only)
• Sony PlayStation

That basically covers the most if not all systems people tend to care about… those reading frag-net.com anyway.

Isn’t This Unfair? (Hosts Advantage)

Mednafen’s netplay feature uses an external relay-server which may be controlled by the ‘host’, but the relay is actually the one managing state, and all players are subject to its authority. In short: There is no clear hosts advantage - the common reason why Peer-To-Peer netplay solutions fall apart is because Player 1 has no lag and central authority.

Flycast-Dojo supports the same thing as mednafen, which is using a relay.

Isn’t This Going To Be Laggy?

You are asked to choose a relay that sits somewhere in-between you geographically, and that does balance the latency quite well in practice. We have successfully tried fighting games, as well as racing games. In our experience it was playable and any latency that may have been present did not affect our enjoyment and generally wasn’t felt. You will simply have to see it for yourself to be convinced though.

Getting Games

Getting Console Games

You can absolutely get legal ROMs, or dump your own. If you bought the SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis Classics on Steam all those years ago, you will have an official ROM with each of them. There’s also games like Tanglewood (singleplayer only!) that give the ROM file with every platform copy. There are countless sources online that attempt to document this, like Legal ROMs Wiki or the Steam specific guide by Mykola1453 on which games offer ROM files.

You can also get them from other storefronts. There’s many to list, but we already mentioned a big one: itch.io

Games for the Sony PlayStation, SEGA Saturn, MEGA-CD and such are easier to obtain in physical form - plus they’re simply Compact-Disc games. Those will generally run fine in any regular PC drive. Invest in one of those Toshiba USB DVD drives, you never know when you need to read (or dump) a disc.

If you have a massive library of cartridge games, you’re probably going to invest in a cartridge dumper for your platform. Those are also useful in dumping your save-data. This topic however is out of scope - but know that conversion software exists that’ll make your physical cartridge saves compatible with emulators also.

On Sharing ROMs

No, sharing ROM files is not legal - in pretty much any country adhering to the World Trade Organization. You are allowed to make your own derivatives of the game distributed to you for your own personal use. That has always been tolerated. If you share duplications (and especially if you make profit off of them) you’re violating copyright law.

When you shared a game cartridge/disc in person, you didn’t make a copy. That’s the dividing line for publishers.

Some games are not commercially available, neither used or new in ‘remastered’ form - or they are not the same game with the same features. We have no advice on that matter, maybe a friend has a spare. After all, we have multiple copies of registered Quake and Half-Life laying around the offices.

How To Play

After setting your netplay server to the one you like in your mednafen.cfg, all you have to do is open the netplay console with the key T and enter /server. That’s it.

Pro-Tip: If you want this to happen everytime you launch a game, you can run mednafen with the -connect argument (no parameters!).

One thing to keep in mind is that the players connecting to each-other need to have the same controller types configured. If you’re playing Mega Drive or PlayStation games, where you often switch to the 6-button arcade pad and Dual Shock respectively (press ALT+CTRL+1 for P1 and ALT+CTRL+2 for P2) make sure your opponent knows to configure them in the same ports as you. The bindings, of course, are not affected by this.

Hint: You can split off into separate sessions beforehand by using /gamekey [roomname]. Agree on a shared gamekey to hide away from other players.

Disclaimer on Flycast-Dojo

You cannot currently host your own relay. When the provided ones work, they work wonderful - but we experienced frequent lag-spikes using their Ashburn relay while playing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure which really spoiled the fun.

Our intelligence agents have reported that the relay server sources are intended to be published at some point, because there’s things still not fully final that hasn’t been done yet. We know of no timeline of said promise. We have that this indeed pans out. Right now it will heavily depend on your location, time of day and general service demand. You can support the flycast-dojo team to pay for the nodes here. We are not affiliated with them whatsoever.

Need A Relay?

Stop by the Chat and you may ask for access to use our relay based in Toronto, Canada. It’s been used quite successfully bridging gamers on the east and west coasts! It is password protected and may be rotated on a regular basis.

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