Emulators

There are many different types of emulators, each designed to mimic a specific platform or system. Some of the most common types of emulators include:

• Console emulators: The most popular emulators, that mimic the behavior of video game consoles, such as the NES/Famicom, Game Boy, PlayStation, and many others. They allow you to play games designed for those consoles on your computer.
• Arcade emulators: These emulators mimic the behavior of arcade machines, allowing you to play classic arcade games on your computer.
• Computer emulators: These emulators mimic the behavior of older computer systems, such as the Commodore 64 or Amiga, allowing you to run software and games designed for those systems on your modern computer.

Here is a table comparing emulators for different platforms:

About RetroArch

RetroArch is a special case, as it is a multi-platform emulator that supports a wide range of systems through the libretro API, which is a standardized interface for emulation cores.

RetroArch itself is not an emulator, but rather a frontend that allows you to run various emulation cores, which are the actual emulators for different platforms.

This is possible either because the emulator authors have created a libretro core for their emulator, or because the libretro team has ported the emulator as a core themselves.

You can see the list of cores supported by RetroArch on libretro's website: https://docs.libretro.com/guides/core-list/

Cores can be displayed in the table above, via the "Show Libretro cores" option.