Retro Gaming on MacOS
Setup
Atari 2600, NES, SNES, Gameboy, N64, and Sega Genesis
- Download and install OpenEmu.
- Download a curated rom set. I used Tiny Best Set: Go!.
PS2
- Download and install PCSX2.
- Download a PS2 bios and add it to PCSX2.
- Download roms from RomsFun.com.
Thoughts
Windows is the de facto operating system for desktop and laptop computers. It’s dominant market share, 70% globally, essentially necessitates that developers build for Windows. Apple’s macOS is the most successful challenger - it’s 15% market share (30% in the US) quadrupled in the 2010s. Apple successfully marketed Macs as the up-scale personal computing , and they became very popular amongst college students, creatives, and developers.
While MacOS is inferior to Windows as a purpose-built gaming device, it’s shocking how easy it is to transform a Mac into a retro-gaming powerhouse. As a child I was mesmerized by the endless cartridge walls in gaming stores in the 90s. Now I have all of those games at the tip of my fingers.
Rapid technological advancements in computational and graphical processing mean that even blockbuster AAA titles from generations past, such as games from the PS2 era, are trivial to run on a modern Mac. To highlight the rapid scale and pace of technological progress, one can observe the size of gaming libraries for popular consoles over the years:
| Console | Number of Games | Estimated Library Size |
|---|---|---|
| Atari 2600 (1977) | ~500 | < 30 MB |
| NES (1983) | ~1350 | < 250 MB |
| Sega Genesis (1988) | ~900 | < 2 GB |
| GB / GBC (1989/1998) | ~1000 | < 600 MB |
| SNES (1990) | ~1750 | < 2 GB |
| N64 (1996) | ~390 | < 5.5 GB |
| PlayStation (1996) | ~4000 | < 5.5 TB |
| PlayStation 2 (2000) | ~11000 | < 18 TB |