EmilDrive

Play Sega Classic Consoles (Master System, Mega Drive, Mega CD & 32X)

EmilDrive emulates Sega's classic consoles: Mega Drive / Genesis, Mega CD / Sega CD, 32X and Master System. It is free and open source, written from scratch by the author of EmilNES, with a clean, simple interface: pick a game from your library and play. The same version and the same features run on Linux, Mac, Windows and Android.

Made for using, not for fiddling

• Rewind: made a mistake? Hold the rewind button and the game runs backwards, up to ten seconds, slowly at first so you can let go at the right moment.
• Ghost challenges: race a ghost of your own best run, in games with a course or a level. EmilDrive finds the start and the finish for you, records every attempt and tells you how many frames faster or slower you were.
• Automap: in games that scroll, a map of everywhere you have been, built from what the game showed. Open it at any time, zoom in and out, and see where you are and where your ghost is. *HD pixel art: an upscaler that works layer by layer, so sprites and backgrounds are enlarged separately and edges stay sharp (Crisp 2x or Smooth 4x). Off until you turn it on.

Your game library

• Add the folders where you keep your games; EmilDrive finds them. Every file is checked by what is inside it, so only real games show up, whatever they are called (cartridge files, disc images, or inside .zip files).
• Play straight from a computer or NAS over SFTP, SMB or FTP. A server can have a second address, such as a Tailscale or NetBird name, used when the first does not answer: one library and one set of saves.
• Search your games and find the ones you played last under Recent.

While you play

• Save states, kept for every game even after you quit; battery saves work as on the real cartridge.
• Cheat codes you can switch on and off as you play, and a recorder that saves the game's sound as a WAV file.
• Keyboard or game controller: most USB and Bluetooth controllers work as soon as they are connected, with 3- and 6-button pads, two players, controllers named and remembered, and any button changed as you like.
• Each game runs on the console it was made for: European PAL (50 Hz) or American and Japanese NTSC (60 Hz).
• Mega CD: use the BIOS from your own console, or use BIOS HLE (high-level emulation of the BIOS), so a disc can start without any BIOS file. Discs can even start while they are still downloading.

How well does it run? 

• Estimated share of games that are playable: 
  • 98% of Mega Drive, Mega CD and 32X games 
  • 90% of Master System games
  • Based on automated tests of 1,269 games and discs.

Optional extras, all off by default: remastered music replayed with sampled real instruments (the sound effects stay original), and HD pixel art.

EmilDrive includes no games and no console BIOS files, and it does not fetch any: use games you own. Server passwords are kept in your desktop keyring.

Website: https://emildrive.statichost.page/