The best open source alternative to EmulationStation is RetroArch. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to EmulationStation and 16 is open source so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to EmulationStation are Lakka, Mame, Batocera.linux and Pegasus.
A fast, modular emulator frontend offering portability and extensive support for systems from arcade consoles to mobile platforms, featuring game engines like Doom and Quake, and capabilities for real-time rewinding and shader support on a variety of devices.
Lakka is the official Linux distribution of RetroArch and the libretro ecosystem. Each game system is implemented as a libretro core, while the frontend RetroArch takes care of inputs and display.
MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game's ROM and disk data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as faithfully as possible on a more modern general-purpose computer.
Batocera.linux is an operating system specialized in retrogaming available for your pc and different nano computers like the Raspberry and the Odroids.
Pegasus is a graphical frontend for browsing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place. It's focusing on customizability, cross platform support (including embedded devices) and high performance.
RetroPie allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite classic games with the minimum set-up.
Recalbox is a light embedded system created to run on the raspberryPi ,raspberryPI 2 and others!
Mednafen is a portable, utilizing OpenGL and SDL, argument(command-line)-driven multi-system emulator with many advanced features. The Atari Lynx, GameBoy (Color), GameBoy Advance, NES, PC Engine (TurboGrafx 16), SuperGrafx, Neo Geo Pocket (Color), PC-FX, and WonderSwan (Color)...
A front-end or user interface (UI) is the presentation and interaction layer of an app or website. Most modern emulator apps have basic game list UIs that you can interact with using a mouse/keyboard but not a game controller.
![Dolphin (Wii, Gamecube, Virtual Console) [Linux, macOS, & Windows]](https://img.alternativeto.net/s/618x394/avif/bottlenose_980398_full.png)
![Cemu (Wii U) [Windows & Linux* using Wine]](https://img.alternativeto.net/s/618x394/avif/bottlenose_762210_full.png)
![Yuzu (Switch) [Linux & Windows]](https://img.alternativeto.net/s/618x394/avif/bottlenose_785449_full.png)
![Citra (3DS) [Linux, macOS, & Windows]](https://img.alternativeto.net/s/618x394/avif/bottlenose_509961_full.png)
RetriX is an emulator front end for UWP, on all the hardware platforms it supports: it serves the same purpose as RetroArch but is built from the ground up to integrate as well as possible with Windows.
QuickPlay is a windows powerful universal emulator 'frontend-of-frontends', which has support for countless emulators and systems, old and new, with a philosophy of being quick and easy for new users, yet comprehensive and flexible for old-timers.
Retro gaming on the Raspberry Pi and includes RetroArchievements.org support, HDMI-CEC and PS3/XBOX 360 control pad support.
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RetroArch is core (emulator) but emulationStation is like a interface or GUI.