Playing in the comfort of your room without having to set up a console is a desirable situation and that is where Emulation comes in. Emulation is the reproduction of the function or action of a different computer or software system.

An emulator can be a hardware device or software which one can use to mimic functions of another system. Emulation consists of two parts – a host system and a guest system. As part of the mimicking functionality, the emulator enables the host system to run the software and use devices made for the guest system.

A home-console that has its fair share of emulators is Sony’s Playstation and this article will talk about some of the best emulators out there for Android and PC.

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Mednafen 

Mednafen (My Emulator Doesn’t Need A Frickin’ Excellent Name) is an open-source multi-system emulator. It uses an original core for the Sony Playstation. The core guarantees high quality, compatibility and accuracy.

Most emulators have simplified user interfaces for interaction but Mednafen uses a command line interface which may be difficult to for people unfamiliar with code and directories.

The emulator is available here – for PC

ePSXe

ePSXe stands for ‘enhanced PSX emulator’ is a closed-source, plugin-based PlayStation emulator. It also has internet connectivity in the form of online multiplayer.

It has support for up to 8 simultaneous people playing and net-play traffic is handled by a central dedicated server that helps keep things synced. There is also private game chat support and public chat to speak with people outside your game room.

It can be downloaded here – on Android and on PC

PCSX2

PCSX2 is an open-source, plugin-based PlayStation 2 emulator. This emulator is said to be the first and only PS2 emulator currently worth using. Although its accuracy is sub-par, with thousands of bugs and graphical glitches. Thespeed of the games being run varies but the emulator can play upto 2455 known games without any major upsets.

The emulator is available here – on PC

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Play!

Play! an open-source, high-level, multi-platform PlayStation 2 emulator, has several advantages; its high-level emulation allows it to run games without requiring a BIOS dump. It also has no plugins which allows for streamlined game settings. Very few commercial titles run on all supported platforms.

The Android version can be found here

RPCS3

RPCS3 is multi-platform PlayStation 3 (PS3) emulator written in C++. It is a very promising open-source emulator. This emulator can run over 1,000 commercial titles without major glitches. They have a compatibility list which you see here.

It also emulates the PSN versions of the PlayStation Classics.

The emulator is said to improve every month and has Patreon support set up for it.

It is available for PC here

PPSSPP

PPSSPP is short for PlayStation Portable Simulator Suitable for Playing Portably and as the name suggests it is used to make more available avenues for an already portable device. It is an open-source PlayStation Portable emulator written in C++ which can assure that it will not run any unwanted code on your device. The emulator has multi-platfrom supprt and focuses mainly upon the user experience with the aim of speed and portability. It is an ongoing project, but most games are already playable.

It is available on the Playstore here

The emulator is available for download here

Extras

Orbital: An emulator for the Playstation 4. It can only boot the firmware as of now and not play any commercial games.

Vita3K: This is an emulator for the PS Vita which was built after much deliberation. It can play only a few commercial games but does support homebrew games.

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