To play your favorite Pokemon games on Android, iOS, Windows, or Mac, you’ll need an emulator. There are many excellent emulators available today, the majority of which are free, while others are not.
We’ve compiled a list of the most well-known, recommended, and top-rated Pokemon emulators, organized by device category (PC, MAC, Android, iOS) and game type. (GBA, NDS, and 3DS)
The Best Pokemon Emulators
| # | Emulator | Platform | Type | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RetroArch | Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Raspberry Pi, Haiku, Xbox Series One, Switch, Wii U, Wii, Gamecube, 3DS / 2DS Family, Steam, Web Browsers, and more. | GBC, GBA, NDS, etc, etc. (basically, every retro console you can imagine) | Click here |
| 2 | mGBA | Windows, MAC OS, Ubuntu | GBA | Click here |
| 3 | My Boy! Lite – GBA Emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
| 4 | My Boy! – GBA Emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
| 5 | John GBA Lite – GBA emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
| 6 | OpenEmu | Mac | GBA/NDS/GBC | Click here |
| 7 | Visual Boy Advance | Windows | GBA | Click here |
| 8 | GBA4iOS | iOS | GBA | Click here |
| 9 | DraStic DS Emulator | Android | NDS | Click here |
| 10 | John GBA – GBA emulator | Android | GBA | Click here |
| 11 | My OldBoy! Free – GBC Emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
| 12 | John GBC Lite – GBC emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
| 13 | My OldBoy! – GBC Emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
| 14 | John GBC – GBC emulator | Android | GBC | Click here |
| 15 | VBA-M for Mac | GBC, GBA, NDS, etc. | GBA/GBC | Click here |
| 16 | VBA-M for Windows | Windows | GBA/GBC | Click here |
| 17 | DeSmuME | Windows | NDS | 32-bit (x86) |
| 18 | No$GBA | Windows | NDS | Click here |
| 19 | iNDS | iOS | NDS | Click here |
Best Pokemon Emulator for PC
There are numerous great Pokemon emulators for PC, but we recommend Visual Boy Advance (VBA) or mGBA if you want to play GBA ROMs on your PC and DeSmuME for NDS ROMs. The vast majority of players use these emulators, and they fully support cheats. So we highly recommend that you stick with these. You can also use RetroArch as you can download the cores of almost every retro console on it, including mGBA, VBA, DeSmuME, etc.
Best Pokemon Emulator for Android
For Android, the best emulators out there are MyBoy!, JohnGBA & PizzaBoy for GBA & MyOldBoy for GBC ROMs and Drastic for NDS ROMs. All of them support cheats and fast-forwarding. Again, you can use RetroArch to play all your retro games on a single emulator.
Best Emulator for iOS
Now, there’s not really a proper emulator for iOS yet, because of obvious reasons, So if you want to play your favorite pokemon ROMs on your iPhone you’ll need to either use EclipseEmu which is a web browser-based emulator. It works with most ROMs we’ve tested so it should be fine with most of them OR you can sideload RetroArch on your iPhone and then you’ll be able to play all your retro games on your iPhone too.
Best Emulator for Mac
For Mac users, we highly recommend using OpenEmu. It is the go-to choice for playing pokemon ROMs on your Mac device. It supports GBA, NDS, GBC, N64, NES, PlayStation, and various other formats. Same with RetroArch.
Free VS Paid Emulators (For Android Users)
While the free versions of the emulators are sufficient for playing your favorite Pokemon games, if you want to take advantage of all that the emulator has to offer and avoid advertisements, you may need to purchase the premium version.
In most cases, it makes little difference, but advertisements can be extremely annoying at times.
However, it ultimately comes down to personal preference.
Thanks for reading this post, if you have any doubts or questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below!