MSX Emulator Comparison - Major Update

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The MSX Emulator comparison was updated today. 9 emulators for Windows were put to the test and compared to each other. Newcomer openMSX - coming out of the opensource Linux community - does remarkably well. Emulators tested are fMSX2.6, fMSXFAN 1.48. fMSX-SDL 2.6.0.40, NLMSX 0.45, openMSX 0.2.0, paraMSX 0.42, RuMSX 0.26, Zodiac 0.8.1.

One of the benefits of having a fast personal computer is the possibility to emulate other computer systems and thus run software (like games) that were not intended for your computer system. The first - barely functioning - emulators were created years ago. As PC's got faster and faster, emulation got better and gained more popularity. Nowadays it is even possible to emulate a Playstation, or even an X-box, albeit with extremely high hardware requirements and a lot of restrictions. With developments like these, one would think that the emulation of our beloved MSX system would be fairly simple. Unfortunately, it isn't. Especially when it comes to emulating extra hardware - like one or more soundcards - or when the emulated program requires exact timing, most emulators show at least some glitches. Nowadays there are a lot of different MSX emulators to choose from. In order to make the choice a little easer, I decided to test nine MSX Emulators for the Windows platform. All these emulators are still in development. I plan to update this comparison frequently, in an attempt to keep up with the many updates of the reviewed emulators.

MSX Emulator Comparison - major update