Recently we talked about Nestopia UE, one of the best Nintendo NES emulators, and about how easy it is to reproduce classic environments these days, including the Commodore Amiga and the PlayStation Portable. However, many users want to eliminate the download and setup steps on each emulator. That's where online platforms like Virtual Consoles come in, offering a total of ten emulators for some of the most important systems of the '80s and '90s.
Connecting consoles from different generations to a screen and gaining access to entire decades of video games is a fabulous experience, but over the years, the scarcity of units in good condition and out-of-control prices have led many users to follow the path of emulation to achieve similar results. That brings us to projects like Batocera, Lakka, and RetroPie that turn old computers into retro consoles with minimal effort, but there is also online emulation, with dedicated portals like Virtual Consoles.
Exploring Virtual Consoles
Of the ten options available in Virtual Consoles, only four are actually "consoles": Nintendo NES, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, and Atari 2600. As for the rest, we find an Apple II emulator, another for Commodore 64, an IBM PC environment with MS-DOS/DOSBox, the inexhaustible ZX Spectrum, and two special systems: the Chip-8 and the PDP-1 with Spacewar!.
The game selection on Virtual Consoles covers Commodore 64 and MS-DOS. In the Commodore section you'll find classics like Bubble Bobble, Giana Sisters, International Karate, Paradroid, Impossible Mission, Lode Runner, and Ghostbusters, but MS-DOS doesn't fall behind, with access to Golden Axe, Prince of Persia, The Incredible Machine, the first Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D and Lemmings. To play on other platforms, you'll need to load each image or ROM manually.
To conclude, my only issue with Virtual Consoles is not the limited selection or the individual game loading, but the apparent lack of activity in its development. The last news published on the blog is from March 2021, and I've also noticed some performance details in my main browsers. Everything was resolved once I opened Virtual Consoles in Microsoft Edge, so I recommend using an alternative browser if the emulators' framerate is not adequate.
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