Mesen is a multi-system emulator for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It supports NES, SNES, Game Boy (GB/SGB/GBC), Game Boy Advance, PC Engine, SMS/Game Gear, and WonderSwan (WS/WSC).
MesenCE is a community-managed fork based on Mesen2, created to maintain and expand this emulator into the future.
We are currently just doing development builds. When we launch stable releases, they will be available from the releases page on GitHub.
These builds don't require .NET to be installed. They load more quickly and are recommended over the .NET builds.
- Windows 10 / 11
- Linux x64 (requires SDL2)
- Linux ARM64 (requires SDL2)
- macOS - Intel (requires SDL2)
- macOS - Apple Silicon (requires SDL2)
These builds use .NET, which for some builds comes bundled and for others must be installed.
They all require .NET 8 except the Windows 7 / 8 build, which requires .NET 6.
For Linux and macOS, SDL2 must also be installed. For AppImage builds, FUSE (such as libfuse2) must be installed.
- Windows 7 / 8 (requires .NET 6)
- Linux x64 - AppImage (requires FUSE and SDL2)
- Linux ARM64 (requires .NET 8 and SDL2)
- Linux ARM64 - AppImage (requires FUSE and SDL2)
Other builds are also available in the Actions tab.
- MacOS: Development builds are self-signed and will require approval via Gatekeeper before they are able to be run.
- SteamOS: See SteamOS.md
See COMPILING.md
Mesen is available under the GPL V3 license. Full text here: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html
Copyright (C) 2014-2025 Sour, 2026 contributors
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.