This section contains information about Emulators which allow you to play NeoGeo games on a variety of other systems including PC & Mac and even consoles such as Dreamcast & Xbox.

All these emulators are given a rating out of 20 and are listed in rank from highest score to lowest, The rating simply indicates which emulators I recommend and prefer. Some ratings of the older emulators may seem quite low, but remember, whilst they may have been state of the art a few years ago the newer emulators leave them far behind. I would encourage everyone to try as many as you can for yourselves and make up our own mind, the authors deserve your support for their hard work.

All these emulators require that you have the NeoGeo MVS Bios (called 'NeoGeo.zip') and/or the NeoGeo CD Bios (called 'NeoCD.bin') in their 'roms' folder in order to work. These files can usually be found on sites hosting game roms.

Considered by many to be one of the best neogeo emulators, this program features an excellent interface, and is capable of running almost all NeoGeo and NeoGeo CD Games, as well as CPS1 & CPS2 Roms, plus a selection of Konami, PolyGameMaster and even Sega Model 2 Roms.
It also has a range of excellent image enhancements to improve the games appearance such as Interpolation, Scanlines, 2xSAI, Eagle and many more.
My personal favourite...

UNGR Rating 17/20 - Download From: Nebula Website

Kawaks features an easy to use interface in a similar mould to that of Nebula and Calice32, It runs almost all NeoGeo, CPS1 & CPS2 roms with near perfect precision and like nebula, features image enhancements.

UNGR Rating 16/20 - Download From: Official Kawaks Website (Outdated)
Alternate Download: CPS2Shock (Up-to-date)

Another excellent emulator with an easy to use interface. This emu is also capable of running almost all NeoGeo Roms plus, CPS1, CPS2, ZN1, ZN2, and System16/18 roms. It currently lacks the range of image enhancements which Kawaks & Nebula have, and also requires that you run your desktop in 16-bit colour rather than 32-bit, but theyre only minor criticisms.

UNGR Rating 15/20 - Download From: Official Calice Website (Outdated)
Alternate Download: Potato Emulation (Up-to-date)

One of the most famous emulators around, it is capable of running almost all NeoGeo Roms, plus literally thousands of other games.
Being an open-source emulator there are versions of MAME is available for Windows, MacOS, Unix, Linux, Amiga, and even consoles such as Dreamcast & Xbox.
There are also enhanced versions such as MAME32 for windows; which features an excellent Interface, and system specific versions such as NeoMAME which is optimised to run only NeoGeo Games.
Technically MAME is superb, my only real criticism is that it's not as easy to use as some other emulators.

UNGR Rating 15/20 - Download From: Official MAME Site

NeoRageX was the first 'fully working' NeoGeo Emulator for Windows. It was created by the authors of 'Rage' and was Immediately seen as the best NeoGeo emulator of the time. It has the advantage that it will attempt to run any NeoGeo romset you place in your Roms folder, the filenames and checksums dont necessarily need to be exact as there are no specific game drivers as with MAME and some of the other emus, this can make it easier to get games to run, as not all romsets are 100% correct.
Despite the popularity of NeoRageX it has not been updated for a long time and whilst it is still worth downloading, it has now been surpassed by the newer emulators and does suffer from compatibility problems with some games and also newer versions of windows (note: an unofficial patch allowing NeoRageX to work under WinXP can be found by searching the web). There is also a version for MS-DOS which also has good compatibility but lacks sound and a user interface.

UNGR Rating 13/20 - Download From: Rage Website

Ace appears to be a very promising emulator but is not as complete as some of the others. It is capable of running a selection of NeoGeo, CPS1, CPS2, and System16/18 Roms, however the project appears to have been discontinued after the author suffered a harddisk crash and lost the latest source code.

UNGR Rating 12/20 - Download From: Ace Website

This Emulator was created by NJ who was responsible for the super optimised NeoGeo driver for MAME. This is a japanese emulator for the NeoGeo CD Console and as such there is very little english info about it, however I have translated the latest readme file (with some assistance from a translation site) and found out some more info. The translation is not perfect but I recommend you read it if you're thinking of trying this emu.
This emulator is very accurate and works almost exactly like a real NeoGeoCD, it is very compatible and is arguably of higher quality than NeoCD but it's lack of documentation makes it tricky to use.
Note: The author has coded this emu so it will only run 'Real' NeoGeo CD's (not copies) so you will need to buy official cd's to use it.

This is definitely the most accurate 'stand-alone' NeoGeoCD emulator, so if you have a collection of official NeoGeo CD games this is the emulator to go for, otherwise try 'NeoCD' below, or 'Nebula' above; (the best all round NeoGeo / NeoGeoCD Emulator).

UNGR Rating 12/20 - Download From: NJ's Website

NeoCD is another emulator for the NeoGeoCD console, it does not run MVS arcade Roms, only Real NeoGeo CD's directly from your CD-Rom Drive. Its compatibility is quite high and it does emulate most games accurately. The two different versions both have advantages and disadvantages;
The DOS version features a good interface and documentation, but as it's a dos based program the sound support is tricky to use, in fact it refused to work at all on my soundcard. Note: full sound is only available in the 'special' version 'v0.80s'. Also the dos version does not appear to be compatible with WindowsXP.

The windows version, NeoCD(SDL) seems to be exactly the opposite, it has good sound support and image enhancement (Scanlines/2xSai/Eagle) but no interface and hardly any instructions to get it working.
Despite it's flaws, if you can get it to run this is a decent 'stand-alone' NeoGeo CD emulator.

Here are a few tips to get the windows version working...
1: You need to run the 'strip.exe' utility from the dos version to modify the bios (neocd.bin) and then copy the modified bios into the folder for the windows version.
2: Put your NeoGeo game cd into your cd-rom drive *before* starting the emulator.
3: All the emulators controls *are* listed in the file 'neosdl.txt' which comes with the emulator, theyre just mixed up amongst all the different version names and descriptions making them difficult to find.
4: If the emulator quits without any explanation, it generates a text file in its folder containing an error message.

UNGR Rating 11/20
Dos Version - Official site unavailable. Download From: VG-Network
Windows Version - Download From: NeoCD SDL Website

NeoGem was developed shortly after NeoRage for DOS and operated in a very similar way, it was also one of the first emus to feature (limited) sound support. However it was not very compatible and was prone to crashes. NeoGem for DOS was discontinued fairly early in its development and a Windows version was rumoured but never appeared.

UNGR Rating 7/20 - Official site unavailable. Download From: VG-Network

Danji appeared around the same time as NeoGem, and likewise runs in MS-DOS. It does feature limited sound support, but It's compatibility is very low and it requires that you convert your game roms into a different format before running them.

UNGR Rating 5/20 - Official site unavailable. Download From: VG-Network

Depam Is another NeoGeo CD emulator, it has very limited features and was only released as an experimental test. It has not been updated since.

UNGR Rating 4/20 - Official site unavailable. Download From: VG-Network

NeoGekko was the very first NeoGeo emulator which is an achievement in itself. It was released as a test demo and only ran one game; Nam 1975, although it was possible to get some other games to work by renaming the roms. NeoGekko was said to have been developed into a fully functional product, but was never updated or released again.
Also, I seem to remember the authors asking that the demo be removed from all download pages. It is still available on the web but can be tricky to find.

UNGR Rating 4/20 - Official site unavailable.