higan

higan is a multi-system emulator created by Near (formerly known as byuu). It is best known for its Super Nintendo emulation, which puts accuracy ahead of performance.

higan grew out of the bsnes emulator and took its new name as support for more systems was added. Its source code is available on GitHub. In 2020 Near started ares, a fork of higan, which other developers have continued since Near’s death in 2021 and which is the actively maintained successor.

higan aims to emulate the original SNES hardware as accurately as possible through low-level, cycle-accurate emulation. The goal is to run every commercial SNES game without any bugs that were not present on the real console.

Besides the SNES, higan emulates the NES, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance and several other consoles, though its SNES emulation is the most mature.

higan is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.