January 29, 2026
Retro dreams, PS2 screams
EmulatorJS
EmulatorJS gets a big reboot: play retro in your browser, but no PS2 sparks beef
TLDR: EmulatorJS was fully rewritten and now ships via a CDN, with cores fetched separately. The crowd loves browser-based retro gaming but roasted missing PS2 support and demo input quirks, while devs debated sticking with RetroArch for smoother audio and stronger tools.
EmulatorJS just dropped a complete rewrite and the devs are steering folks toward versions on a CDN or releases instead of cloning. It’s a plugin, not a full website, so no Docker, and it’s mostly ad‑free (demo page ads may pop in and out). There’s a simple version lineup—stable, latest, and nightly—and it runs a buffet of classics: Nintendo, Sega, Atari, Commodore, plus PlayStation and PSP. But one big console is missing, and the comment section made sure the devs heard it.
Cue the chorus of “PS2 when?” as hungryhobbit kicked off the mood: no PS2 support is the heartbreak of the day. Keyboard drama landed too, with jasonblick noticing the Flappy Bird demo doesn’t take keyboard input. Meanwhile, the emu veterans rolled in: apitman waved folks toward RetroArch, and soulofmischief dropped a dev diary, saying they started with EmulatorJS but switched to libretro (the framework behind RetroArch) after audio streaming issues with prebuilt cores. The thread turned into a friendly turf war: easy browser play vs serious dev tooling.
On the home‑server side, RomM got shoutouts for clean EmulatorJS support, and fans traded links to third‑party integrations. Nightly builds? Hype and fear. Stable? Snooze but safe. The vibe: people love the web‑friendly retro magic—just give them PS2 and working controls already.
Key Points
- •EmulatorJS was completely rewritten in version 4.0 and is designed as a plugin, not a full website (no Docker).
- •Since version 4.0.9, cores and minified files are no longer in the repository; obtain them via releases or the EmulatorJS CDN.
- •Production use should rely on releases or the CDN; cloning the repository is no longer recommended for production.
- •EmulatorJS uses three version channels: stable, latest, and nightly, accessible via https://cdn.emulatorjs.org/.
- •Development steps include npm install, running node start for minification, viewing the demo locally, and recommended script minification and localization support.