C64 Emulator Mac Games

C64 ROMs and Commodore 64 Games Online. Play and Download C64 ROMs for free in the best quality online. ROMsDownload has a complete list of Commodore 64 ROMs and C64 Emulators available with sorting options. Browse C64 Games online and rate pages using the star-based rating system. Provide a vote for your favorite Commodore 64 console game.
This C64 emulator has been ported to Unix, MacOS, BeOS, AmigaOS, RiscOS, and now Windows. This emulates the Commodore 64 very well, and is being updatedall the time. Definitly an emulator to download for the hardcore C64 fan. Hoxs64: The Hoxs64 is a Commodore 64 emulator for Windows with DirectX7 or higher.

Due to the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), we are under heavy load of retrogamers wanting to travel back to those old and safe times. Please choose thoroughly every game you download and share the bandwidth with everyone.

How to play C64 games

CoolROM.com's Commodore 64 / C64 emulators section. Download the highest rated and most compatible emulator here.

How to play Commodore 64 games

About 3800 C64 games are available or will be soon published on MyAbandonware. A very small part compared to the 20000+ games released by TOSEC (The Old School Emulation Center) and 25000 listed by Gamebase 64, but you can already spend days playing the Commodore 64 games we have. This quick how-to will help you run C64 games on Windows, Mac or Linux.

Although C64 emulation is less popular than DOS emulation, a strong community is still active on websites like C64.com or Lemon64.com. Several emulators are available, although the vast majority of them are now inactive project.

Commodore 64 emulators

Several emulators are still active, though two of the list below are just front-ends and use existing emulators:

VICE: stands for 'Versatile Commodore Emulator' and sometimes called WinVICE, VICE supports tons of operating systems (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X...) and also provide emulation for almost all Commodore computer systems. A very solid emulator with tons of options, recommended. Note: select amd64/x64 version without SDL.
CCS64: an ongoing project started in 1995, still active but Windows only. CCS64 is a shareware without limits, if you enjoy it, please register your version to support the author.
C64 Forever: an easy to use VICE front-end for Windows, with a free and a paid version for advanced users.
Hoxs64: a more recent C64 emulator, supports Windows XP and up.
Gamebase: a nice front-end and database program to play games on various platforms, including the Commodore computers.

As VICE is the most versatile emulator, this page will use it for the tutorial. Other emulators are quite similar and should not pose any problem.

Download C64 Games

Running C64 games in VICE

Note: This tutorial is focused on Windows, but it's almost the same on other operating systems.

VICE comes with several emulators for the various computers released by Commodore. Most of the time, you will just want to run the Commodore 64 emulator, named x64.exe (or x64.app on Mac).

After downloading a C64 game and unzipping it, you will usually find one .NFO containing game information, and one or more files containing the actual game code. Game files can be stored in various formats:

.d64, disk format: the most popular format for games, some of the later games where released on several disks.
.tap or .t64, tape format: tapes where quite popular too, around 7000 games were released in this cheap and slow format, according to C64Tapes.org.
.crt, cartridge format: cartridge were fast, but very expensive, less than 400 cartridge games are listed by C64-Wiki.
.prg, plain program file: program files that can be loaded immediately, not a physical format per se.

Look for the game file or the first one if the game is on multiple disks. Most of the time, multiple disks are named GAME0.D64, GAME1.D64, and so on.

Drag and drop into VICE

Most C64 games can be launched in just a few seconds with a simple drag and drop of the game file, or the first file, into the VICE main window, where you can see the Commodore 64 prompt screen. Alternatively, you may select File > Smart attach Disk/Tape, then select the program name to run in the image contents.

Simple drag and drop of Chip's Challenge d64 file into WinVICE window. Works the same on Mac.
Click on the picture to see a bigger GIF.

Games with multiple disks will prompt you to insert disk number two or more at some point. Use the File > Attach Disk Image to attach the required disk, then press a button to continue.

Running games in VICE is quite straightforward most of the time. If you have trouble to run games, try to edit options in Settings > Peripheral Drives. If you really need help, best place to ask politely in the Emulators forums on Lemon64.

Dolphin

Dolphin is a Wii and Gamecube emulator. It has been ported to libretro and an alpha version of the core is available now for Windows and Linux! Version for macOS will be released at a later date.

Commodore 64 Emulator Mac Os

For more information on Dolphin, visit the author's website here.

Citra

Citra is a 'work in progress' Nintendo 3DS emulator.

Core available now for Windows and Linux. Version for macOS will be released at a later date.

For more information on Citra, visit the author's website here.

OpenLara

OpenLara is an early Tomb Raider game engine recreation.

Core available now for Windows/Linux.

For more information, read our article on this release here.

It uses the original data files in order to work. What is nice about this one is that it has some very fancy graphics effects that it adds on top of the old game engine without it resulting in any stylistic clashes.

melonDS

melonDS is a 'work in progress' Nintendo DS emulator.

Core available now for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS.

For more information on melonDS, visit the author's website here.