Emulator releases, autumn 2026: DOSBox Staging, Denise and Fuse ship while MAME holds at 0.289

Three emulators that matter to home-computer users shipped new versions between August and October 2026: DOSBox Staging 0.83.0, the C64 and Amiga emulator Denise 2.9, and the ZX Spectrum emulator Fuse, which put out three versions in two months. MAME has not released since 0.289 at the end of July. VICE, Altirra, RetroArch and OpenEmu are where they were at the start of the year, and a published claim of a new OpenEmu release is wrong. Every version and date here was checked against the project's own release page or repository on 26 October.

MAME 0.289, and no 0.290 yet

MAMEdev's announcement of 0.289 is dated 31 July; the GitHub release went up late on 30 July, UTC. Nearly three months later the site lists nothing newer, although the repository was still receiving commits on 26 October. The gap is partly policy. In April the team said it would stop releasing nearly every month, and 0.288 and 0.289 each came two months after the one before.

The headline changes are practical ones. Windows builds now include SDL's sound output and joystick input modules, and the SDL joystick module accepts controllers with up to 128 buttons. Outputs were overhauled, and the team warns that external programs hooked to them and some artwork files may need updating. For computer collectors the larger news is a run of newly working machines and coprocessor cards built around NS32000-family processors, which can now run 32-bit System V UNIX, along with the Xerox 820 and Big Board families booting CP/M. Fixes to the PowerPC and 68000 cores let more versions of the classic Mac OS run on the emulated Power Macs, and Apple's A/UX now boots. The whatsnew file also lists corrected memory and I/O timing for the Apple IIGS, better Zip Chip accelerator emulation for the IIe and IIGS, and a fix for very slow disk formatting on the C64.

DOSBox Staging 0.83.0

Released on 27 August, 0.83.0 is the largest DOSBox Staging release yet, by its developers' own account. The feature most DOS players will notice is emulation of the Roland SC-55 Sound Canvas, built on the Nuked-SC55 project; the notes call the SC-55 the de facto General MIDI device for DOS games from the 1990s on. It needs SC-55 ROM images, which the user supplies, and the notes ask for "a mid-range or better desktop-class CPU released in the last 5-7 years" to run without glitches. Alongside it come CRT colour emulation, image adjustment controls, wide-gamut monitor support, a reworked frame presentation with variable refresh rate support, a deinterlacer for full-motion video games and a filter that removes checkerboard dithering.

Some changes affect existing setups. IMGMOUNT has been merged into MOUNT, a new MAKEIMG command creates disk images, and the upgrade notes ask users to back up their primary config file and rewrite it with the new defaults. The release also adds floppy and CD-ROM automounting, clipboard support, an HTTP interface that lets external tools work with emulated memory and DOS internals, and a user manual that includes a timeline of PC hardware from 1981 to 1998. Development builds of 0.84.0, marked alpha, are already on GitHub.

Denise 2.9

Denise, a cycle-accurate C64 and Amiga emulator, released version 2.9 on 28 August, and its repository has moved to GitHub. For C64 developers the main addition is a binary monitor compatible with VICE's, so a development environment such as C64 Studio can use Denise for debugging. The C64 side also gains the libresidfp SID library, support for the Trilogic Expert and Prophet64 cartridges, the Disk Demon speeder for the 1541, an option to disable sprite collisions and an updated USBSID-Pico library. Fast forward now has an adjustable speed, and blank disks, tapes and flash images can be created from the menus.

Fuse, six releases since April

Fuse went five years without a release after 1.6.0 in February 2021. Since April it has published six: 1.7.0, 1.8.0 and 1.9.0, then 1.9.1 on 1 August, 1.9.2 on 30 August and 1.10.0 on 26 September, according to the project's SourceForge folders.

The changes are aimed at accuracy and at loading real tapes. Version 1.9.1 added PAL chroma blending to the composite scaler and freely resizable scaling in the GTK interface. Version 1.9.2 rebuilt the beeper emulation with separate MIC and speaker paths and a model of the speaker's response, chosen automatically for each emulated machine. Version 1.10.0 extends automatic detection and acceleration to the Microprose, Software Projects, Gremlin 2 and Movieload tape loaders, supports both 8K and 16K Interface 1 ROMs, enables the DISCiPLE interface on 128K machines and fixes several RZX playback problems. The home page links a Windows port of 1.10.0 by Sergio Baldovi.

86Box 6.0

86Box 6.0 is from 31 May, outside this period, but it is still current. It adds hard disk sounds, a "local switch" that networks several emulated PCs on one host or across a network without manual setup, SCSI tape drives, a fast-forward button, Windows ARM64 builds and, among new machines, the IBM Multistation 5550. The video card list now shows chipsets, with individual cards under a Configure button; machines are migrated automatically, and the developers warn that going back to 5.3 can lose the video settings. On 3 July the project said it was understaffed and needed funds for a second Mac to keep its macOS builds going.

Still current from last winter

VICE 3.10, released on 24 December 2025, remains the current release; ad hoc snapshot builds continue on GitHub, the latest dated 25 October. Its changes included dithering in reSID to remove aliasing noise, a fix for a DC offset in the 6581 filters, support for the USBSID-Pico and new C64 cartridge types, among them Protovision's Megabyter. Command-line options for virtual devices were renamed, so -virtualdevN is now -trapdeviceN, and scripts that use the old names need updating.

Altirra 4.40, released on 31 December 2025, is still the latest full release on virtualdub.org. It added full emulation of the Atari 850 Interface Module, paddle input and VGM recording. Test builds of 4.50 are being posted on the AtariAge forum; atari.org.pl reported test 20 on 8 September, and t2e.pl listed test 26 on 24 October, with work on VBXE graphics emulation.

RetroArch's latest stable release is 1.22.2, published on 20 November 2025. The unreleased section of its changelog lists an ASIO audio driver for Windows and a DOS build that now starts and handles the keyboard.

OpenEmu's latest release is 2.4.1, published on 30 December 2023, hours after 2.4. The release notes say it fixed launching on Apple silicon Macs, where the program still runs only under Rosetta 2. A how-to article on tech-insider.org, dated 9 September 2026, says version 2.4 "shipped on September 25, 2026". It did not; the project's GitHub and its website list nothing after 2.4.1. The release that did appear this autumn came from OpenEmu-Silicon, a community-maintained fork for Apple silicon, whose 1.4.0 arrived on 14 October and requires macOS 12. Its notes say the Commodore 64 has no playable core in that build for now.