Alternatives to Attract-Mode Plus
A customizable graphical frontend for browsing and launching command-line emulators and arcade games. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Attract-Mode Plus
A customizable graphical frontend for browsing and launching command-line emulators and arcade games.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Attract-Mode Plus.
RetroArch
One front end for dozens of emulators, with unified settings, shaders and a controller setup you only do once.
RetroArch is an open-source GPL-3.0 front end that runs its own emulator cores with unified settings and shaders, rather than launching separately installed command-line emulators, and it adds macOS, Android and iOS.
Retrom
A self-hosted game library manager and launcher built around emulation and retro game collections.
Retrom is an open-source, self-hosted library manager and launcher that shares one collection across several machines, but you must run and maintain your own server.
OpenEmu
macOS emulator front end with a polished library interface.
OpenEmu is an open-source front end with a polished library interface and shared controller setup, but it runs on macOS only, and the OpenEmu team packages its cores.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
MAME
Documents and recreates thousands of arcade machines, consoles and old computers, with accuracy as the point.
GroovyMAME
A fork of MAME tuned for CRT monitors and low-latency arcade emulation.
Steam ROM Manager
A bulk importer that adds emulated and non-Steam games to a Steam library along with artwork.
EmuDeck
An installer that sets up and configures emulators on Steam Deck, SteamOS, ROG Ally and Windows.
RetroDECK
An all-in-one retro gaming Flatpak for Linux that bundles emulators with the ES-DE frontend.
Batocera.linux
A free, open-source retro gaming Linux distribution that boots from a USB stick or SD card.
