Although already having entered the territory of ‘retro gaming’, the Sony PlayStation 3 remains a notoriously hard to emulate game console. Much of this is to blame on its unique PowerPC-based Cell processor architecture, which uses a highly parallel approach across its asymmetric multi-core die that is very hard to map to more standard architectures like those in today’s x86 and ARM CPUs. This makes it even more amazing that the RPCS3 emulator team has now crossed the 70% ‘playable’ threshold on their compatibility list.

This doesn’t mean that you can fire up these games on any purported ‘gaming system’, as the system requirements are pretty steep. If you want any kind of enjoyable performance the recommended PC specifications feature an Intel 10th generation 6-core CPU, 16 GB of dual-channel RAM and a NVIDIA RTX 2000 or AMD RX 5000 series GPU or better.

It should be noted here also that the ‘playable’ tag in the compatibility list means that the game can be completed without game breaking glitches. Performance remains an issue, with very creative optimizations through e.g. the abuse of x86 SIMD instructions remaining the topic of research by the emulator developers. Yet as original PS3 hardware gradually becomes less available, the importance of projects like RPCS3 will become more clear.

Header: Evan-Amos, Public domain.

Emulating older computers on microcontrollers has been a staple of retrocomputing for many years now, with most 8-bit and some 16-bit machines available on Atmel, ARM, or ESP32 platforms. But there’s always been a horsepower limit, a point beyond which a microcontroller is no longer enough, and a “proper” computer is needed. One of those barriers now appears to have been broken, as microcontroller-based emulation moves into the 32-bit era. [Amcchord] has the Basilisk II emulator ported to the ESP32-P4 platform, providing a 68040 Mac able to run OS8.1. This early-1990s-spec machine might not seem like much in 2026, but it represents a major step forward.

The hardware it uses is the M5Stack Tab5, and it provides an emulated Mac with up to 16 MB of memory. Remember, in 1992 this would have been a high-spec machine. It manages a 15 frames per second refresh rate, which is adequate for productivity applications. The emulator uses the Tab5’s touchscreen to emulate the Mac mouse alongside support for USB input devices. To 1990 hackers, it’s almost the Mac tablet you didn’t know you would want in the future.

We like this project, both because it’s advancing the art of emulation on microcontrollers, and also because it delivers a computer that’s useful for some of the things you might have done with a Mac in 1992 and could even do today. Pulling this out on the train back then would have blown people’s minds. There’s even a chance that MacOS on something like this would turn a few heads in 2026. It’s certainly not the first emulated Mac we’ve seen though.