(Updated) Relive your favorite Genesis games with Pizza Boy's latest classic Sega emulator

Update: October 30, 2024 (10:55 AM ET): A source reached out with a correction regarding the reason development was halted on the Pizza Boy’s Nintendo DS emulator. It was not related to the Yuzu case, but rather a way to focus development efforts on maintaining existing emulators.

Original article: October 28, 2024 (1:45 PM ET): Look out, Sonic fans, because there’s a new classic Sega emulator on Android called Pizza Boy SC Pro. It’s a brand new core from storied emulator developer Pizza Boy, and it just launched in beta.

This initial public release covers the 8-bit and 16-bit generations, including the Sega Genesis, Master System, and Game Gear. Support for CD and 32-bit expansions is listed as coming soon. Other notable features include rewind (up to 15 seconds) and RetroAchievements support.

I tried the emulator with a few Genesis and Master System games, and everything worked well. There’s still plenty of room for optimizations, but for an initial launch, it’s very impressive. Neither console is particularly demanding, but this core was built from the ground up for efficiency, so it should offer great performance on just about any Android device once the kinks have been ironed out.

While it’s listed as incomplete, the current version on the Play Store is a premium app without ads. If it follows the same pattern as previous Pizza Boy emulators, we may see a free version launched once the project is more mature.

That said, this is the first new emulator from Pizza Boy in years. Their previous work-in-progress, a Nintendo DS emulator, was canceled in the wake of Nintendo’s lawsuit against Yuzu developer Tropic Haze earlier this year to focus development resources on existing emulators. In fact, he briefly pulled all of his emulators from the Play Store in March. After some legal council, he brought them back less than two months later.