Old Worlds. New Ways.

A retro game launcher and emulator frontend for PC

Name: Nostyra
Author: vivusk

Nostyra lets you play games from 16 classic Nintendo, Sega and Sony systems on a Windows PC. Choose the folder with your ROMs: Nostyra builds a library with cover art and downloads the emulator core the first time you play a system. It is free, open source, needs no installation and runs on Windows 10 and 11.

Download for Windows

macOS (planned) Linux (planned) iOS (planned) Android (planned)

Version 0.1.0 · 25.9 MB zip · Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit

Hosted on GitHub Releases. First time? Read the install guide.

Nostyra Home screen: a Continue banner for the last game played, a Continue playing row and Recently added covers, with a sidebar listing systems

Supported systems

Each system runs on an established open-source emulator core. Super Nintendo is marked Stable. The other systems pass automated tests and are marked Experimental until they have been tested by hand on real games.

Systems supported by Nostyra, with emulator core and status
System	Emulator core	Status	BIOS	Achievements
NES Nintendo · 1983	Mesen	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Game Boy Nintendo · 1989	mGBA	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
SNES Nintendo · 1990	Snes9x	Stable	Not needed	Yes
Nintendo 64 Nintendo · 1996	Mupen64Plus-Next	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Game Boy Color Nintendo · 1998	mGBA	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
GameCube Nintendo · 2001	Dolphin	Experimental	Not needed	No
Game Boy Advance Nintendo · 2001	mGBA	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Nintendo DS Nintendo · 2004	melonDS DS	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Wii Nintendo · 2006	Dolphin	Experimental	Not needed	No
SG-1000 Sega · 1983	Genesis Plus GX	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Master System Sega · 1985	Genesis Plus GX	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Mega Drive / Genesis Sega · 1988	Genesis Plus GX	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Game Gear Sega · 1990	Genesis Plus GX	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
Dreamcast Sega · 1998	Flycast	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
PlayStation Sony · 1994	PCSX ReARMed	Experimental	Not needed	Yes
PSP Sony · 2004	PPSSPP	Experimental	Not needed	Yes

Features

What Nostyra does besides running the emulator, with the limits of each feature.

Library and ROM scanning Add one or more ROM folders, organised however you like. Nostyra classifies each file by its content and builds one library for all systems. Metadata and artwork Games are identified offline against bundled databases, then covers and screenshots are downloaded per game into a local cache. Controls and remapping Every game button and the 8 shortcuts can be remapped for keyboard and gamepad, for all games or for one game. PS4, PS5 and Xbox controllers Nostyra reads gamepads through SDL3. Gamepads work out of the box, and the Controls editor shows Xbox or PlayStation button labels to match your pad. The DualSense (PS5) has been tested by the maintainer. Soft patching Translations, bug fixes and hacks are often shared as patch files. Nostyra applies them in memory when the game starts; the ROM file is never changed. Portable mode The Windows release is a portable zip with no installer. Everything Nostyra writes stays in a data folder beside Nostyra.exe. RetroAchievements RetroAchievements is a community service that adds achievements to classic games. Nostyra supports it on 14 systems using rcheevos, the same library RetroArch uses. Save states A save state stores the whole emulated machine at one moment, so you can continue from any point, not only where the game lets you save. Rewind Rewind keeps a short history of the game in memory. Holding the rewind key plays it backwards at 2× speed. Fast-forward Fast-forward runs the game as fast as your PC allows while you hold the key. It is useful for long dialogue, grinding or slow intros. Run-ahead Many games react to a button press one or more frames late, even on original hardware. Run-ahead emulates ahead and rolls back each frame to hide 1–2 frames of that delay. CRT and LCD shaders Shaders change how the picture is drawn, for example to imitate the scanlines of a CRT TV or the pixel grid of a handheld screen. Resume When you quit a game, Nostyra saves a resume point. The next time you press Play, it asks whether to continue from there or start fresh.

How it works

Step 1
Download and extract

Download the Windows zip and extract it to any folder you can write to. There is no installer.
Step 2
Add your ROM folder

Point Nostyra at the folder with your games. It detects each system from the file content and fetches cover art.
Step 3
Press Play

On the first game of a system, Nostyra offers to download its libretro core from the libretro buildbot.

Nostyra does not include, download or link to games or BIOS files. Use games you own.

Who makes Nostyra

Nostyra is developed by vivusk, an independent developer. The launcher is written in Rust with a Tauri and React interface. The full source code, test suite and issue tracker are public on GitHub under the GPL-3.0-or-later licence.

The information on this site comes from the project's own README and release notes. Known limits are listed on every page. More about the project.

Get Nostyra for Windows

Free and open source. Portable zip, no installer, no account.