Nostlan : the nostalgia launcher

Download Nostlan from itch.io 🤝

What's a "game launcher"?

Nostlan isn't just a fancy file browser for your game files, it brings the console gaming experience to your computer!

Total emulation noob?

With Nostlan you can install new emulators with a single click. It's never been easier to get started with emulation!

Hardcore collector?

A big bookshelf of game boxes is an impressive feat. A list of games displayed by a file explorer? Pretty lame.

Use Nostlan to show off your virtual game collection with high quality box assets. Nostlan is unlike any other game launcher because it has a minimal, skeuomorphic UI design that prioritizes box art. It's like a virtual game room!

Check out the screenshots below. 👇

Couch gamer?

Nostlan was designed to be used with a game controller, so you won't have to use a mouse and keyboard if you don't want to. Nostlan's UI uses large text only, making it perfect for a big UHD TV or projector.

Looking to play retro and modern games?

Nostlan can do it all!

Systems supported: Arcade, DS, 3DS, GBA, N64, PS2, PS3, PSP, SNES, SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, Nintendo Switch, Wii, Wii U, Xbox, and Xbox 360.

Emulators supported: bsnes, Cemu, Citra, Cxbx-Reloaded, Dolphin, DeSmuME, DS Player, em-fceux, MAME, melonDS, mesen, mupen64plus, mGBA, PCSX2, PPSSPP, RPCS3, Ryujinx, Ryujinx-LDN, snes9x, VBA, webretro, xemu, Xenia, and Yuzu.

Exclusive Features

• browse the entire app with your mouse, keyboard, or game controller
• cloud backup and sync of game saves
• automated install of many emulators
• no nonsense setup with sensible defaults
• checks multiple database sites for the highest quality box art
• nostalgic UI themes for each supported console
• designed for big UHD displays and projectors
• most controllers connect to Nostlan automatically, no setup required
• cross-platform support for Linux, macOS, and Windows
• menu translations for Spanish, German, Hebrew, Russian, and Dutch
• box edit mode provides an in-app image search on the web (no need to download and manually place image files in the right folder)
• can launch games using standalone emulator apps or JavaScript/WASM based emulator cores
• browser-based features are completely isolated from the main process in accordance with the latest Electron app security standards
• advanced customization: edit launch commands and change themes

Join the fun!

Download Nostlan and join the Nostlan community Discord. 😄

Big fan? Support the development of Nostlan on Patreon! ✨

Systems and Emulators

Click on an image to see it in full quality 4K resolution.

Switch [Ryujinx, Yuzu]

Wii U [Cemu]

Wii, Gamecube, Virtual Console [Dolphin]

PS3 [RPCS3]

PS2 [PCSX2]

SNES [bsnes, snes9x]

Arcade Machines [MAME]

NES [Mesen, em-fceux]

DS [melonDS, DeSmuME]

GBA [mGBA, Visual Boy Advance]

Xbox, SEGA Genesis, N64, Nintendo 3DS, and more!

Documentation

Learn more about Nostlan by reading the wiki pages.

Contact

Contact me on Discord with your comments, question, suggestions, or if you need any general help using the app.

Please report technical issues and make specific feature requests on this project's Github.

Is Nostlan safe to use?

Allow me to introduce myself, my full legal name is Quinton Michael Ashley.

I created Nostlan for fun and also to learn more about app development. Since Nostlan started as a personal project I wasn't under any pressure to make it look like a corporate website or follow any UI standards. Nostlan is an experiment in UI design. I consider it a piece of art that I'm sharing because I want other people to experience it too. Of course, I'd also like making some money off it but I have no interest in collecting your usage data, hijacking your cpu to mine crypto sh*tcoin, or doing anything malicious.

I also put a LOT of effort into following the latest Electron security standards. All the 3rd party emulator cores that Nostlan uses are sandboxed, meaning they run in isolation from the main process.

Legal Disclaimer

Although emulation is legal, pirating games you do not own is illegal. Nostlan does not condone piracy. Nostlan is open source software that does not infringe on any copyrights of publishers, developers, artists, or texture packers. Anyone asking for or sharing information related to digital piracy on Nostlan's Discord server or GitHub page will be blocked and have their comments removed and flagged.

COPYRIGHT AND TRADEMARKS

Nostlan is not affiliated with Nintendo, Sony, SEGA, or Microsoft. All trademarks and servicemarks referenced in this app are the property of their respective owners.

MAME and the MAME Logo are Copyright © 1997-2025 MAMEDev and contributors. MAME® is a registered trademark of Gregory Ember. Use of the MAME name and logo is done so with the expressed written permission from the trademark owner. For more information, please visit https://www.mamedev.org.

Nostlan was created by Quinton Ashley Copyright © 2019-2025. The Nostlan logo images are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International. The template images found in the nostlan-img repository are public domain images under the Public Domain License CC0. The Nostlan software itself is open sourced and licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license, which prohibits closed source commercial use.