BizHawk vs DuckStation
BizHawk
tasvideos.orgDuckStation
duckstation.orgSide by side
| Figure | BizHawk | DuckStation |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Game Console Emulators | 7.7 (#20) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Integrations | EmuHawk supports Lua and C#.NET scripting and has rebindable keyboard, mouse, and gamepad hotkeys. | DuckStation integrates RetroAchievements, Discord Rich Presence and FFmpeg-based video capture. |
| License | The repository says the BizHawk team's original work is provided under the MIT License, while warning that repository licensing is heterogeneous and advising users to contact the team about licensing details. | The maker describes the project as distributed under CC-BY-NC-ND terms and says modified versions may not be published. |
| Purpose | BizHawk is an emulation project whose EmuHawk app is a multi-system emulator with recording, playback, and debugging tools. | DuckStation emulates the Sony PlayStation console, focusing on playability, speed, and long-term maintainability. |
| Windows requirements | Windows users must run the prerequisite installer first; the README says current releases require the MSVC++ redistributable and target Windows 10 22H2 or Windows 11 21H2 and later. | Current Windows builds require Windows 10 or 11 version 1809 or newer. |
Plans
In their own words
BizHawk
BizHawk is an emulation project centered on EmuHawk, a multi-system emulator written in C#. It targets tool-assisted speedrunners with recording, playback, and debugging tools. EmuHawk records rerecordable movies for 45 or more systems, while the integrated TAStudio provides a piano-roll workspace for composing movies with savestates that rewind and adjust inputs. Other functions include save slots, named savestates, speed control, frame stepping, rewinding, screenshots, audio and video recording, and memory viewing, searching, and editing. Lua and C#.NET can control the frontend and emulator cores programmatically, and keyboard, mouse, and gamepad hotkeys can be rebound. Supported systems include Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony PlayStation, arcade machines, and DOS/Windows. BizHawk is free and open source, with the team’s original work under the MIT License. Installation instructions cover Windows and Unix, but current EmuHawk does not work on macOS; Android and iOS are unavailable.
DuckStation
DuckStation is a free emulator for Sony PlayStation games, available for Android, Linux, macOS and Windows. Its hardware renderer supports D3D11, D3D12, OpenGL, Vulkan and Metal, with upscaling, texture filtering and 24-bit color among the graphics options. Enhancements include PGXP geometry precision, texture replacement, adaptive downsampling and post-processing shader chains. Play options include save states, rewind, runahead, CPU overclocking and multi-disc support, along with memory-card editing and save importing. DuckStation supports RetroAchievements and Discord Rich Presence. It accepts digital and analog controllers, rumble, and up to eight devices through multitap; GunCon and Justifier lightguns can be simulated with a mouse. Supported formats include bin/cue, MAME CHD, single-track ECM, MDS/MDF, CCD and unencrypted PBP. A PS1 or PS2 BIOS image is required but not supplied, and games are not provided. The maker says users should dump a BIOS from their own console. Desktop requirements include Windows 10/11 and macOS 13.3 or newer.