I don't know if it's still active, but Kaillera was dope. I remember 1v1ing people in Mario Kart 64 like a decade ago.
this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2026
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Looks like it is!
Dolphin does online multiplayer for game cube, and I think also wii
There's also a neat back way to use steam for it too. You need a game that supports steam's remote play together, and you can replace the install files with an emulator, rename the emulator .exe to match the game you replaced and launch it with steam. I might be missing part of the method, so googling might be necessary, but I've done this with a few friends before with xbox emulation and it worked great.
Edit: found the forum post I used at the time!
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/homestream/discussions/3/1643178512758489324/
I had a friend trick Steam into streaming the Dolphin emulator through remote play and me and a few people played Mario Kart Wii splitscreen. The lag wasn't too bad even tho I was connecting from the UK and my friend lives in NJ, USA.
They were hosting on Windows, but I was able to connect fine through Steam on Linux.
They did it by downloading a free game called Crashphalt then going into the directory and replacing the exe with Dolphin.exe renamed to match the original games exe. Then Dolphin should launch when you try to play Crashphalt through Steam along with remote play settings in the Steam overlay.
No clue how you'd do this on Linux yet sadly.
Not to sound like a douche, but it seems like you didn' even try looking for them.
No it's alright, I have looked, and tried a couple (don't recall the name) and they didn't work. And a lot of them don't work on Linux it seems. So I wanted to see what smarter people were using!
also these 3 you sent look like copies of each other, and don't say they run on linux. not sure.
Well, there's fightcade. It's an excellent platform that emulates arcade and console games from the '70s up through the Dreamcast era.
Dunno if it's on Linux though. :/
EDIT: worth noting that its online MP has never had any connection issues, but it does have ranked matches, so you'll see a lot of folks trying to be the best of the best, and that's putting it nicely.
I know Snes9x and Zsnes have had online multiplayer for years. It's a direct connection, though. No server browser or lobbies. So it is entirely possible.
https://parsec.app/ works great for that usecase, one person runs the emu, the other just streams the screen. supports controllers and inputs are pretty fast in my experience.
if the host is windows or mac it just works, getting a linux host to work is more fiddly, but any os works great as a client
so I looked at Parsec and everything said you cannot host on linux. not true?
i tried this with a friend once for a modern game that he didn't own and it worked surprisingly well. First thing that came to mind.
I was playing online multiplayer on zsnes over 20 years ago. I would be really surprised if most emulators didn't support it these days.
Most of the old consoles it can be done. I've played a bunch of games this way. The most fun I had was probably Kirby Super Star on the snes.
But it's possible with the newer consoles too. The buzz word is typically "netplay". Works by syncing the game state and emulating their controller being connected with the host session and vice versa.
Depending on the specific game or emulator you're trying there can be some pitfalls. Some emulators won't let you play unless the application is identical and identically configured (such as the various plugins in 1964). You would need to run the same windows version of the emulator to play with your buddy likely.
Network quality is extremely important. No one should be using WiFi. All players ideally should be using low jitter connections like fibre, cable or dsl. Ideally your ping to each other is under 60ms. Once you get into the 80-120+ range PvP games become unfair and games in general could become glitchy.
Have everyone playing run this tool. You're looking for low jitter, medium to low ping, 0% packet loss. (It just isn't going to be reliable and fun if anyone is experiencing any packet loss)
Depending on the emulator you might need to understand port forwarding and resolving a double NAT.
If you want to discuss what specifically isn't working I could be more helpful instead of sharing generalised information.
Retroarch, which means pretty much almost every emulator.
As I recall it's pretty hi-tech, too.
Hardware permitting it'll emulate every path your friend might take, and correct itself to the correct timeline when it gets friend's input. Lag-free for everyone.
I thought this didnt work anymore ? Someone had also mentioned using steam play and making the emulator a game in your library but that no longer works.
I remember playing Rock'n'Roll Racing with my friend over 56K modem back in like 2002... It's existed for a while lol
You need some sort of streaming if you want to play Split-Screen over the Internet. I guess you could use Steam's Remote Play Together feature with an emulator (I believe there are ways to enable that for non-steam games).
If we consider the ineffably marvelous titles of prior ~2010...
The following are third-party alternatives that emulate aspects of GameSpy services and might be used to enable online functionality in some games.
Dolphin can handle networking. Theres a special version of Dolphin called Karphin for Kirby's Air Ride specifically and a nodded iso that gives each player their own screen as well as some other cool hacks for match settings.
It very much exists, and I second the recommendations for Parsec (for anything) or the network modes in Retroarch, Dolphin, etc (for emulation). The emulators imo work better, and Dolphin even has support for GBA controllers for GameCube stuff like Crystal Chronicles.
Those have given me the best luck, although my friend used to have terrible lag from being half a world away. Seems to be a little better now, especially with Parsec, but since it's not client side it's never going to have perfect ping for very time sensitive things. You're ultimately doing a low latency stream, so it's about as good as games played off a stream.
Fightcade is good for some of that
I know some n64 emulators support net play as well
Not so sure about ps2
It’s not the most secure but I just set up a port forward in my router to the device with the emulator on both sides of the connection. When you’re done playing make sure to remove/disable the port forward. You connect to the public IP and port of the other person. Shouldn’t be any different than making local lan play work at that point. Your latency is pretty much just whatever the transfer time is. This does require both of you to know how to set that up in your router and basic networking knowledge.
I meant more for games that may not have lan options, to more mimic 2 or 4 player in the same room. Or did I not understand
The emulators software should handle that(gets the player 2-4 inputs from over the network). I play Tetris Attack with my sister sometimes ~2000 miles apart which is an old Super Nintendo game. No such thing as network play on that console.
The network features on the emulator should work locally or remotely. You just have some extra steps like I mentioned in my first comment to make it work remotely. If you have a spare device to run two emulators locally I’d start with getting it working in your own house before trying to walk a buddy through it remotely.
Yes, lots of emulators support that and as others have mentioned have for some time. I can remember doing it with Super Mario Kart back in high school at LAN parties.
Apparently it is also possible to do it on the latest crop of Retroid, Ambernic, etc. handhelds where each player can use their own handheld for the split screen game wirelessly. As someone who also remembers corrupting Pokémon saves because the bus hit a bump while plugging in the link cable I am super jealous of kids these days for tech like this.
FightCade.
RPCS3 enables full PS3 functionality on PC; it’s how I’m able to play the OG 2009 version of Demon’s Souls, complete with online connectivity.
Definitely a thing. Dolphin has support for netplay, and Melee in particular has a great rollback implementation in Slippi. Fightcade for classic fighting games, mainly arcade.
Feels like it should be widespread across emulators, but I guess I've only really happened across it in that handful of cases.
there's a very small and niche crowd that still plays MAME fighting games with MAME32k (through kaillera). Old, has syncing issues sometimes, need servers nearby, but when it works it's pretty fun. :)
There are some people that play 64 games on those same servers iirc. I think they used mupen + kaillera. I tried it a few times and the syncing issues were a drag (had to restart everything to resync), but with the mame thing you can discover servers near you and see what games are being hosted/played as well as the emulators and their versions.
edit: if anyone's interested, 0.64 was the popular version for classic fighting games.
All VNC into the same box?