Emulation Ceiling

A device’s emulation ceiling is the most demanding console generation it runs acceptably: below the ceiling everything is smooth, at it things are playable with tuning, above it they struggle or fail. Ceilings rise by chipset tier — PS1/SNES for entry chips, PSP/DS/N64 in the middle, PS2/GameCube/Wii higher, and 3DS/Wii U/Switch only near the top. We report ceilings as consensus bands from published testing because individual titles vary, and everything assumes games you legally own.