How to Play Classic Pokémon Games on a Mac

The old-school Pokémon games are timeless, lovely games, which, unfortunately, can only be played on Nintendo consoles. But there is a way to play them on other devices using an emulator.

Emulators may seem a little difficult to grasp at first, but they are relatively straightforward software. Here, we’ll show you how to get Pokémon games running on your Mac; you might enjoy playing them on your computer more than on a Nintendo.

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How to Emulate Classic Pokémon Games on Your Mac

Before you can play any classic Pokémon games, you must first figure out how to install an emulator on your Mac. There are a couple of free ones online, but we recommend Visual Boy Advance, which we’ll use for this guide.

Download and Install Visual Boy Advance

Downloading and installing Visual Boy Advance is similar to installing any application from the web. Here’s how you could go about it:

After you finish these steps, Visual Boy Advance should be installed on your Mac. You can run it anytime you want by clicking its icon.

A man playing Pokémon on his MacBook

If you want to play old Pokémon games on the go with an Android phone, you should find outwhat emulators you need to run Pokémon on Android.

Get a Pokémon GB ROM

The software version of a Pokémon game is called a ROM, and you’ll need one of them to run the game on an emulator. However, you can only create ROMs of video games you own, and depending on the laws of your region, it could be illegal to share them.

Regardless, you may easily find a ROM with a quick Google search. Type in the ROM you want, and you’ll find some online.

Visual Boy Advance Download button on the website

Open the Pokémon Game on Visual Boy Advance

Now that you have the game and an emulator, you’re ready to load it up on the emulator and begin your Pokémon adventure.

Follow these steps to boot the game on Visual Boy Advance:

GBA Online keybinds with a diagram of a GameBoy Advance

Your game will start immediately after you open the ROM.

General Tips to Know Using Visual Boy Advance

You should keep some things in mind while playing Pokemon with Visual Boy Advance:

Feel free to explore the emulator and adjust settings to improve your gaming experience.

Visual Boy Advance File menu

Play Pokémon in Your Browser

With your ROM ready, you can also play Pokémon using your browser. There’s a website called GBA Online, which has an online emulator you can load your ROMs on.

Here’s how to get started with GBA Online:

A browser-based emulator can be useful if you don’t prefer installing third-party applications. However, you’ll lose access to your games when you’re offline.

Enjoy Pokémon Across Your Apple Devices

There are other Pokémon games on the App Store you can check out if you want to explore the world of Pokémon without emulators. But with emulators, you get to enjoy the classics with a lot more flexibility than if you were using a real Nintendo console.

Don’t forget that emulators aren’t restricted to Macs in the Apple ecosystem; you’re able to also run your Pokémon ROMs with an emulator on your iPhone or iPad.

It’s now easier than ever to enjoy Pokémon titles on your iPhone.

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