A port is not emulation: it is the game itself, recompiled to run directly on your machine. Recalbox ships 23 of them, all based on free engines or open-source reimplementations — Doom and Quake thanks to the sources released by id Software, Tomb Raider through OpenLara, Theme Hospital through CorsixTH, Caesar III through Julius, Prince of Persia through SDLPoP. The result is often better than the original: free resolution, stable framerate, native controller support.
The trade-off is that a port provides the engine, not the game data. For most of these titles you therefore need the files of the original game — a .wad for Doom, a .pak for Quake, the installation folders for Theme Hospital or Caesar III. A few games in the list are exceptions and are entirely free: 2048, Cave Story, Dinothawr, Gong, Mr. Boom and The Powder Toy can be played without providing anything else. Each game page states precisely which files to place, and where.
| Game | Author / publisher | Year |
|---|---|---|
| 2048 | Gabriele Cirulli | 2014 |
| Caesar III | Impressions Games | 1998 |
| Cave Story | Studio Pixel | 2004 |
| Dinothawr | Libretro | 2013 |
| Doom | id Software | 1993 |
| Doom 3 | id Software | 2004 |
| Flashback | Delphine Software | 1992 |
| Gong | Libretro | 2021 |
| Minecraft | Mojang | 2013 |
| Mr. Boom | Remdy Software | 2017 |
| Out Run | Sega | 1986 |
| Prince of Persia | Brøderbund | 1989 |
| Quake | id Software | 1996 |
| Quake II | id Software | 1997 |
| Quake III Arena | id Software | 1999 |
| Rick Dangerous | Core Design | 1989 |
| Star Trek: Voyager — Elite Force | Raven Software | 2000 |
| Tamagotchi | Bandai | 1996 |
| The Powder Toy | Open source | 2018 |
| Theme Hospital | Bullfrog | 1997 |
| Tomb Raider | Core Design | 1996 |
| VVVVVV | Terry Cavanagh | 2010 |
| Wolfenstein 3D | id Software | 1992 |
Each port has its own rom folder under
/recalbox/share/roms/, named after the game. Availability depends on the machine: the heaviest 3D ports (Doom 3, Quake III Arena, Star Trek: Voyager) are not built for every board. Refer to the availability table on each page.
Several of these games are played together on the same screen — Mr. Boom goes up to eight players. An extra controller never hurts.