Twenty systems on this site cannot be played on a computer today. We keep their games anyway, because a game nobody can run is still part of the history of games, and because the position changes: nine systems left this page while it was being written, one of them Mophun, with 218 games. A tenth, the digiBlast, left in October 2026.
Each section says what the machine was and where the work stands. Some have a project you can follow; some have nothing at all. The original hardware is the only way for now, and for several of these it is the only way there has ever been.
BREW
Qualcomm's answer to Java, on American phones from 2001. Every game was signed to one handset, which is why so little of it survives and why no emulator on a computer runs one.
Two projects exist, Melange and Infuse, and both are Android programs rather than desktop ones. Infuse is the active one and the further along. Our 67 BREW games wait on it.
Design Master Denshi Mangajuku
A Bandai machine of 1995 for drawing manga, with cartridges of characters to trace. MAME has a driver, bdesignm, and marks it not working and silent.
The driver is a start rather than a working machine. Our four Design Master cartridges need it finished.
Didj
LeapFrog's 2008 handheld, sold as a games machine that taught spelling. MAME has a driver, didj, marked not working and with no sound.
LeapFrog's machines are among the least emulated of their era, and three of them are on this page. This one holds our fifteen Didj games.
ExEn
A French game engine for phones, made by In-Fusio around 2000, and a rival to Java's own. Only a simulator from the company survives, and it runs almost nothing.
The ExEn games on our shelf are .exn files, and they need an emulator of the engine. The one that exists was built to test games during development, not to play them, so our 46 ExEn games wait for a better one.
Game Wave
ZAPiT's 2005 console played discs on your television, with six remotes for family quiz nights. It is not a DVD player, whatever the discs look like, and no emulator exists.
The discs carry the console's own software, so a computer's DVD player will not run them — see our page about DVD games for the ones that do work that way. This applies to all our fourteen Game Wave games.
Gizmondo
The 2005 handheld famous mostly for the crimes of the company that sold it. MAME has a gizmondo driver, marked not working and silent.
It ran Windows CE on hardware ahead of its time, and it sold about 25,000 units before the company collapsed. We hold twenty-five Gizmondo games.
GoGo TV
Plug-and-play boxes of the mid 2000s: a controller with the games inside, plugged straight into a television. No emulator covers this particular family.
MAME emulates dozens of plug-and-play machines built on the same chips, so our six GoGo TV games may become playable without anybody planning it.
GP2X
Game Park's 2005 handheld ran Linux, and its games are Linux programs for an ARM chip rather than cartridges. MAME's gp2x driver is marked not working.
This is the one machine here you might run without an emulator, by building its games for a modern ARM computer — which is a programming job, not a download. We hold two GP2X games.
GP32
The earlier Game Park handheld, from 2001, sold mostly in Korea and loved by the people who had one. MAME has a gp32 driver, and marks it not working.
The driver shows something and plays nothing. It has been in that state for years, and our twenty-eight GP32 games with it.
Hasbro iON
A short-lived television system where a camera watched you move, four years before Kinect. Five games came out and no emulator exists.
An emulator would also have to stand in for the camera, which is why nobody has tried, and why our five Hasbro iON games wait.
HyperScan
Mattel's 2006 console read cards you swiped through it, and put what was on them into the game. MAME's hyprscan driver is marked not working and silent.
The cards are the difficulty: the games expect them, and a dump of the game alone is only half of what was sold. This is true of all our five HyperScan games.
iPod Classic
Apple sold about fifty games for the click-wheel iPod between 2006 and 2009. They are locked to the device they were bought on, and nothing plays them.
The encryption was never broken, and Apple's store stopped selling them in 2011. Our fifty-four iPod Classic games are the hardest thing on this page to bring back.
Leapster
LeapFrog's 2003 handheld, the most successful machine on this page — millions were sold to children who are now adults. MAME's leapster driver is marked not working and silent.
The driver covers the Leapster, the L-MAX and the Leapster 2, and none of them run our thirty-six Leapster games.
LeapTV
LeapFrog's last try, from 2014: a television console with a motion controller. It has no emulator and no driver anywhere.
It is recent enough that its hardware is well understood and old enough that nobody is working on it. Our twelve LeapTV games wait.
MRE
MediaTek's runtime, on the cheap phones sold by the million across Asia and Africa from 2011. Its games are .vxp files, and one emulator is being written.
MREmu runs .vxp files built for ARM and is open source, but its own notes call it early. MediaTek's official simulator only runs files built for a computer, which our nine MRE games are not.
VideoNow XP
Hasbro's 2004 disc player showed cartoons on a tiny screen, and the XP model added a handful of games. No emulator exists.
The discs are a format of Hasbro's own. Our two VideoNow XP titles are here so that the record is complete.
XaviXPORT
A 2004 Japanese system whose cartridges came with the thing you played them with: a tennis racket, a bowling ball, a fishing rod. MAME emulates much of the XaviX family, but not this one.
Dozens of XaviX machines run in MAME, and the cartridges of the XaviXPORT itself do not. Even if they did, an emulator would have to stand in for the racket that measures how you swing, in our five XaviXPORT games as on the real thing.
Zeebo
A 2009 console for Brazil and Mexico that sold games over the phone network, with no discs and no cartridges. MAME's driver is a skeleton, and the only progress is on Android.
Zeebo ran BREW, so it waits on the same work as the section at the top of this page. Infuse, the Android emulator, already runs some of our 56 Zeebo games.
Zodiac
Tapwave's 2003 handheld ran Palm OS on hardware built for games, with a proper analogue stick. Palm OS emulators do not touch it, because the parts that made it a games machine were Tapwave's own.
Our page about Palm OS covers the ordinary Palms, which are well emulated. The Zodiac is not one of them, and our twelve Zodiac games do not run there.
Zune
Microsoft sold its music player as a games machine too, with small games written in XNA. XNA is gone, the store is gone, and nothing runs a Zune game today.
MonoGame, the free rebuild of XNA, could in principle run one — but only from its source code, which almost nobody has. Our forty-two Zune games are compiled for a device nobody emulates.
Do you know better?
This page is a snapshot, and snapshots go stale. Nine systems left it in a single week of checking, every one of them because somebody had quietly written an emulator and never told anybody.
If you know of an emulator we have missed, or you are writing one, tell us and we will move the system to the guide it belongs in. Mophun got a page of its own that way, and it had been playable for years.
Checked in October 2026 against each emulator's own documentation and, where it exists, its source code. Game counts and file sizes come from our own catalogue. These guides were drafted with the help of an AI assistant and checked by hand before publishing. If something here is out of date, tell us.