The Palm was the pocket organiser of the late 1990s, a grey screen you wrote on with a stick. People played on it during meetings, and a whole shelf of small, clever games grew around it. CloudpilotEmu brings them back, in your browser.
We have about 60 Palm OS games on My Abandonware, from Sega Swirl and Space Trader to Bejeweled 2 and the colour games of the last Palms.
Emulators
CloudpilotEmu is the one to use. It runs in the browser, it emulates 40 different Palms, and it is still updated. The Mu core is the RetroArch way in.
- CloudpilotEmu (browser, and an app on iOS): open the page and it runs, on any system. It emulates the old Palms and, through a second engine, the ARM ones that ran Palm OS 5. Recommended.
- Mu: a core for RetroArch, on every system. It emulates the Palm m515 and the Tungsten T3 only, and it is less finished than CloudpilotEmu.
- StyleTap (Android, paid) is not an emulator but a translator: it runs Palm programs on a modern phone.
Running the games
The emulator needs the ROM of a Palm, then you drag the game file straight into the window. Nothing is installed on your own machine.
A Palm ROM is the program of the device itself, the same idea as a BIOS: it is copyrighted, so no emulator ships one. See our page about BIOS files; CloudpilotEmu's own front page also says where a supported ROM is found.
In CloudpilotEmu, create a session, pick a Palm, give it the ROM, and the device starts. Then drop the .prc file of the game onto the screen: it appears in the launcher, and you tap it. A .pdb file is data, a level pack or a save, and is installed the same way.
Our downloads are zip files. Some hold the .prc on its own, some hold the Windows installer of the day: open the zip and look for the .prc inside, that is the file the emulator wants.
Choosing the right Palm
The machine you pick has to match the game. A 2005 game on a 1997 Palm shows an error, and a black and white Palm turns a colour game into a mess.
Three devices cover nearly everything we have:
- Palm III (1998): black and white, 160 by 160. For the early games.
- Palm m515 (2002): colour, still 160 by 160, Palm OS 4. The safe middle choice.
- Tungsten E2 (2005): colour, 320 by 320, Palm OS 5. Needed by the later games, Bejeweled 2, Sky Force, Warfare Incorporated and Rayman among them.
If a game refuses to start and says nothing useful, it was written for a newer Palm than the one you chose. Make a second session with the Tungsten E2 and try again.
The Palm had no pad and no fire button: you played with the stylus, the four buttons under the screen and the two scroll keys. CloudpilotEmu draws all of them, and your keyboard works as well.
I need help!
We do not provide support for running abandonware games. The Palm crowd is small, and most of what it knows is written down in one place.
PalmDB is the archive of Palm software and the community behind it, and the Emulation General Wiki compares the emulators.
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.