It was one of the first programs out of the gates to have frontend shader support to begin with.It also allows you to rewind your games in real-time. Libretro’s serialization support allows features such as rollback based netplay to be easily implementable.It has features few other dedicated games / emulators have, such as:
It tries to be on the cutting edge of technology in terms of supported technology as well as trying to be as backward compatible as possible, a paradoxical goal if any. It is designed to be fast, lightweight, and portable. RetroArch is most popularly known for being a program with which you can play many emulators and games, which have all been customized and tailor-ported to the libretro API.