The Definitive Guide to Emulation on Android: Play Nintendo, Sega, C64, Amiga and More

1983: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Emulation

Both Sega and Nintendo Emulation on Android is at the time of writing clearly dominated by yongzh – he has no less than six excellent emulators on the Market. The one that emulates the NES console is Nesoid. I have yet to encounter a game that it doesn’t run at full speed with sound. Nesoid works great in both landscape and portrait mode, you can tell it to take advantage of the screen in its entirety and the game is automatically adjusted to fit the display. You can save gamestates any time you want, and the on-screen buttons have vibration feedback and work surprisingly well. Nesoid also lets you place these buttons basically anywhere you want, so you can customize their position to fit your hands. It’s a great little NES emulator.

1990: Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) Emulation

When it comes to emulating the SNES on the Android platform, SNESoid by yongzh is the way to roll. It’s very similar to Nesoid, only that it emulates the Super Nintendo Entertainment System instead. SNESoid is the fastest SNES emulator I’ve ever seen on a smartphone, but the 1 GHz Snapdragon processor on my HTC Desire might have something to do with that as well. Nearly all games are supported.

1989 / 1998: Game Boy (GB) and Game Boy Color (GBC) Emulation

Well, there’s not much to add here. If you’re familiar with either Nesoid or SNESoid, you’ll feel right at home using the Game Boy and GBC emulator GBCoid. Yongzh has taken a homogeneous approach when constructing his emulators, and that’s a good thing.

2001: Game Boy Advance (GBA) Emulation

The top GBA emulator for Android: Gameboid by — who else — yongzh. It works great. Please note that you need the GBA bios to run this emulator. It can be downloaded here. Extract the RAR archive on your computer and copy gba_bios.bin to your SD card. When Gameboid asks you about the GBA bios, locate the file and you’re ready to rock!

1985 / 1990: Sega Master System (SMS) and Game Gear (GG) Emulation

I seem to write less and less about these video game console emulators for Android, but that’s because they’re so similar to eachother and all coded by the same developer: the main thing that changes is what they emulate. Yongzh’s Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator is called Gearoid, and it has all the by now traditional features of these virtual console replicas. Oh, and it rocks, too, of course. I was a Sega kid myself, mainly because most of my friends had Nintendos and I wanted something different. I was really fond of both my Sega Master System and my Game Gear — I think I had a total of 45 games, and I bought a converter for the Game Gear so I could play SMS cartridges on it as well, and I also had an antenna that enabled me to use it as a TV! They’re still lying in a closet somewhere at my parents’ house.

1988: Sega Mega Drive (SMD) / Genesis Emulation

Sega’s fourth generation video game console Mega Drive (it was released in the North America as the Genesis) can be emulated on Android with Gensoid, also by yongzh. No surprises here, Gensoid works as it should.

1994: PlayStation (PS) Emulation

The original Sony PlayStation was first introduced in Japan on December 3, 1994. After 9.5 years, it became the first ‘computer entertainment platform’ to ship 100 million units. I think we’ve all played a PlayStation at one point or the other. psx4droid is a PlayStation emulator developed by ZodTTD, and while I haven’t had a chance to try it myself yet, I’ve heard it runs pretty nicely on high-end Android devices such as the Nexus One, HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy S, et cetera. Highlights:

- Uses formats BIN,ISO,IMG,PBP,Z,ZNX, and Eboot (compressed too)
- WiiMote controller works
- Trackball dpad
- Memory card & save states.
- Virtual control overlays
- Scaling modes

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial @ the xda-developers for getting psx4droid to work.

1982: Commodore 64 (C64) Emulation

The iconic Commodore C64 was manufactured for an impressive 12 years: it was released in 1982 and wasn’t discontinued until 1994. The totally old-school, über-retro 2nd generation ColecoVision was my first video game console (it was considered rather obsolete even when I got it), and later my parents bought me a used C64. It was my first home computer and it was magical: a new world to be discovered. I even tried to write some software for the C64 in BASIC. Frodo is a very popular (and portable) C64 emulator that is available for many different platforms (main website). The Frodo port for Android is called Frodo C64, and I quite like it. Sure, the on-screen controls could be improved, as well as other aspects, but the emulator works, has sound, runs games at fairly decent frame rates, and it can save and load states. Hopefully the developer will continue to improve Frodo C64 for Android and make the port grow.

When one contemplates the fact that the C64 had a humble 0.985 MHz processor and merely 64 KB of RAM — that’s a more than a 1000 times slower CPU and 9000 times less RAM than what my HTC Desire is packing, and games still run comparatively choppy on it, one realizes just how much an emulator / port of a system can slow processing down.

All hardcore C64 geeks might want to check out the related apps C64 Games Music Collection and SID Player. I still got my old Commodore 64, although I haven’t started it for at least 12 years. Hopefully it’s still working.

1987: Commodore Amiga 500 Emulation

My second home computer was in fact an Amiga 500, which I got pretty cheap after the model had been discontinued. I thought its graphic capabilities were downright stunning at the time, and the Amiga featured some of the best games known to man – and some of the greatest game soundtracks. As mentioned above, Frodo is a common, multi-platform C64 emulator, and UAE4All is a popular Amiga emulator. UAE4Droid is an Amiga 500 emulator for Android that is based on that project. Here’s how you get it started.

• Download the Amiga 500+ Kickstart ROM, extract the RAR archive on your computer and copy the .rom-file to your SD card. I know that you’re supposed to get the ROM from your own Amiga, but that’s unrealistic. I see no harm in providing a ROM from a home computer that stopped being manufactured 19 years ago.
• Download UAE4Droid and launch the emulator.
• Tap the Configure button in the upper-left corner, and then tap on ROM Location. Locate the Kickstart ROM that you copied to your SD card, and it will be used as the ROM for the Amiga emulator.
• Press on Floppy1 Location and select the game you want to play. It should have the .adf file extension. If the game has more than one disk, repeat the procedure.
• Scroll down to the Performance settings, and activate the sound option if it wasn’t on by default.
• Press the hardware Back button to return to the previous screen, and then tap on the Start Amiga button to launch the game.
• To bring up various commands and options while you play games, press the Menu button.
• Enjoy the trip of nostalgia!

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