Whether you're looking to relive the past or experience the origin of gaming you missed in your youth, your Android or iPhone can take you back to Mario's salad days, the birth of the Final Fantasy series, and much more. Here's how to get started with retro game emulation and turn your phone or tablet into an arcade in just a few minutes.
While contemporary video games have come close to cinematic masterpieces, there's often nothing better than the fun and simplicity of retro classics. If you've never jumped into the world of emulation, this guide will take you through the very simple basics and have you up and running right away. We'll also take a quick look at ROM hacking so you can power up your emulation experience as well.
Before we get started, let's go over the basics. When you're talking about retro game emulation, you need two basics things: game ROMs and an emulator that can play them. A ROM is simply a copy of a game that exists as a file on your device. An emulator is an application that's capable of playing that ROM file on your device. Basically, you can think of a ROM as a virtual game cartridge and an emulator as a virtual console. Now that you know what you're dealing with, let's get started.
Get Your Emulators
Finding an emulator is pretty simple, but you may prefer some emulators over others. We're going to include our favorites for various platforms and, in some cases, a few alternatives if there's a good reason to check them out as well. If you are looking at an emulator we didn't recommend, remember that accuracy, performance, cheat code support, game pad support, and cross-platform compatibility are all things you'll want to consider.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN iOS AND ANDROID: Emulation on iOS requires jailbreaking. We won't have links to our iOS emulator recommendations for that reason. All you need to do, however, is open Cydia (the jailbreak app store) on your jailbroken iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and search for the recommended option. From there you'll be able to download it and use it no problem.Additionally, third-party controller support (like the Nintendo Wiimote) works differently on iOS and Android. Controller support is generally built into the app on iOS, but on Android you need to add a separate app that connects controllers as input devices. (If you have an Android tablet with Honeycomb 3.1 or later, however, you can connect some controllers via USB as well without the need for a helper app.) We'll discuss controllers a bit later, but in the following sections assume any reference to controller support refers to iOS.
