How to: Emulators on your Phone

[Pizza1295]

Color Code
IMPORTANT
PERSONAL NOTE

I made this because I feel not enough people know you can even do this

All of yongzh are free except for N64, which is constantly being updated and improved. Worth your money.
I've tried them all, and he's definitely put the most work in his N64 APP, it probably has the most compatibility of all n64 emulators on the Android, which is still rather limited compared to emulators like Project64 on the computer, so support him so he can get your favorite games working! (Message me if they are no longer free so I can remove this message)

Alright, first off, making this tutorial is a little complex, because different phones might require different emulators, applications, or settings, or they might not work on your phone at all! So I suggest that when you find an emulator application, you read it's description, from what I've seen most will tell you if certain phones won't work or if you need something different to make it work. My phone that I used for setting up emulators is an HTC EVO Shift 4G.

Because of this, THIS TUTORIAL WILL ASSUME YOU HAVE A HIGH-END ANDROID PHONE. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THIS TUTORIAL DOES NOT APPLY TO ANY OTHER PHONE, BUT ALTERNATIVE APPS WILL HAVE TO BE FOUND AS I MIGHT SUGGEST APPLICATIONS FROM THE ANDROID MARKET

First off, don't spend money on an emulator unless it offers a LITE version. A lite version is usually the emulator, minus a few of the cool gimmicks that might be found in the bought version. I say this because you don't want to buy an emulator and not have it work, AND you might be satisfied with just the Lite version, from what I've seen of bought emulation apps, they usually don't add anything too important.However, I can vouch that N64OID is worth forking over some cash, he is constantly fixing people's complaints and even has added a couple surprises since I last messed with it(there's a nice cheat system in it now)

Also, don't spend money on ROMs, for one I don't think it's even legal to have such an application so it's probably a scam, and also you should just use your friendly neighborhood Coolrom for your Rom needs! I haven't seen such an app, but I'm sure you could find it on unofficial app markets, such as SlideME.

Point in case: Don't waste your hard earned money unless you're sure. Some of the 3d Emulators, like PSX and N64 might be hard to find a lite version of or a free version of, so you might have to throw some money in for that.

Now to get started, decide what emulators you want to get. The most common one I've seen people get is SNES, so I'll use SNES as an example for the guide. The first place to start looking for an emulator would be the android market, but I HIGHLY reccomend downloading the SlideME market and checking out there as well, many rejected, trademarked apps end up on there. Be careful on unofficial markets though for it's much easier to download something that could mess with your phone, so ALWAYS READ WHAT PERMISSIONS YOU ARE GIVING THE EMULATOR AND MAKE SURE YOU ARE COMFORTABLE WITH THEM.

Now for the SNES, on the market you can find SuperGNES, SNES9x EX and SNESOID. From reading reviews and seeing other emulators on other peoples phones, the MAJORITY of others are NO different then one of these 3 and usually are not free. The term coined for these apps seems to be spam, so I will use that terminology as a reference to apps that are duplicates of other, often better working, applications. The differences in emulators can be summed in game compatibility, button mapping, and interface. For example, While SuperGNES loads artwork for all games found on the SD card, providing a very neat looking interface when looking for a game, it does not provide as flexible button mapping as Snes9x EX or SNESOID. So Try multiple emulators for all systems and pick the one that you personally like the best. I used SuperGnes for a while because I really liked the interface, but now I use SNESOID because I did not like the options for button mapping provided by SuperGnes

While you are testing emulators, you might be considering trying to figure out how to transfer saves to different emulators. I'm almost 100% positive that emulators of a same system will have the same files for .sav, but to use them on a different emulator you have to find where that emulator saved its save files, and where the emulator you want to use those saves on saves IT'S saves (I would read that over twice). To figure this out, you can start a file on a game on the emulator you desire to use your save on, then when you have a save for it, connect your droid to a computer, mount it's sd card, then locate where the saves are. Then transfer the saves you want on the emulator to that location and it should use those saves automatically upon loading the game!

Here starts the section on roms if you are looking for assistance on this start here.

Now before you can go testing emulators, you obviously need the games, called Roms when referencing them as a copy of the data from the memory chip of the cartridges, or an ISO when referencing the data ripped from disk.

To get these Rom files, you either need to get them from your own cartidges or disks(which I will not cover in this tutorial), or downloading them from the internet, from sites such as Coolrom! All you would do to download roms from your phone is to go to the respective site you seek roms from, and download it.

However most Roms are compressed, which makes it take less time to upload and download and requires less bandwidth(Not ENTIRELY sure about those last couple words). To extract roms from these compressed files, you need an applications capable of extracting that specific type of compressed files. Some applications will only work on certaing types of files as well. However, there seems to be problems when the application is working with very small archives, I have no idea how to resolve this so another option from downloading from your phone is to download on the computer, extract the archive with something like winrar or 7zip, then take the extracted rom and drag it onto your phone while it is connected to the computer. You can go a step further by making a folder for Roms and organising the folder for respective system's roms. To do all this, your phone must be connected to the computer via usb and you must have the phone mounted as a storage device, from there all you have to do is go to my computer and select the drive that is your phone.My phone on the computer is referred to as a removeable disk. In other words, you aren't looking to open something called MyPhone, for it is mounting an SD card, not your phone's root

Once you have the Roms extracted on your phone, all you have to do is run the emulation, and usually it will ask you to find the game on your phone. It will bring you to your SD card's root, the same place you could see on your phone. Where you go from there depends on where you put your Rom. So find your rom's location, click it, and you're ready to go!

I also reccomend checking out the setting and optimizing them for your phone and for your thumbs, for the preset settings might not work well with your phone and might need a little tweaking. That and it really is incredibly diffiult to play games that require a controller on a touchscreen. There are alternatives to using your phones touchscreen for your controller. For example, this beast (http://icontrolpad.com/). You can even use your phones keyboard, which some might find more optimal for emulators that dont have too many buttons. If you have a wiimote and a nunchuck, you can connect these to your phone via bluetooth, and use that instead of your phone(which kinda ruins the whole point of having mobile emulators). I will not cover how to do such a thing, mostly because it's as fundamental as finding the right app, but if quite a few people are having trouble figuring it out, I'll add on to this tutorial, for I haven't personally tried to do this and would have to actually look into it instead of pool my knowledge.

One more thing, alot of 3d emulators have a lot of lag. A great way to reduce this lag I found was Flashing the cyanogenmod. When I did this, I literally have NO lag on the N64 at all, especially super smash bros which was previously hard to play(have not tried it on playstation). This is incredibly complicated and require it's own tutorial, which it has multiple of. All I will say about it is that you should be careful as you could easily reduce your phone to an expensive paperweight if you aren't, and to have PLENTY of time to do this. I spent 12 straight hours getting cyanogenmod on my evo shift. For evo shift users interested in cyanogenmod, read this: EVO SHIFT AND EVO 4G ARE NOT THE SAME SOFTWARE AND YOU NEED TO DO DIFFERENT SETUPS FOR ROOTING AND FLASHING FOR THE SHIFT THEN YOU DO THE 4G. Save yourself the headache!

[Bach89]

Hello

I think u made a great guide here! GOOD JOB!
But i am missing tje FPse guide, or an other guide for the PSX emu for android.
and u should remember to say that we also need to get the bios scph1001.bin for the emu. (the PSX Emu) i say this in hopes that u will make a PSX guide for all the guys out there.

I i will try to promote this thread as much as i can!!!

Again, great job on the guide.

[Pizza1295]

my most famous internet persona, pizza1295. Incredible, getting like thousands of views over here. I'm getting an Iphone soon, I'll update the guide with more info and such, maybe I'll get on my bro's android and check what's good nowadays cus from what I've seen lately it got way more free and easy so I'll see if I can shorten some of this and such ight peace

[Oppie K]

This is great. Thanks a lot for posting. I recently started using my iPhone for Business Voip, and I am wondering if you have a guide for the iPhone?

[Pizza1295]

Thanks a lot but unfortuneately I wouldn't know the process behind iPhone however I'd like to believe it's just as easy so if there's any help you need getting it started just let me know on my email slinkjenkins@gmail.com