Previously on Lemmy:
Past Discussions:
Now that our buying guide (or a first draft of it) is done, let’s get back to our usual discussions. This week’s topic is emulators, by request of u/AlmightySnoo. As emulators could not be loaded on iPhones without jumping through many hoops, Android remains the preferred OS for emulation on smartphones.
(Reminder, rule 2 is in effect, so please don’t give out links to ROM sites.)
Now, as we all know, the mobile gaming landscape in 2023 is not great exactly. Most of the games in twr Play Store are designed for frustration instead of fun, littered with microtransactions, timegating, and of course, ads. Even the good games have terrible monitization practices, and there are a lot more bad games than good.
But emulated games are a way to get away from that, and let us remember a time when games on the go are simply games that are fun and nothing else, the nights when you are sitting in the backseat of your parents car with only the glow of your GameBoy and the passing streetlight as you play Pokemon. Nostalgia from a time when we didn’t have grownup things to worry about.
But of course, many emulators didn’t only aim to “emulate” the original console, but to enhance them into the modern age: Save states, rewind, enhanced graphics, texture replacements, easy cheats, touchscreen and gamepads. Things we could only dream of as kids are now reality.
So, please share your experiences with emulation on Android and give out some cool tips and tricks here.
(A special shoutout to RetroArch for having the (dis)honor of staying as one of the most frustrating software that I have ever used.)
I’m big into the SBC gaming world, where increasingly more and more devices are launched with Android as opposed to Linux. My current device is the retroid pocket 3+ which runs android 11 and retails for 150ish. I’ve been using emulators for the past 15 years so I have a hearty collection of roms and along with the fact you can play play store games and stream with it, it’s pretty much the perfect device for me. Retroarch handles everything up until GameCube/PS2 era, then standalone emulators for the rest. 3ds is playable with vulkan and GameCube is too if you downscale. I literally can’t tell the difference between any resolution so it’s perfectly playable for me.
If you’re looking to get into either a dedicated handheld console for emulation or just connecting an Xbox controller to your phone, check out retro game corps on YouTube. He has detailed guides on how to set up every emulator, every handheld, everything you can think in relation to this. If you at all have nostalgia for this kind of stuff, I’d say invest like $100-$200 into one and just go crazy. They’re all seriously great little devices and being able to play all the games you did when you were a kid or just missed out on is awesome.