Smartphones have evolved a lot in the past ten years.
Nowadays, we use them not only for making calls, but also for sending messages, browsing
the web, watching videos and playing games.
So, why could not we use a mobile phone for playing classic games from our childhood again?
What's up guys, this is 640KTech and in today's video, I'm going to show you how to use your
Android smartphone as a portable retro gaming device.
In this video, I'm testing twelve different video game consoles from the past running
on Android.
Some of them are over twenty or even thirty years old now, while others are still considered
to be modern consoles.
For testing hardware, I'm using my main phone, a Xiaomi Mi A1, which was released in 2017,
and has a Snapdragon 625 inside with an 8 core CPU running at 2.0 GHz, 4 gigs of RAM,
an Adreno 506 GPU with OpenGL and Vulkan support, and running the latest Android version 9.0
Pie.
While this phone is not nearly as powerful as a Snapdragon 845 device, but it will be
enough for running older titles in full speed, while newer games will be a bit more challenging.
For most emulators, I'm going to use RetroArch, a free application available in the Play Store.
Actually, it's a collection of free and open-source emulators, and also works as a framework for
them.
I'm going to use the 64 bit version since my phone supports it, and for some emulators,
it gives you better performance.
If you're using RetroArch for the first time, you will not see any emulators installed in
the app, because you have to download them manually.
It's not very difficult, you only have to tap on Download Cores, and select which cores
you would like to install.
Some systems have more cores to choose from, so if you're not sure which emulator will
be the best for you, just search for it on the web.
Each core has it's own settings.
In most cases, you don't have to change these, because they are configured default to give
you the best performance and accuracy for emulation.
But sometimes, you may want to change these settings, for example if you want to use a
different aspect ratio, or a higher internal resolution for better graphics at the cost
of performance.
RetroArch itself has some global settings as well, which applies for all cores by default.
For example, you can turn on an internal FPS counter for watching the performance of games
in real time, and you can also change some other settings, including the switch between
OpenGL and Vulkan drivers for graphics.
While Vulkan should give you better performance than OpenGL, I'm going to stay with the latter
in this video, because a large number of cores are still not compatible with Vulkan, which
results in often slower speed or even graphical glitches.
Our first system to see running on this Android phone is the Nintendo Entertainment System,
our oldest console in this video.
The most iconic game on this system is Super Mario Bros., which runs perfectly fine on
this phone.
It's not a big surprise though, since it's an over thirty years old 8-bit system.
For the core, I'm using FCEumm, which emulates NES games with high accuracy and allows you
to use the original aspect ratio of the console.
As you can see, you can use the built-in on-screen controls for playing games, which works well
for this system, but if you want to play for a longer period, it's much better to use a
real physical controller.
Most of them will work including USB wired and Bluetooth wireless ones as well.
I also tried the original Legend of Zelda running on the NES emulator, which also runs
at full-speed 60 fps of course.
Even though I didn't test them in this video, but I'm pretty sure other 8 bit consoles and
computers will also work fine such as the Sega Master System, old Atari consoles, or
even Commodore 64.
All of these systems have it's own cores in the RetroArch catalog, so you can download
and try them for free.
The next game console I'm going to try is Nintendo's next console, the SNES.
I'm going to use SNES9x for emulation, which is also known to work very well as a standalone
emulator on PC.
Well, I didn't have to be disappointed here either.
Super Mario World worked flawlessly on this phone, even though it was a bit difficult
to play with the on-screen controls, because sometimes it's very difficult to exactly hit
some buttons, especially when you have to jump precisely.
I also wanted to test a far more advanced SNES game, so I picked Star Fox 2.
This game was unreleased for many years till the launch of the SNES Classic game system
in late 2017.
It utilizes the SuperFX chip, which was a separate processor in the game cartridge,
making able to use polygonal 3D graphics and some special effects as well.
For testing the game, I'm using the original ROM ripped from the SNES Classic console,
so it's the original final game with the official English translation.
As you can see, it is running without any problems.
Unfortunately I've never played any Star Fox game in the past, so I did not got very far
in this title, but the game itself was totally playable.
I also wanted to try out a Sega console in this point, so here is Sonic 3 running on
the Genesis Plus GX emulator.
Well, I don't have anything to say, everything worked as well as on the SNES.
I think this is the best Sonic game on the Genesis, and I played it a lot when I was
a child, so at least I could pass the first level of this game even though the small on-screen
buttons and that I had to watch the screen through my camera.
Before switching to the next generation and 3D Games, I also want to show you Game Boy
Advance running on this phone.
While this handheld was released ten years after the SNES, it has similar capabilities,
so we should get similar performance as well.
Well, I got what I expected.
Using the mGBA core, Mario Kart Super Circuit was running perfectly, and since this game
was optimized for a small screen portable game console, it felt very good to play it
on my smartphone.
I also tried Wario Ware Twisted, but it looks like it's making use of the built-in accelerometer
sensor in the game cartridge, something which my phone couldn't emulate, even though it
has a similar sensor inside.
Fortunately, most games don't use this function, and these games should work without any problems
on this emulator.
And now, I'm going to switch from 2D to 3D games, which require much more processing
power from our phone.
Let's start with the original PlayStation.
For the emulation, I'm going to use PCSX-ReARMed, which is also used in Sony's retro gaming
console, the PlayStation Classic.
Sony's product got many negative feedbacks because of the lack of some classic games,
the mix of PAL and NTSC titles, and the generally poor performance.
The same emulator, however, works fine if you pair it with a bit more powerful hardware.
Running on my phone, Crash Team Racing was running in 60FPS with only some very minor
slowdowns, which did not affect gameplay at all.
That's also a childhood favourite of mine, and while for some reason I couldn't use the
analog controller input, I was able to play the game with the virtual digital pad and
buttons.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the analog control can be used by chaning some settings in the
emulator.
Our second PlayStation game is Metal Gear Solid, another top game released on the system.
You can see that this game was running at 50FPS instead of 60, but it was because I
was using a PAL version of the game.
If you want, you can override the region in the core settings, so you can get 60 FPS out
of PAL titles as well.
Anyway, sorry for the dark screen during the gameplay, it was not a problem with the emulator
but with my camera actually.
And don't forget Nintendo's first 3D game console, the Nintendo 64.
Since it's actually a more complex system, it also means that it's more complex to emulate.
Let's try an early and a relatively simple game for the first time, Super Mario 64.
As you can see, I used the analog controls this time, which felt much better to use than
the virtual directional pad.
I used a bit higher internal resolution than the default settings, but the game managed
to keep 30 FPS, only dropping a bit below sometimes.
I was using Mupen64 for emulation there.
So, let's try a more complex N64 game, Goldeneye 007.
Well, when I tried to start this game in Mupen64, RetroArch crashed.
I even tried with an older version of the emulator, but with no luck whatsoever.
Then, I installed another core available in RetroArch, called ParallelN64.
Using this core, the game actually started, but the game itself was not very playable.
The peformance was bad, even though there were no graphical glitches.
It looks like this emulator uses an interperter instead of a recompiler, so it needs much
more CPU power to get acceptable performance.
So, while this game was not playable on my phone, you may get better results with a better
CPU.
Before moving on to more recent home consoles, let's see how do 3D handhelds perform.
Firstly, let's check out the Nintendo DS.
For the emulator, I used DeSmuME, which is also available in RetroArch.
The problem is that this emulator also does not have a recompiler mode on Android systems,
so I had to stick with the slow interperter mode.
So, the results are not very surprising.
The first game I tried playing was New Super Mario Bros., which may seem like a 2D game,
but it actually uses 3D sprites and elements.
Well, I do not have the patience to actually play this game, because it would be too slow
to be enjoyable anyway.
The same happened to Mario Kart DS, but in this game, it was just too slow to play, even
in time trial mode, where I did not have any CPU opponents.
But, let's say some positive things, I was able to take advantage of my smartphone's
touch screen and use the bottom screen of the DS like it was intended to be.
So, there is actually an emulator for Nintendo DS which works much better on Android, and
even works better than any DS emulator on PC at this point.
It's called DraStic, and is available as a separate app in the Play Store.
However, this app is not for free, even though it doesn't cost as much.
I did not buy this emulator because I don't really like to play Nintendo DS games, but
if you're looking for a working emulator, you should definitely give it a try.
Fortunately, PSP emulation worked much better.
While PPSSPP is also available in RetroArch as a core, it is much better to use the standalone
official app if there is one, and that's the case now.
The emulator defaults to run in twice the internal resolution and in Vulkan mode.
So, that's what I used to run Ratchet & Clank.
The game was running in a constant 30FPS, with only minor slowdowns, mainly while loading
the game.
The controls were okay, but using the shoulder buttons with others at the same time can be
very difficult when using the on-screen controls, so a real controller is highly recommended
for this system.
God of War: Ghost of Sparta is a more complex game on this system, and that also came with
a slower framerate.
In this case, I had to turn down the internal resolution to the native level, and also had
to turn on frameskip to deal with the slowdown.
While it was not perfect, but the game was actually playable.
Okay, and now let's switch back to home consoles, and move a step forward.
The first sixth-generation game console I'm going to try is SEGA's short-lived Dreamcast
console, which was the first console in it's generation.
For emulation, I used reicast, which is available as a separate app in the Play Store.
You have the option to use a BIOS ripped from your own game console, or to use the emulator's
own.
I recommend to use an original BIOS though, because it gives you better compatibility
and sometimes better performance as well.
In this video, I have only one game to test, and that's Sonic Adventure 2.
While the on-screen controls were a bit of a headache to use, the game was able to keep
a stable framerate between 50 and 60 FPS, so it was actually better than what we saw
on Nintendo 64.
Sadly, the PlayStation 2 emulation is not that great though.
For emulation, I used DamonPS2 Pro, which is also a paid app on the Play Store, and
it's actually not the cheapest one there.
However, we don't really have any other option there, because at the moment, that's the only
emulator on Android capable of running commercial PS2 games on a playable or near-playable level.
But it's still far from perfect.
After setting the path to the BIOS files and getting some credits to play games by watching
videos, I managed to boot Sonic Unleashed, a game from 2008.
While Sonic Unleashed was originally made for Xbox 360 and PS3, there was also a kind
of dumbed down version available for PS2 and Wii consoles.
As you can see, the game did not run very well on this phone, even playing the pre-rendered
intro of the game was a pain in the neck.
Slow speed was not the only issue, however: I also had to face with some visual glitches.
I did not try to get into some real gameplay in this game, but if you're watching other
videos of this emulator running on Youtube, you can see it's very hard to get an acceptable
framerate there even with a flagship device.
Despite all the facts, I think this emulator will improve in the future, and with phones
being more and more powerful by every year, we will be able to play our favourite PS2
games on Android one day.
Okay, for the last two systems, I'm going to use Dolphin, which is also well-known on
PC.
In fact, that's the first and only emulator to work with GameCube and Wii games even today,
but it's not a big problem, because the emulator itself is free, open-source and has very high
compatibility which gets better almost day by day.
Dolphin also has it's own Android port, and while it is available as a RetroArch core
and as a separate app in the Play Store, I'm not going to use these versions, because on
the official website, you can download much more recent builds as an apk file.
The emulator comes with a wide variety of options to change, including the switch between
OpenGL and Vulkan modes as well.
In this video I'm going to use OpenGL, because Vulkan support is still experimental, and
does not really work well with mobile GPUs at the moment.
Let's try two GameCube games.
The first one is Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, a first-party title released by Nintendo.
This is where it became clear that my phone is too weak to emulate these or any newer
home console games.
While there were no graphical problems, the game was just too slow to be playable.
Since the opening scene is rendered in real-time, you can actually see that while the performance
is not as bad as it was with PS2 games, it's still not enjoyable at all.
Anyway, I also tested a second game on this system, Need For Speed: Most Wanted.
I have to say it was even worse, which is not surprising, since it's a liter title with
more advanced graphics.
But the good news is that you can actually get playable speeds on these games by using
a more powerful device, you can actually see that if you search a bit on YouTube.
And finally, let's see how Wii emulation was working on the system.
Well, I did not have any hope for getting an acceptable framerate in this game, and
that was something I was right about.
But actually, Super Mario Galaxy 2 on Wii worked better than Need for Speed did on the
GameCube, so that was a bit of surprise.
Anyway, it was still not playable, so I did not get any longer in the game than the first
few screens.
So, in conclusion, you can see that the emulation of 2D systems and games worked pretty fine
on a mid-range Android smartphone, while 3D systems and games came with somewhat mixed
results.
NES, SNES, Genesis, GBA, PS1 and Dreamcast emulators were running with perfect or almost
perfect performance and no graphical glitches.
Nintendo 64 was a so-so experience, with some games working fine and some games working
slow or not running at all on specific emulators.
PSP emulation was about the same as Nintendo 64, with few games having stable FPS even
on lower end devices, but for some games you may have to use frameskips or lower internal
resolutions depending on your smartphone.
Nintendo DS did not really work for me, but using a different emulators it should be able
to work with no problems even on slower smartphones.
Nintendo GameCube and Wii emulation really needs a flagship device to get a smooth framerate,
but if you have the hardware, it should work without any problems.
And there was the PS2, which definitely needs some work before it gets stable and playable,
but it's actually on it's way there.
Of course, there are other emulators for other systems available on Android as well, but
I did not have the time to try all of them, but I may show these in a later video.
Thank you for watching, if you've enjoyed my first video on this channel, please leave
a like, or leave a dislike if you didn't, and also don't mind to comment your own thoughts
and if you want to see more content like this in the future, subscribe to my channel.
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