Thanks to the triumph of mobile platforms, you can finally get through the entire Shinobi series, replay Legend of Thanks to the triumph of mobile platforms, you can finally get through all the Shinobi games, replay Legend of Zelda, Beyond The Oasis and BattleTech. Or just play Contra and Rock’n’Roll Racing. And you need just one modern gadget, which can easily fit, if not in your pocket, then in your bag.

The emulation of popular retro consoles on mobile devices is a widespread, if not comprehensive phenomenon. More often than not, eight and sixteen bit classics are emulated. Still, the all-pervasive, absolutely massive popularity of games on consoles started in 1983 (whatever fanboys of Magnavox Odyssey and other antiques may say). Nintendo then released the Famicom console, and well, here we go. Soon the NES – the Nintendo Entertainment System, the eight-byte joy of millions of teenagers – hit the market. The world was introduced to Mario and rivals SEGA rolled out the Master System, offering an alternative to the mushroom plumber in the swift Sonic the Hedgehog.

Then 16-bit consoles hit the market and a real Super Nintendo vs. Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The legacy of this marketing war is a collection of great games that would take a lifetime to play. And when you consider that literally everything from Atari to the first PlayStation is emulated, you have to be Dracula to fully experience it – drink some blood and sit down!

How much emulation is legal

As has always been the case with emulators, the legal side of things is a murky affair. On one hand most of games which are interesting for retrogrades, are already become obsolete. Not all publishers who owned the rights to these games have survived to this day, and many DOS-hits have been made available to the public (and free) by the developers themselves.

On the other hand, many publishers are keen to cash in on games that are 20 years old: mobile devices are expected to be a breeding ground for gaming classics. Thus, 8-bit hits began to appear on the very modern and popular Nintendo handheld consoles. And now even the toughest gamers, forgetting about Battlefield and other Gears of War, enthusiastically ruminate in prehistoric platformer Adventure Island, or rediscover the dashing tracks of Mario Kart.

By the way, the very existence of the application, emulating the stuffing of antique game consoles, is not illegal. Any emulator is a useless piece of code without so-called ROMs. ROM is a digitally copied image of a console game. It’s because of ROMs that all the legal stuff happens. Making, downloading and distributing games in this format is piracy in all its flibberishish glory. Nevertheless, the occasional, inconsistent attempt to combat the ROM scene has so far ended up with cannon fire. Images of eight- and sixteen-bit classics are on every corner of the Internet, they’re tiny in size, spreading instantly. So it goes to the emulators, to which, from a legal point of view, it is much more difficult to pick on.

Big companies from time to time organize witch hunts, burning out emulator applications from online shops. So don’t be surprised if some of the applications mentioned in this article might disappear from the radar altogether. That doesn’t stop new versions from popping up (making emulators is a very tenacious scene).

There is a stack of profile applications, some combining a dozen generations of gaming consoles at once. In general, things are such that you can easily carry in your pocket a bunch of hits from consoles NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Sega Mega Drive, Gameboy Advance, etc. The more advanced gamers can even get their hands on emulators of fairly powerful platforms all the way up to the Dreamcast. The global web will tell you how to properly install this or that application and where to get the games themselves.

Under the wing of copyright

The smartest copyright companies are actively mastering the principle of “If you can’t beat ’em, take the lead! Along with the demonstrative cleansing of online application markets, official emulators of console classics are also emerging. Particularly successful in this regard is the company SEGA, releasing the console hits in the format one game – one emulator. That is, all the 16-bit childhood memories of 90s gamers, available in the AppStore (Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, etc.), must be purchased separately. What’s more, SEGA’s own development Virtual Console is far from the most successful emulator, especially against the background of fan projects. Uncomfortable interface and not the best way of screen control spoil everything: gamepad’s cross wheel placed on touch screen covers a part of the screen, and in Golden Axe you can hide a dragon under the buttons.

But a pleasant variety in the life of the law-abiding fan of retro games add some third-party studios. They, too, master the gold mine of classics, but do so in compliance with all legal regulations. Here, of course, is DotEmu, a studio specialising in porting gaming classics to iOS and Android. What really made these developers famous was their top-notch iOS remake of the quest The Last Express. Another World, R-Type and Metal Slug 3 followed. The retro blockbuster has been so carefully transferred from arcade games that it even supports a two-player mode over Wi-Fi.

All in all, it’s certainly possible to get involved in retro gaming if you want to, without stepping outside of the legal boundaries. But compared to what’s going on in the field of unofficial emulators… it’s like peeping through a keyhole.

Classic games on unofficial emulators

Despite their shadowy status, emulators of all sorts of gaming systems abound. And to fully experience the majesty of the first Metal Gear or admire the cartoonish ultra-violence of the Battletoads series, you’ll need a modern mobile device. The processor frequency of a smartphone or tablet is often critical to the speed of emulators. A 1GHz processor on board a mobile device will already allow a fairly wide range of 16-bit games to be played. Plus, the bigger the screen, the more comfortable the virtual gamepad will be. However, it is possible to connect a full-fledged controller if you want to.

Unfortunately, iOS device owners are less fortunate than Android owners in terms of retro gameplay. Official emulators certainly exist, but for wider access to gaming classics have to resort to questionable action called Jailbreak. After that, having dug into the murky depths of Cydia, it’s quite possible to find worthwhile apps. But, all in all, this approach is aerobatics. A Jailbreak not only threatens to lose the warranty, but in especially dexterous hands can turn a cheerful smartphone or tablet into a useless brick.

Nevertheless, there is a ray of light in the dark apple realm. The most widely emulated are the legendary Nintendo NES and Super Nintendo consoles. The most popular emulators usually go by names like nes4iphone or SNES9X (that app, as it’s not hard to figure out, is responsible for Super Nintendo, which means hello, Donkey Kong Country, Metroid and Killer Instinct). SEGA fans will also find plenty of curiosity behind the iron curtain of official iOS firmware. The Sega Mega Drive emulator, which does its job quite well, is succinctly called MD. If the iPad is your gaming platform of choice, then GENESIS A.D. Plus is your choice. Emulator is not only optimised for the modern big screen, so and is able to split the image, allowing dvuhmemerovym play in hot-sitting mode.

Also on the iPhone and iPad emigrated famous Multiple Arcade Machine Emulutor or MAME – emulator of vintage slot machines such as NEO GEO. The first versions of MAME for different platforms appeared in the late 90s, when only Steve Jobs could dream of touch screen phones. Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters were already entitled imperishable classics.

For those who want to remember how the digital entertainment looked like on personal computers, you can turn to another emulator – an old timer – DOSbox. It, too, has been around for more than a decade, and of course, has once again appeared to the world on mobile devices. DOSbox in capable hands will allow to launch Warcraft II, Doom and Fallout on iPad. The version of the emulator for iOS devices is called iDOS, and for obvious reasons Apple does not like it too much. They say the App Store already has a whole selection of solid retro titles. Streets of Rage or the first two parts of Earthworm Jim can be played officially. As are the reworked Myst, Beneath the Steel Sky and Monkey Island. Those who want to run other classic LucasArts quests will need to sweat it out by installing the ScummVM emulator, which will give access to Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and other masterpieces of the golden age of adventure.