Android Classic Retro Emulator List

There's no "retro emulation" for the iPhone. Due to Apple's "no 3rd party runtimes" rule, emulators are banned from the iPhone. One guy spent a year writing a Commodore 64 iPhone app, only to have it banned! He even negotiated the right to sell games with his app, but Apple banned it anyway.

For the iPhone, Apple 100% controls distribution. It's impossible to install an iPhone app that Apple didn't approve, unless you hack your phone.

On Android, there's no such restriction. Even if an app is banned from Google's store, people can still offer the .apk installer file on their personal website. This has led to a lot of emulators. (Some copyright owners are attempting to censor emulators, by sending takedown notices and legal threat letters. People still leak the .apk file or put it on their personal website.)

Unfortunately, the trend is for stricter and stricter enforcement of copyright law. So far, nobody has been prosecuted or sued for downloading rom images on the Internet. That may change. There is a push to change copyright law from civil to criminal. Why do police arrest someone for growing marijuana and smoking it themselves? Because they can. Similarly, in the future, police may be prosecuting file sharers. Can you imagine a no-knock raid, because someone was suspected of downloading Super Mario Brothers?

Most violent copyright enforcement is focused on movies and music. That may change in the future, with more focus on games.

Nintendo claims that it's illegal to play a game in an emulator, even if you own a copy of the original game. That claim hasn't been tested in court (yet). Nintendo claims that if I want to play Super Mario Brothers on a newer console, I have to buy another license, even if I already bought it once.

It's impossible to legally obtain a collection of all Atari 2600/800 games. If there's no legal option, people will download it via BitTorrent. Even if I hunted down used copies and bought them, the money would go to collectors and not the original game authors.

I'm much more interested in playing games I actually own and played, rather than experimenting with other games. It is interesting to browse in an emulator.

Many games were never released in the USA. If you want to play the arcade version of "Tetris: The Grand Master", your only choice is in an emulator. If you want to play the original arcade version of Mario Brothers, your only choice is in an emulator. (The NES version of Mario Brothers isn't as polished as the arcade version. For example, in the arcade version, if you get to phase 30, you get two bouncing red fireballs! That isn't in the NES version. Also, the NES version doesn't have the icicle levels.)

Most Android emulators are based on open source GPL-ed code, made for other systems. There's one guy "yongzh", who made a bunch of paid emulator apps based on GPL-ed code, without releasing the source of his version. You should be able to find free alternatives. If you know where to look, you should be able to find free versions of most emulators.

There's another nice bit when you play games in an emulator, the "save state" feature. This is useful when you're playing on the subway and have to get off for your stop. It also helps to get past tricky parts of a game.

I didn't see a good emulator app list, so I made one myself! Other lists include paid apps. Here is another list, but it contains lots of paid apps (mostly by yongzh).

I only tested these emulators on my phone, a Droid 3. They may not work at 100% speed on older phones.

Atari 2600

This is was my first game console. Here is the emulator for Atari 2600 on Android.

This is a pretty good emulator. It worked fine on my phone.

I like the way that paddles are emulated via the touchscreen. Super Breakout (advancing walls mode) and Circus Atari are great classic games.

The only negative is that it uses the "camera key" for the reset button. The Droid 3 doesn't have a camera key! After much experimenting, I figured out how to remap the reset button and select button.

It's awkward using the keyboard, but I'm getting used to it. I'm undecided if I prefer the keyboard-as-joystick or the on-screen joystick overlay.

Also, you can't play any games that require two joysticks, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fortunately, only a small handful of games require two joysticks.

It really is amazing that "every game written for the Atari 2600" fits in 0.5GB on my 16GB micro SD card. The same is true for many of these emulators, that the entire game library only uses a fraction of my micro SD card space.

Atari 800

This is another one of my favorite consoles.

Here's one emulator. Unfortunately, development seems to have stalled. This emulator worked, but it wouldn't recognize my keyboard in the "remap joystick" feature.

This emulator seems buggy. It's based on an older version of the Atari800 core. It wouldn't run "Mountain King", so I didn't try any other games.

Allegedly, "kostas" wrote an Atari800 emulator. The droid800 developers claimed that they stopped supporting their emulator, because kostas' was better. He received a legal threat letter from Hasbro, who owns the copyright and trademarks for Atari. He stopped distributing his emulator.

Annoyingly, all the Atari800 emulators expect you to unzip the file before using it. The Atari2600 emulator will directly play zipped rom images.

Also, the Android phone OS can't handle directories with much more than 100 files. I wrote a PHP script that takes a big rom collection and breaks it up into 100 file subdirectories.

Commodore 64

This is another classic console. Frodo C64 seems like the best (only?) emulator.

It had a couple of problems. This emulator seems like it isn't actively developed anymore.

I couldn't figure out how to make "joystick mode" work. I tried one game "Super Pipeline", and it didn't work properly.

I tried it with one game (Super Pipeline), and it didn't work. I also tried "Raid on Bungeling Bay" and couldn't get that to run at all. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

It requires game images to be already unzipped.

It read .D64 format but not .T64 format. I noticed a lot of the rom images were in .T64 format but not .D64 format.

I tried the VICE emulator. I couldn't get that to work either.

Atari ST

I couldn't find an Atari ST emulator for Android. I never had played that console.

Amiga

"AEU4Droid" is the emulator for Amiga. I had never played that console. I didn't try out that emulator.

Apple II

"Candy Apple" is the Apple II emulator. Almost all the good Apple games were released for other consoles. I didn't try out that emulator.

Colecovision

I couldn't find a colecovision emuoltor.

Intellivison

I couldn't find an Intellivision emulator. "Intellivision Lives!" was released for iPhone but I didn't see an Android version.

I have "Intellivision Lives!" on the Xbox. The only Intellivision game I really like is Astrosmash. The Intellivision version of Astrosmash is better than the Atari 2600 version.

Dosbox

This is a great emulator. You can play old dos games on your phone.

The Droid 3 keyboard doesn't exactly map to the DOS keyboard. The only keys I notice missing were the escape key and function keys. You can map them to the onscreen keyboard overlay, but there's a limit of only 6 keys.

I couldn't get the touchscreen mouse to work, when I tried playing Rampart.

You need to experiment with each game, to see if it's playable in Android dosbox.

The only annoying feature of dosbox is NO SAVE STATES. You can only save your game if the original game supported saves.

Unfortunately, you can't play Windows games on your Android phone. WINE won't work, because the underlying hardware isn't x86.

Fortunately, until around 2000, most games were written for DOS. Those will work on dosbox.

GOG bought the right to sell some old DOS games. They also sponsor dosbox development.

Some people installed Windows on top of a dosbox installation. That seems like an abomination. That works, because dosbox emulates the x86 hardware.

You might be able to install Linux on top of dosbox, and then run WINE from there. That also seems like an abomination. That would work, because dosbox emulates the x86 hardware needed for WINE.

NES

There's "Tiger NES". If you want it, you have to download the "Where are Tigers" app. It was banned from the Google app store.

It was pretty good at supporting key remappings and recognizing my keyboard.

Tiger NES is adware, which is annoying. Also, it only loads roms from \sdcard and won't load from \sdcard-ext.

There was another annoying bit about Tiger's emulators. His emulator asks permission to read your phone # and your real name. I found that disturbing, but there's no other good emulators available.

SNES

There's "Tiger SNES". If you want it, you have to download the "Where are Tigers" app. It was banned from the Google app store.

It was pretty good at supporting key remappings and recognizing my keyboard.

N64

Tiger doesn't have a Nintendo 64 emulator.

Bit64 seemed like a decent Nintendo 64 emulator. I couldn't find it.

Here's a page for a Nintendo 64 open source emulator. It isn't finished yet. Note: this has nothing to do with yongzh's n64oid.

Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance

Tiger has emulators for the gameboy and gameboy advance. I haven't tried them yet.

Gameboy emulation seems like a really good idea, because the games were originally written for a handheld.

Sega Genesis

Tiger also has a Sega Genesis emulator.

Sega Saturn

I didn't see a Sega Saturn emulator.

Sega Dreamcast

I didn't see a Sega Dreamcast emulator. There were some people working on porting nullDC (PC emulator), but they aren't done yet.

My favorite Dreamcast games were "Mr. Driller" and "Crazy Taxi".

Sony Playstation

There are two options here. First, there's PSX4Droid. Second, Tiger has a PSX emulator.

MAME

Tiger wrote a partial MAME emulator. It only works on NEO-GEO games and Capcom games.

Some people have ported an older DOS version of MAME to Android.

There no longer is a DOS version of MAME. If there were a DOS version, you could run it under dosbox. You could run an older DOS version of MAME under dosbox.

I considered compiling MAME with dosbox+cygwin. I didn't try.

Apparently, there's a lot of things you would have to change, if you wanted to get the full version of MAME working on Android. Each game has its own special code.

Don't Bother - Not Enough CPU Horespower

In order to get emulation to work, you need a CPU that's a *LOT* more powerful than the hardware you're emulating. Your emulation CPU needs to emulate the underlying CPU, plus all graphics chips and sound chips.

The following consoles can't be emulated, because the phone isn't too much more powerful than the emulated hardware: PSP, DS, Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Gamecube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360.

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I'm trying to make this a complete list. If you notice any errors or omissions, I'll update the post.

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I like my Android "Motorola Droid 3" phone. If you want game emulation, you need the phone with the most CPU horsepower. Right now, that's the Droid 3.

It's really neat that you can run old games on your phone! Technically, it's illegal copyright infringement, but it's not enforced. Hopefully, corporations won't lobby for stricter copyright law and crack down more. Right now, most copyright enforcement focuses on movies and music, but that may change. Most of these older games aren't on the market. They wouldn't be preserved if collectors didn't dump the rom images.

Downloading a 20 year old game is morally equivalent to copying a 70 year old book. Lawyers and judges don't think that way, but it's an important analogy. Copyright shouldn't last forever.

If you own an iPhone, you can't run old games, because of Apple's control freak app policy. Classic consoles are a good reason to pick Android over iPhone. Some of the best Android games are old console games played in an emulator!

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Verizon Promo Fraud

I recently upgraded my Verizon cellphone to a Droid 3. I finally received my new phone via FedEx 1.5 weeks after ordering in the store. The guy in the store originally said my phone would ship the day after purchase. I got two new phones, one for me and one for my sister, on a family share plan.

They had some really confusing promos, when you upgrade.

They have a program "Turn in your old phone for a $100 gift card." I thought we could bring the phone to the store. No. You have to mail it.

When they shipped me my new phone, they included an envelope for turning in your old phone. HOWEVER, that envelope is for donating your phone to charity. If I used that envelope, I wouldn't have received the $100 gift card. That was really confusing and tricky.

I had to separately order a rebate envelope online. However, I need a "promo code". They mailed me the promo code only for my phone, and mailed my sister the other promo code.

I tried their website and it didn't work. I called customer support. I asked "Can't you just mail me the damn envelope?" The support idiot insisted that I use their crappy website.

I finally managed to get it to work.

They also had a "$50 credit for buying a tablet, when you upgrade your phone." When I was in the store the first time, the clerk said "You can wait until later, after the phones arrive, to claim the credit." When we came back 2 weeks later, the clerk said "Sorry! You had to use the $50 credit the same day you upgraded your phone."

I also thought it was a $50 credit on buying accessories. No. It's just $50 credit for buying a phone. It was incredibly confusing and misleading.

Why was Verizon trying to trick me? If I used the envelope they shipped with the new phone, I would have been donating the phone to charity, rather than getting the $100 credit. Why can't they just mail me the rebate envelope like a normal sane person would? Why can't the support clerk just mail me the envelopes, rather than making me use their crappy website? (I'm certainly not computer illiterate. It was a crappy hard-to-use website.) Why make me jump through all these hoops to get a rebate?

Why couldn't they make the promo simple? Why didn't they just give me the right envelope? Why can't I turn my old phone in the store? Why do they make the promos so complicated?

The problem is that Verizon has a monopoly. Even if I get mad and drop them, AT&T and the others are just as bad or worse. Can't I buy a phone without all these stupid and confusing promos? Can't they just give me their best price, without all the stupid tricks?

Fnord Analysis - "Inside Job" Documentary

I saw the documentary "Inside Job". It covered corruption in the financial industry, and the housing bubble/bust/bailout.

One thing overwhelmingly impressed me. Every single person interviewed in the film had the parasitic or psychopathic personality type. Even the people saying "WTF? There's too much corruption!" had the parasitic personality type.

Some parasites go around saying "WTF? This is wrong!", just to provide cover for the other parasites. "Inside Job" was a very weak criticism of the financial industry, compared to my blog.

When people weakly criticize corruption, that helps provide cover for the criminals. "Inside Job" was a very weak criticism of bankster corruption.

However, the issues are very complicated and lies are rampant. Did the filmmakers have a sincere desire to expose the truth? Was that film a whitewash, because it offered criticism but didn't present any serious challenge to the State financial system scam?

If the authors of the film weren't completely clueless, they should have read a little about Austrian economics. That's a pretty serious omission, from a film criticizing the financial industry and corruption among academic economists. (I don't consider myself an Austrian economist, because Austrian economics doesn't include the Compound Interest Paradox.)

"Inside Job" didn't touch any of the "big issues". "Inside Job" failed to discuss:

1. Is having the Federal Reserve central bank a good idea?
2. The Federal Reserve is one big price-fixing cartel.
3. With negative real interest rates, the incentive is for banks to load up on as much debt and leverage as they can. No matter what other reforms you have, negative interest rates give the banksters free money.
   
4. Paper money or a gold standard?
5. Regarding credit rating agencies, the law says that certain institutions may only invest in high-quality debt. The fabricated A credit ratings matter, because the fake ratings allowed more institutions to buy the lousy bonds. "Inside job" briefly criticized the ratings agencies, but failed to mention that the ratings matter due to various laws. (This is a minor but serious error in the film.)

There were some lesser State-approved evils discussed:

1. The banksters own the government via lobbying.
2. The banksters own the economics profession. Many "top economists" have very lucrative side jobs consulting and speaking for the banksters.
3. There's a revolving door between government and big banks. (However, they didn't explain the "Captured Regulators Problem" as explicitly and clearly as I do.)
   

Films like "Inside Job" give me a mixed reaction. It's a step in the right direction, because it is some mainstream criticism of bankster corruption. It's also an evil fnord, because the criticism presented is only a tiny fraction of the truth.

I was shocked by the personality type of the interviewees. All the people interviewed had the parasitic or psychopathic personality type. All of the people interviewed came across as criminals, even the ones saying "WTF? This is wrong!" That was extremely disturbing.

An Interesting Analogy

I thought of a weird analogy.

Consider this "conspiracy theory".

There's no way that high-ranking US Federal government insiders would intentionally allow guns to be sold to Mexican gangsters. There's no way that policemen trying to arrest gun smugglers would be ordered to stand down.

Of course, this "conspiracy theory" is now Official Truth. This is the ATF "Operation Fast And Furious" scandal. The motivation was to create a crisis. This would lead to more laws restricting gun freedom, because Mexican gangsters were caught with guns made in the USA.

(Buying and selling and smuggling guns is not a real crime. That makes this scandal seem silly.)

Consider this "conspiracy theory".

There's no way that high-ranking US Federal government insiders would intentionally allow a large terrorist attack. There's no way that police who tried to prevent the terrorist attack would be ordered to stand down.

This is one variation of the "9/11 conspiracy theory". The motivation for allowing the attack is to create a crisis. This justifies expanding State power and taking away people's freedom.

I still mostly believe the "official explanation" for the WTC terrorist attack. It was a very disturbing analogy. Here are two similar ridiculous conspiracy theories. High-ranking State insiders allowed a crime so they could create a crisis and claim more power. The first story is definitely true. I mostly disbelieve the second one, but I'm not 100% sure.

Fnord Analysis - Al Gore On The Colbert Report

I watched Al Gore on The Colbert Report on Tuesday. There was a really interesting bit.

Watch Al Gore's body language and voice inflection. When he discusses global warming, he strongly implies "Everyone who disagrees with me is a fool!" Watch the body language and listen to the voice. That's very important.

Now that I'm mostly unplugged, I understand better. It's like Al Gore's body language was saying "Yup! This is a hoax! We've got everyone conned!" (Of course, Al Gore himself is probably not aware that it's a hoax. That makes him a more effective liar. He's just doing what his handlers are telling him to do. If Al Gore consciously knew that he was spreading lies, then he wouldn't be able to do it so effectively.)

If you didn't have high emotional awareness and watched that bit, you would think that you were smart for disagreeing with Al Gore, and an idiot for questioning him. If you don't have high logical awareness, you would just agree with Al Gore's emotions and not spot the logical fallacies in "carbon dioxide causes global warming".

Stephen Colbert even jokingly said the truth. "The scientists who promote global warming are all working for the government. Therefore, they can't be trusted." Of course, none of the serious anti-"global warming" arguments were discussed.

To recap, the serious questions are:

1. Exactly how much carbon dioxide causes how much global warming? This has never been satisfactorily proven. In fact, one experiment showed that adding carbon dioxide to air doesn't increase its energy absorption capacity, after about 200 feet of air.
2. It may be a "correlation confused with causation" fallacy. The temperature has risen in the past 100-200 years. Humans have used more fossil fuels in the past 100-200 years. That doesn't prove causation.
3. Increased solar output may be causing global warming, rather than human activity. The sunspot cycle may be a factor.
   
4. The raw data regarding temperature readings was destroyed. Records older than 10 years were destroyed. Scientists intentionally massaged the data, to get the desired results. Only the "massaged" results were kept, and not the raw data.
   
5. The temperature monitoring stations were moved, distorting results. For example, if you move a temperature sensor next to an air conditioner exhaust vent, that will cause the temperature reading to increase. Here is a link that discusses this "conspiracy theory".
   
6. Even if "carbon dioxide causes global warming" is true, global warming may be beneficial overall. For example, temperate regions get longer growing seasons.
7. Even if "carbon dioxide causes global warming" is true, and "global warming is harmful" is true, then the solution is not to give the State more power. Most of the "carbon cap/tax" plans are thinly disguised corporate welfare agreements.
8. "Global warming" and "terrorism" are scare issues. Statists bully the slaves into accepting more State power.
   
9. Another interesting bit is that "global warming" has a lot of similarities to the eugenics movement. The grandchildren of the people who promoted eugenics are now promoting "global warming". Just because a lot of "scientists" believe something doesn't make it true. The truth is not determined by a majority vote.
   

Peer review is a great censorship tool. In "climategate", scientists specifically bragged about corrupting the peer review process to silence critics. If the majority of people believe that "Carbon dioxide causes global warming!" is true, then via peer review it becomes almost impossible to publish dissenting papers. If all science funding comes from the State, then scientists who have dissenting views don't get funding, don't get published, and don't get tenure.

Watching that interview was a really convincing argument for "Global warming is one big hoax!" Watch carefully, to see if you can notice Al Gore's body language and voice inflection, when he discusses "global warming".

New Phone - Motorola Droid 3

I got my new cell phone. It's a Droid 3 from Motorola.

Overall, I like it so far.

The "pentile" screen seems fine. It doesn't bother me. A lot of people said they didn't like it.

The phone is 3G and not 4G. That doesn't bother me, because my primary goal is to use it on the subway. (Ironically, my contract ended and I'm unemployed again. That means I won't be using it for my daily commute. I should find a new job again soon.)

Now that I have free time, I may experiment with the Android SDK.

There were some UI gotchas.

You click on "e-mail" to configure a new account. You have to go to apps-gmail to actually read your e-mail. That was extremely confusing. I kept clicking on email-gmail, and it asked me to configure a new account, but no hint on how to use an already-configured account.

I'm trying to figure out how to get it to stop saying "Droid!" every time I get an E-mail. (I googled and found the answer. Go to the gmail app and change the settings.)

If you want to delete a desktop icon, it's very unintuitive. You have to click and hold the icon, then a trash can appears, then you drag it to the trash.

If you have the phone plugged into the USB port, you can't read any files on the SD card. It mysteriously didn't work, instead of giving a helpful error message.

If you put more than 100-500 files in a directory, the file manager can't handle it. I put an Atari 2600 emulator on my phone, but mistakenly put all the roms in one big directory. It's better to break it up into a, b_c, etc. (I told my coworker about that. He said "WTF? You can make folders on an Android phone? I didn't know that.")

Astro File Manager is a must-have app. I'm using the free ad-supported version.

I'm using jota text editor to write this. There's no plaintext editor that comes with Android. Amusingly, they make text files default to UNIX-style carriage returns, rather than Windows-style CR/LF. You can change that in the settings.

It seems that all the Blogger Android apps suck. I'll do a more detailed analysis later. The jota text editor is still orders of magnitude better than my crappy LG envTouch.

When I plug the phone into my USB port, the sd card nicely mounts as a drive. That was a problem with my LG envTouch. I had a hard time transferring data from phone to PC. The Windows driver was crappy/buggy, and the phone wouldn't mount properly.

I got a 16GB micro sd card from Radio Shack for $25. The 32GB cards were a *LOT* more expensive. They were $60+. Apparently, there's an "external SD card" and also an "internal SD card". There's about 2GB of internal app space. With most apps under 1-2MB, I shouldn't run out.

You can download .apk installer files on your PC and then transfer the file to your phone. That saves bandwidth.

Allegedly, Verizon banned tethering apps, because they want to sell the $10/month tethering package. The Droid 3 seems to support tethering by default. However, I tried it, and it didn't work. (However, I mysteriously get no Internet reception at home.)

The battery ran out quickly on the first day. However, some sites said that it takes a couple of charge cycles before the battery performs at 100%. Allegedly, the newer batteries don't have a "memory". (With old rechargable batteries, if you consistently only used 50% before recharging, then the max charge on the phone became 50%. The new batteries don't have that defect.) After a few days, the battery duration seems better.

I'm not going to bother with a case. I do want to get a screen protector, from my fingerprints and scratches. I've had a hard time finding a store carrying ones that fit a Droid 3. Even the Verizon store didn't have any Droid 3 compatible accessories. I got some generic screen protectors at Radio Shack.

Overall, I like the phone. It seems worth it.