Chances are, you’re finding yourself with a little extra time on your hands these days, and increasingly looking for new ways to keep yourself entertained. That could spell starting some new projects, catching up on your reading list, or spending some quality time with a video game or two. And while there are plenty of hot new games landing all the time for Android and Stadia alike, you’d be doing yourself a disservice to ignore the utter mountain of classic games just waiting to be checked out right on your phone thanks to the magic of emulation.
For the better part of the past 35 years now, gamers have been using some clever software to reproduce the functionality of older consoles on newer hardware. By faithfully emulating the behavior of all the components that built up those gaming machines — everything from the CPU, to audio and video chips, to all input/output circuitry — and pairing that with a copy of the game software (most often referred to as the ‘ROM’) you can relive these classic titles without needing any of the original equipment.
While emulation got started on the PC, like pretty much all software these days, emulators have migrated to smartphones — and done so in spades. With the right app, and access to the right ROMs, you can play anything from a blocky Atari 2600 (or VCS to you cool kids) game to relatively modern Wii titles. So what do you need to start emulating?
Get started with video game emulation on Android: apps, ROMs, and everything else you’ll need
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