Emulation on smartphone: how to make an old phone a game rig

An emulator is an app that makes your phone behave like another piece of hardware. Load a game file built for a specific console, and the emulator translates it so your phone can run it.

That translation is heavy work. You need a lot more computing power than the original console had, which is why emulation took off once phone chips got fast. A handset from a few years ago easily outruns consoles from the early 2000s.

Most emulators cover one console each, so expect to install a few apps rather than one. Each comes with on-screen touch buttons, so you can start playing straight away.

A small set of well-known apps covers a huge library. Popular emulators tend to run more games, because more developers work on them and fix problems with individual titles. Newer or niche ones can struggle.

• Dolphin handles both GameCube and Wii games. It is easy to set up and has some of the best game compatibility of any emulator.
• PPSSPP brings back Sony’s PSP library with strong performance and sharp upscaling, which renders old games at a higher resolution than the original hardware could.
• My Boy! is a long-standing Game Boy Advance emulator. It is light enough for almost any phone and gentle on the battery, so it suits the oldest handset you own.
• Haku X is a newer Android emulator for the original Xbox. It runs Halo, Fable and Jet Set Radio Future smoothly, works without the console’s system files (the BIOS), and copes with demanding titles on a mid-range Snapdragon 865 phone. It even recreates the old LAN-party trick of linking consoles, so friends can play Halo together over Wi-Fi. A few games, such as Phantom Dust, still show small graphical glitches.
• Azahar picked up Nintendo 3DS emulation on Android after Nintendo’s legal pressure shut down the older Citra project. Turning off the 3DS’s right-eye image, which was only needed for its 3D screen, gives about a 50% speed boost.

There is also an emulator for the Xbox 360, Xen Droid, but it is newer and game support is patchy.

Yes. For years Apple kept emulators out of the App Store, but it relaxed its rules after the European Union forced wider changes to the iPhone. Delta, which plays classic Nintendo handheld and console games, shot to the top of the download charts in 35 countries soon after it arrived. Gamma followed for the original PlayStation, and PPSSPP is on the App Store as well.

The shift is bigger than it looks. Apple had long been wary of apps that load and run code from somewhere else, the same worry behind its fight against cloud game-streaming apps. Emulators are exactly that kind of app.

Even an iPhone a few generations old has enough power to run most retro emulators without trouble. That makes an upgrade leftover an easy candidate for a game machine.

The main appeal is cost. If you already have an old phone, the core apps above cost you little or nothing, and you get a pocket library spanning several console generations.

Performance is the trade-off. There is no guarantee every game will run on every emulator, and some titles simply refuse to cooperate. Older and cheaper phones are happiest with lighter systems like the Game Boy Advance, while GameCube, Xbox and 3DS games ask more of the hardware. Start with a light game to see how your phone copes before moving up.

A few extras make a big difference:

• A physical controller. Real buttons are more accurate than touch controls and free up the whole screen. Pick a standalone Bluetooth pad or a grip that holds the phone in the middle, Switch-style.
• A magnetic power bank. It tops up the battery without a cable sticking out of the USB-C port while you hold the phone sideways.
• A USB-C adapter with video out. Plug the phone into a TV or monitor, pair a controller, and it works like a small home console.

Emulator apps are generally treated as legal, but the game files (ROMs) are another matter. The accepted rule is that you need to own a physical copy of the game for the same console and make the file yourself by copying it from your own disc or cartridge. Downloading ROMs of games you do not own is illegal.

Nintendo in particular protects its hardware hard. It sued the team behind Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, which ended in a $2.4 million settlement and led several other developers to drop similar projects. So far, neither Nintendo nor Sony has gone after emulators for older consoles that are no longer on sale.

Preservation groups argue emulation matters for history, too. A 2023 study by the Video Game History Foundation and the Software Preservation Network found that about 87% of classic games had effectively disappeared.