Thinking of switching from iOS to Android - Questions about emulators (Xperia Play)

[crimsonnight]

Hi everyone,

I thinking of switching from my iPhone to the Xperia Play when it's out next month, but there's one vital decider for me; how emulation works on the Android OS.

So obviously you have to jailbreak your iPhone, but even then, the options available on Cydia are limited and they're sparsely updated. How is the emulation scene on Android?
Do you need to jailbreak (or the equivilant?) the Android OS to download emulators, or are they available in the store? If so, for example, could a PSP emulator just appear in the store one day and it would't get taken down?

Right, these questions are Xperia specific: Can it support N64/PSP emulation with it's hardware? If so do you know if there are any projects currently in progress?

Thank you for your time!

*EDIT* Is there a definitive list of the best emulators currently available for the different consoles on Android? Or a comparison chart etc?

 

[novox77]

Welcome to the forums!

Google just release a web version of their market so now anyone can browse it:

https://market.android.com/

I know for a fact that you do not need to root the device to run an emulator app, and there are lots of emulators for some of the older consoles (NES, Genesis, SNES, GB, GBA, etc). If you already have ROMs on your PC, you can just copy them onto your SD card (each emulator may have a different folder it looks in for ROMs). Emulators are not considered taboo on the Android Market.

 

[salimundo]

PSX4DROID is a great ps1 emulator that works well on my OG droid so I can only guess it'll be much better on the play. I don't think there are any psp emulators... yet, but I'm sure as the hardware progresses they will show up. As Novox said there are also plenty of other emulators available for older systems as well. They are all in the app store.

 

[yoyohere2]

fpse and psx4droid are great ps1 emulator. But any emulator that is available now on the android market place needs to be rewritten to work with the gamepad. Probably not that hard for developers.

 

[crimsonnight]

cheers guys - fingers crossed that the play will inspire devs to work on an N64 emulator as that would make 98% of my dreams come true

 

[rushmore]

cheers guys - fingers crossed that the play will inspire devs to work on an N64 emulator as that would make 98% of my dreams come true

Tegra 2 plays the N64 app smooth, but the 8255/8655 plays at about 60% the speed. It will take some serious improvement in the app to make it smooth on the single core, or some battery draining overclocking to about 1.5ghz.

 

[Hordriss]

fpse and psx4droid are great ps1 emulator. But any emulator that is available now on the android market place needs to be rewritten to work with the gamepad. Probably not that hard for developers.

They don't need to be rewritten at all. With all the emulators I've got (which is a few), all game controls can be mapped to physical buttons through the input settings menu.

 

[Hordriss]

cheers guys - fingers crossed that the play will inspire devs to work on an N64 emulator as that would make 98% of my dreams come true

There is an N64 emulator in the works. It was available in the marketplace for a while but the dev took it down after too many people complained that it only played a few games at the time. But the guy who is developing it is a reputable guy who has released most of the best emulators for Android, so I'm sure we'll see it again in the not too distant future.

 

[rushmore]

There is an N64 emulator in the works. It was available in the marketplace for a while but the dev took it down after too many people complained that it only played a few games at the time. But the guy who is developing it is a reputable guy who has released most of the best emulators for Android, so I'm sure we'll see it again in the not too distant future.

The main problem the dev is battling is only a few games play smooth on single core chipsets. Mario 64 and a few others play good, but most others are slow on single core, but play fine on the Tegra 2. The TB plays games like Goldeneye slow, gTablet plays it smoothly.