Emulators are making it possible to play retro games—from 1970s arcade games to early 2000s console games—on practically every device in existence. You can play Space Invaders or Super Mario World on your PC, tablet and even on Mac devices.
While it’s true that running emulators on the iPhone or iPod Touch can be a pain due to the smallness of the screen, the iPad is a promising platform. And with the right controller, you’re on your way to reliving gaming good times.
Emulators made for the iOS operating system can run on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Some popular emulators for the iPad are the Snes4iphone (Super Nintendo Entertainment System), Nes.app 2.3.4 (Nintendo Entertainment System), Mame4iphone 1.5.0 (arcade games), Psx4iphone 1.10 (PlayStation) and Genesis4iphone 3.5.0 (Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive). All these emulators can be downloaded from the Cydia store. Note that you need a jailbroken iPad to run emulators and ROM files. To avoid wiping out your data, it’s best to back up
everything in case something goes wrong.
Let’s say you want to play SNES games on your iPad. First, you’ll need to jailbreak the tablet. Spirit Jailbreak is the recommended software for iPads running iOS 3.2.
Run the program, click “Jailbreak” and wait for it to finish. Cydia will be installed after the jailbreaking. Next, go to Cydia and buy the Snes4iphone emulator. Run the emulator and copy your ROMs over to the folder called “/var/mobile/media/ROMs/.”
We’ll be using the Wiimote as a controller, so go back to the Snes4iphone menu andturn on Wiimote Support under “Options.” Hold down buttons 1 and 2 on the Wiimote and let the emulator locate it. You should be all set. The same process applies to the NES, N64 and other emulators for the iPad. Instead of a Wiimote, you can also use an iPhone or iPod touch as a controller. You need the SNES HD emulator to do this as well as jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch.
