We knew it was coming, but I still can’t help but be a little blown away that there’s no an app that will let you play classic Playstation games on a Google Android device. PSX4Droid is now available in the Android Market for $5.99.

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Bear in mind, this is just an emulator. In order to run the games, you’re going to need a valid Playstation BIOS file and a way to get get ROMS for the games you want to play. There are a few different methods for doing this — ranging from downloading illegal files from the internet to ripping files from your own Playstation discs. I have a feeling that the PocketISO tool used for the FPSECE Playstation emulator for Windows Mobile might be useful.

Update: XDA-Dvelopers has a good tutorial on how to make the emulator work and how to get ROMS to work properly in the emulator.

PSX4Droid features on-screen controls, support for using the trackball as a directional pad, and the ability to use a WiiMote as a remote control if you connect it over Bluetooth. You can also save game states, which is a lot easier when gaming on a phone than hunting around for a save point in a game and missing your bus stop.

The app supports Android 2.1 and up.  You’ll also probably get the best results on a newer phone with a 1GHz or faster processor and decent graphics.

You can check out a few videos of Final Fantasy VII, Warcraft II, Ridge Racer, and Crash Bandicoot, and other games on Android devices after the break.

via Android Central and Engadget

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Want to play Final Fantasy VII on your Google Nexus One? Pretty soon, you’ll be able to. That’s because mobile phone hacker ZodTTD is busy building a Playstation emulator for Android.

The emulator will require a fairly speedy phone running Android 2.x, such as Nexus One or Droid Incredible to run. But it reportedly already runs faster on the Nexus One than a similar emulator on the iPhone.

Right now the user interface is still pretty rough, since it’s based on Nintendo and Gameboy Advance emulators for Android. But ZodTTD plans to add Playstation-specific controls. The emulator uses a phone’s touchscreen, trackball, and hardware buttons as controls.

ZotDD is also reportedly working on bringing the VLC media player and a Nintendo 64 emulator to Android.

via MobileCrunch

The folks behind the FPSECE playstation emulator have been building software that lets you play classic Playstation games on Windows Mobile devices for a couple of years. I remember playing Final Fantasy VII on my Dell Axim X50v and it looked beautiful. The only problem is that the frame rate was just a little too slow for the game to be considered truly playable.

Flash forward a few years and FPSECE has made some serious progress — and so have mobile phones. FPSECE 0.10.1 is now available to supporters who donate a few bucks to the cause (The latest free version is FPSECE 0.10), and XDA-Developer forum member Audio Oblivion has posted a video of the new emulator running on a shiny new HTC HD2 Windows mobile phone.

He says he was getting frame rates of 40 to 50fps on most games, and the on-screen controls look like they work really well for most, if not all games.

In order to run most PlayStation games with FPSECE, you’ll need to track down an SCPH1001.bin file and have a compatible Windows Mobile phone. You can find out more by checking out the user manual. And you can check out 10 glorious minutes of Playstation gameplay on the HD2 after the break.

via PocketNow

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There may only be about a dozen apps for the Zune HD in the Zune Marketplace. But third party hackers are doing their best to turn the handheld media player into a full-fledged mobile computer. A few weeks ago we saw the launch of an independent development kit that made it possible to write games and other apps that would take advantage of the Zune HD’s 3D graphics capabilities. And now a developer has ported a Nintendo Game Boy emulator to the Zune HD.

At the moment it can handle Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but no Game Boy Advance titles. The emulator is still a bit rough around the edges. It doesn’t’ support audio, for instance. But the latest release adds support for saved game states, which is something.

You can check out a video of the emulator in action after the break.

via Engadget

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Hot on the heels of news that iPhone app developer Manomio has decided to offer its popular Commodore 64 emulator for free, the company is announcing plans to create two new emulators for the iPhone: Atari 2600 and Amiga 500.

That means you may be able to play classic games including Frogger and Space Invaders on the iPhone and iPod touch. In fact, the developers have already whipped up tech demo videos which you can check out after the break, but the apps aren’t available for download yet.

The controls look… interesting. I’m not a big fan of games that require you to place your finger over the action in order to play. But I suppose a virtual joystick that’s invisible when you’re not using takes up less screen real estate than dedicated buttons.

Manomio still needs to work out the kinks and get the apps approved for the App Store — not to mention working out deals with the original game developers. An emulator isn’t much good if there aren’t programs for it to run, and something tells me Apple and Manomio aren’t going to release the Atari and Amiga emulators just for users that want to run pirated copies of old school games. The Commodore 64 emulator has a built-in app store that lets you purchase classic games. It also comes bundled with a handful of free games.

via TUAW

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The Commodore 64 iPhone App used to cost $4.99. But earlier this month the developer ran a promotion where you could get it for free for a limited time — and downloads increased enough to convince the company to continue offering it for free… forever.

You can still buy games for the C64 emulator using the in-game app store for $0.99 to $1.99  a pop, so nobody’s going out of business based on this decision. But the app still comes with 8 free games, including Dragon’s Den, Arctic Shipwreck, International Tennis, and Jupiter Lander.

Commodore 64 is available as a free download for the iPhone and iPod touch from the iTunes App Store.

You can find a few more screenshots after the break.

via PocketGamer

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Sure, Palm has dropped Palm OS in favor of the new WebOS mobile operating system used on the company’s latest phones. But PalmO S was one of the first great PDA/smartphone operating systems, and there are thousands of excellent applications available for the platform — even if many of them are starting to look a bit dated.

So what do you do if you’ve left Palm behind and moved onto an iPhone or Windows Mobile or Symbian smartphone, but you still have a few Palm apps you’d like to run? You get an emulator, of course.

StyleTap has been offering Windows Mobile and Symbian software that lets you run Palm OS apps for a while. This week the company finally got around to launching a version for the iPhone. There’s just one catch — it hasn’t been approved by Apple and isn’t available in the App Store.

In order to install StyleTap on an iPhone or iPod touch you’ll need a jailbroken device.

StyleTap for the iPhone supports all iPhone and iPod touch models with v3.x firmware and it supports most most Palm apps written for Palm OS 5.2 and earlier. While the Palm apps will run within the StyleTap emulator, you can copy and paste text and images from Palm applications to your native iPhone apps. The program also supports audio recording and playbck and a virtual memory card for storing data.

A fully licensed copy of StyleTap will set you back $49.95. You can also download a 14-day demo version for free.

For instructions on how to install StyleTap, hit up the StyleTap iPhone page.

via Engadget

Yesterday Microsoft released a series of developer tools for Windows Phone 7 Series… including an emulator. And one of the intrepid hackers at xda-developers figured out how to extract the emulator image, which is now available for download as a standalone file. But while this file will give you a peek at the source code for Windows Phone 7 Series, it’s worth noting that this is not necessarily a first step in unofficially porting Windows Phone 7 Series to run on existing phones.

That’s because the emulator was designed to run on machines with x86 processors. You know, like desktops and notebooks running Windows — not smartphones.

While it’s possible that we will see Windows Phone 7 Series ROMS for older hardware, there are a few technical hurdles to leap. First, you need a build that’s designed for ARM-based chips. Second, you need to get around the fact that Microsoft doesn’t expect Windows Phone 7 Series devices to use external storage — which means new phones will have large amounts of internal flash storage and the operating system ROM will likely eat up more storage space than you have on most current phones.

In related news, PocketNow has put together a short video showing the web browser from Windows Phone 7 Series, made using the emulator from the developer tools. You can check out the video after the break.

via SlashGear

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