The XPeria Play smartphone is the first Android phone from Sony to include a built-in Playstation emulator that allows you to play classic PSOne games purchased from Sony. But developer yifanlu has spent the last week or so working on a way to get the phone to run games that aren’t officially available for the phone.

People have been taking classic Playstation game discs and converting them to ISO files for use on emulators for ages. There are a handful of unofficial Playstation emulators available for Android that can already handle these files. What’s new here is that yifanlu’s tool will make it possible to run those games using Sony’s official emulator and Sony’s first so-called Playstation phone with a built-in gamepad. The combo could offer the best classic gaming experience available on an Android device.

Yifanlu plans to release his tool to the public in the next few days. For now you can follow the project’s progress at the xda-developers forum and at the developer’s website. You can also check out the video below which shows Crash Bandicoot 3 running on the Xperia Play.

While there are a number of ways to download Playstation ISOs from the internet, the closest thing to a legal way to obtain disc images is to use a computer to convert an original Playstation game disc into a digital file that you can use with an emulator or burn to another disc. Odds are you won’t get sued (or discovered) by Sony for doing that. Whether the developer behind the tools that help you run old Playstation games on your phone will get sued is another story.

via Phandroid

Coming soon: Run any Playstation game on the Sony Xperia Play (unofficially) is a post from: mobiputing

Say you love your iPhone or iPod touch, but you’ve always kind of wondered what it would be like to use Android instead. You could go all out and actually install Android on a jailbroken iPhone. Or you could take the easier route and simply install iAndroid, a free Android simulator available from the Cydia store.

While iAndroid won’t give you the full Android experience, it does offer a rough approximation of the Android experience. When you load iAndroid you’ll see a nice big HTC Sense-style widget with the time (although there’s no weather data). There are also icons for Settings, Phone, Twitter, Facebook, Camera, and Browser.

The phone and camera functions actually work, allowing you to make calls or take photos – although you won’t necessarily get all the bells and whistles you would with the default iOS apps. The web browser works reasonably well, but there aren’t any advanced features such as support for browser tabs or Adobe Flash (obviously).

The Twitter and Facebook apps are actually just links to the mobile web sites, but they work pretty well. Because there are no hardware buttons, an on-screen “home” button appears in most apps, allowing you to go back to the virtual home screen. There are no buttons for search or menu though.

You can also swipe between virtual home screens to view additional apps and a few widgets. Or you can tap the grid button in the center to see a full list of apps including a calculator, a simple paint app, and a music player which is a we-based app that streams songs from Myousic.me and which works pretty well. It doesn’t look anything like the default Android music player, but it’s nice to have a working music player in the iAndroid simulator.

You can launch iAndroid like any other iOS app and you don’t have to reboot your device. If your device supports multitasking, you can also switch between iAndroid and any other running apps quickly and easily — although it doesn’t support background audio streaming.

Honestly, the whole thing is much more of a neat trick or gimmick than a useful tool. But it’s still kind of cool to be able to trick out your iPhone to look like Android… even if the illusion disappears when you exit the app.

via iPhone Download Blog

iAndroid is an Android simulator for jailbroken iPhones is a post from: mobiputing

Google has removed some of the most popular video game console emulators from the Android Market. Developer yongzh tells Engadget that his account as been terminated and that Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid, GBCoid, and Gameboid have all been pulled from the Android Market.

This comes on the heels of last month’s removal of Gensoid and the removal of psx4droid in March.

Emulators have always been on shaky ground. They don’t necessarily violate copyright law, since the code used is often reverse engineered rather than copies from original game consoles. But emulators are used almost exclusively to play games which are protected by copyright. While it’s theoretically possible to rip your own game from a cartridge or disc, it’s pretty difficult to do and most people simply download game files or ROMs from the internet illegally.

So it’s not particularly surprising that few emulators have ever been approved for sale in Apple’s iTunes App Store… and honestly it’s not shocking that Google is cracking down on emulators in the Android Market.

The good news for emulator fans is that you can install apps on most Android phones and tablets without using the Android Market. You need to jailbreak an iPhone to circumvent the App Store, but yongzh has simply moved all of his apps to SlideME, a third party app store for Android which should work with most phones except for a handful of devices on AT&T’s network which are incapable of installing non-Market apps (without at least jumping through some hoops).

All of the emulators from yongzh will be available for free for a limited time from SlideME, allowing existing users to grab the latest versions without paying twice.

It’s possible that the apps weren’t pulled simply because they allow you to run illegally downloaded games or because they violate any trademarks or copyrights though. Some folks allege that the problem may be in the way yongzh used open source software to develop his apps without complying with all the terms of the original license.

via Engadget

Google’s war on game console emulators continues is a post from: mobiputing

One issue which has reared its ugly head on most current tablet OSes is how to deal with legacy apps. For the upcoming HP TouchPad and the shiny, new webOS 3, the challenge is how to handle apps created using the older Palm Mojo SDK. As the Touchpad nears launch readiness, however, HP has finally revealed its response in the latest beta build of its tablet emulator.

Right now, Mojo apps default to running in their original resolution — a Pre-friendly 320×480. As you can see, the emulator also defaults to rendering a virtual handset around the app. HP has included a way for developers to tag their apps so as to utilize the TouchPad’s full 9.7″ display, though doing so causes the virtual gesture area to disappear. That’s not a problem if an app offers other built-in navigation options, but it could certainly cause issues in some cases.

Of course, the emulator is still in its beta form and HP has released four versions between April 12th and now. As they continue to update, the rough edges will no doubt be smoothed out.

via PreCentral

Mojo app support appears in HP TouchPad Emulator Beta 5 is a post from: mobiputing

After Google pulled the psx4droid Playstation emulator from the Android Market, the developer has decided to offer the app as a free download. As long as you have a phone that lets you install non-Market apps, you can download psx4droid 3.0 and install it manually. The developer has also released the source code for the project.

Version 3.0 of the emulator is based on the open source PCSX-ReARMed emulator, and developer zodttd says it’s faster than older versions of psx4droid. Unfortunately saved game stats from previous versions won’t work with psx4droid 3.0.

Zodttd’s move to release the source code is kind of a big deal, because he’s been accused of coding apps in the past that are based on open source software licensed under the GPL, but failing to release the code for his apps — which is a violation of the GPL terms.

According to the developer, the GPL issue had nothing to do with the app being removed from the Android Market though. He says Sony asked Google to pull the app because the app’s icon included graphics that were covered by a Sony trademark.

While psx4droid was the first Playstation emulator for Android, it’s not the only game in town anymore. The popular FPse emulator was ported to Android recently and it’s available from the Android Market for just over $5.

psx4droid Playstation emulator for Android goes open source (and free) is a post from: mobiputing

I’ve seen software that lets you run Google Android in an emulator window on a Windows PC, but a company called BlueStacks is taking things to a much higher level. SlashGear reports that BlueStacks offers software that lets Android run on a Windows computer through virtualization, allowing you to run an Android app in one Window while Windows apps are running in other windows. You can quickly and easily flip between Android and Windows apps — and you can use your Windows drivers and utilities from the Android environment to print web pages, documents, or other items.

The system isn’t perfect. There’s no access to the Google Android Market, for instance, but BlueStacks does let users download apps from the Amazon Appstore, which is quickly becoming the biggest competitor to Google’s app marketplace.

Of course, many Android apps were designed for touch input and aren’t going to work all that well with a PC that relies on a keyboard and mouse. But if you have a Windows tablet or a desktop or laptop PC with a touchscreen display BlueStacks gives you access to thousands of touch-friendly apps without leaving Windows.

BlueStacks will be available for download later this year. The company is also working to get the software preloaded on PCs.

BlueStacks lets you run Android apps on a Windows PC is a post from: mobiputing

The first PlayStation emulator for Android devices has been pulled from the Android Market due to intellectual property issues. The psx4droid emulator has been helping bored Android users get their nostalgic gaming fix since last summer. But today the developer Tweeted that Google removed the app from the Market.

In case you’re wondering though, it’s possible that the alleged content violation likely has nothing to do with the fact that the emulator allows you to run PlayStation games. The FPSe emulator is still available for download from the Android Market. Some folks are suggesting the difference is that psx4droid is based on source from another PlayStation emulator called PCSX, but doesn’t comply with the GPL license used by that software.

If you already installed psx4droid you should be able to continue using it, and there’s nothing preventing the developer from continuing to distribute the app outside the Android Market. But psx4droid developer zodttd says he’s rather find a way to return the app to the Market than to distribute it through a different app store, because he want to make sure that customers who have already purchased the app can easily upgrade to new versions of the emulator.

Update: Android Police has another theory. Apparently Sony has a trademark on the term “PSX,” so it’s possible that zodttd could get the app back into the market with a name change. Meanwhile Engadget notes that Sony’s Xperia Play phone with support for PlayStation games is due out soon. Coincidence?

psx4droid PlayStation emulator removed from the Android Market, FPSe lives on is a post from: mobiputing

When Amazon launched its Appstore for Android last week, one of the features I was most interested in checking out was the “Test Drive” option which lets you launch apps in a browser window to try before you buy (or download). Unfortunately, at the time I couldn’t for the life of me find a single app to test drive. Even the Bubble Blaster game that was featured on Techcrunch didn’t show me a test drive button.

But this weekend Engadget ran another article on the Test Drive feature, and it looks like Amazon has seriously stepped up the number of apps that you can check out in your web browser, because I’d say that more than half of the apps I clicked on today offer a demo mode.

Basically what’s happening behind the scenes is that Amazon is loading a cloud-based Android emulator to run the application. You can test an app for up to 30 minutes at a time using the web demo. It can be a bit tricky to play a touch-based game using only a mouse pointer, but the service should give you a good idea of whether or not you want to devote precious disk space (and money) to an app before downloading it.

In fact, now that Google has reduced the refund window for Android Market purchases to 15 minutes, the Appstore for Android actually gives you more time to decide whether you really want an App than the official Android marketplace.

What’s more, you can actually exit most games and just use the Android emulator — although you won’t be able to install other apps or surf the web in the browser, since keyboard input is disabled.

The Amazon Appstore is only available for US customers at the moment, so the test drive feature won’t work outside of the US.

Amazon Appstore for Android lets you “test drive” apps in your web browser is a post from: mobiputing

With the launch of webOS 2.0, Palm eliminated some of the underlying code that MotionApps needed to get Classic working properly. So MotionApps abandoned the project.

But now an independent developer named Arthur Thornton has posted information on how to get Classic to work on devices running webOS 2.0 and 2.1.

Sure, old Palm OS apps might not look as pretty on a Palm Pre 2 or other new phone. And they may not have been updated in years. But if you rely on an app that isn’t available for webOS, or if you just don’t feel like paying for the new version when you’ve already paid for the old, then Classic can certainly fill a need.

via PreCentral

PalmOS emulator unofficially ported to webOS 2.1 is a post from: mobiputing

We’ve seen GameBoy emulators, PlayStation emulators, and even a Nintendo DS emulator for Google Android. What’s next? An app that lets you run Nintendo 64 games on your phone. Developer yongzh has released the first N64 emulator for Android. It’s called N64oid and you can download it now from the Android Market for $5.99.

The developer says the app is still a work in progress, but he says that most games should run reasonably smoothly on phones with fast processors including the Google Nexus One, Nexus S, Motorola Droid series, or Samsung Galaxy phones.

The emulator lets you save and restore game states from any point in the game. It also has a configurable on=screen keyboard and key mapping to let you use your phone or tablet’s hardware buttons. You can also use your device’s G-sensor as an analog stick.

Of course, the emulator is useless if you don’t have digital copies of some N64 games, but you’re on your own finding those.

via Android Police

Nintendo 64 emulator hits the Android Market is a post from: mobiputing

The popular mobile Playstation emulator FpseCE is now available for Google Android. Appropriately, the developer has dropped the CE (which stood for Windows Compact Edition) from the name, and you can now download FPse from the Android Market for just under $5.

Sony is actually expected to launch its own PlayStation app for Android soon, making classic PlayStation One games available for purchase. The advantage of using a third party emulator such as FPse or psx4droid is that you can rip your own CDs to play most PSOne game (or download games off the internet… for titles you already legally own, of course).

FPse for Android also supports Android 2.2 and up, while the Sony app will require Google Android 2.3.

Some early users are reporting bugs in the FPse forum, but developer seems to be actively working to improve performance.

via reddit

FPse PlayStation Emulator now available for Android is a post from: mobiputing

The developer behind a series of popular game console emulators for Android such as the Tiger GBA Emulator and Tiger SNES Emulator has released the first working Nintendo DS emulator available in the Android Market. Unfortunately, working is putting it a bit strongly.

Scan to download

Tiger Lab can open Nintendo DS ROMS, but it’s extraordinarily slow at this point. The developer recommends only trying the emulator on high-end phones, and sticking with small games without 3D graphics. He expects it could be another year or two before a truly usable DS emulator is available for Android devices — and it will likely take more powerful phones as well as software enhancements to get there.

That said, if you want to get a glimpse of the future, Tiger Lab is available as a free download from the Android Market.

via PocketHacks

Nintendo DS emulator for Android now available… barely works is a post from: mobiputing

Sure, Sony is getting ready to launch the Playstation Suite for Android, allowing you to purchase and run classic Playstation games on Android devices. But the Suite is only expected to work with Android 2.3 and up… and what are the odds it’s going to work with your existing PSOne ROM collection? Fortunately, Sony isn’t the only game in town.

There’s already a popular PSOne emulator for Android called psx4droid. Now it looks like we could soon see a second emulator in the Android Market. Mobile developer Schtruck plans to port FPSeCE, a popular Windows Mobile Playstation emulator to run on Android.

FPSeCE has been around for years, and I remember using it to play Final Fantasy VII on my Dell Axim x50v more than 4 years ago. Sure, it was a little sluggish on the PDA’s 624 MHz processor. But for RPGs and other games where speed isn’t necessarily of the essence, it worked amazingly well.

I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how the emulator handles modern Android devices with 1 GHz or faster processors.

Bear in mind, emulators like FPSe can be a bit tricky to use. First, you need a valid BIOS file from an original Playstation device. Second the emulators exist in a legal gray area at best, since it’s usually easier to just download games from the dark corners of the internet — even though it’s technically possible (if not easy) to rip CDs from your own game collection (which is what I did with FFVII, and man did it take a long time).

Schtruck says FPSe should hit the Android Market soon. To tide you over, he’s posted a few videos of the app in action, which you can check out after the break. It looks like the app lets you choose several different input methods including on-screen controls. There’s support for saving game states, skipping frames to improve performance, and you can play in both portrait and landscape modes.

via PocketNow

FPSeCE Playstation Emulator coming to Android is a post from: mobiputing

Google released the Software Developer Kit for Android 3.0 Honeycomb today, as well as some screenshots and details about the upcoming tablet-friendly version of the Android operating system. The SDK includes an emulator, which lets you run a test version of Honeycomb from a PC.

Right now the emulator is in the very early stages and it’s clunky and slow as all get-out, and therefore doesn’t provide a great sense of what the actual user experience will be like. It also seems to be stuck in portrait mode. But I decided to spend a few hours installing the SDK and tinkering with the emulator anyway to see if I could get a better sense of how Honeycomb will look and feel.

The first thing you’ll notice is that Google has replaced the hardware buttons and notification bar with a single bar at the bottom of the screen. From here you can always press the Back, Home, or Recent Apps button, as well as check the time, wireless signal, and battery life.

The home screen isn’t all that different from what you get on older versions of Android. Google offers multiple screens which you can customize with wallpapers, widgets, and application icons. There’s also a search bar at the top of the page and an Apps button which you can use to pull up the full list of available apps. Out of the box, this developer preview doesn’t come with many apps at all.

The web browser is one of the few apps that has change significantly, thanks to support for browser tabs. Unfortunately the browser crashed every time I tried to load a second tab. So I could only get a screenshot of the web browser loading its home page — Google.

When you tap-and-hold on the home screen you get a new customization menu which lets you change wallpapers, add widgets, shortcuts, or other items. I experienced a number of crashes when exploring this section, but I did manage to change out the wallpaper once.

While Google promises that the Recent Apps menu will show real snapshots of recently used applications, in the emulator it seems to simply show icons — but the large rectangles around the icons suggest that support for thumbnail images may arrive in a software update.

The Settings menu doesn’t appear to have changed all that much, except that there’s now a two-panel view, allowing you to view the complete list of Settings categories on the left while making changes on the right. That means, you can flip between the Wireless & networks, Sound, or Applications menus with a single tap now. There’s no need to hit the Back button.

The contact manager has also been redesigned to make better use of the large screen.

I couldn’t get the on-screen keyboard to pop up while using the emulator. Instead, when I tapped on a text box, I was able to use my computer’s keyboard to enter text. But there is an icon in the system-wide status bar which lets you change your input method if you want to change the default keyboard.

Overall, Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb looks like exactly what it is: Android redesigned for devices with larger displays. While the early demo videos released by Google made the OS look like a revolutionary departure from Android 2.x, now that I’ve played with Honeycomb for a while, I can say it still feels a lot like Android — and that’s a good thing, since many of the people who are likely clamoring for an Android tablet are Android phone users. I suspect they’ll be right at home using upcoming tablets such as the Motorola Xoom which will ship with Android 3.0.

First look at Android 3.0 Honeycomb UI (thanks to the SDK) is a post from: mobiputing

The developer of the first Playstation emulator for Google Android is back, with version 2. The new app adds a framerate counter option and automatic frameskipping to make games play more smoothly. The developer recommends only running psx4droid v2 on phones with 60MHz or faster processors.

The new app is on sale for $1.99 for a limited time. The original app is still available from the Android Market for $5.99 — and the developer is not offering a free upgrade to the new version, so if you want the latest bug fixes, you’re going to need to pony up a few bucks. The developer says the reason for the new version is that save states from the old emulator aren’t compatible with the new app.

Keep in mind, the emulator requires a valid PlayStation BIOS file to run properly. If you don’t know what that means, you might want to check out a set of step by step instructions for using psx4droid from xda-developers.

via Droid Gamers

psx4droid Playstation emulator for Android hits version 2, goes on sale is a post from: mobiputing

We’ve seen plenty of Nintendo and GameBoy emulators for Android, and even a Playstation1 emulator. Now it looks like there’s a Dreamcast emulator in the works as well.

The project is based on an open source Seage Dreamcast emulator called nullDC. The developer is porting the app to run on Android, and while it’s still in very early stages, the emulator does boot and load the Dreamcast ROM on Android phones. You can see it in action in the video after the break.

Unfortunately, there are currently no touchscreen-based controls and no there’s no way to actually run a game. But if all goes according to plan, you may one day be able to play classic Dreamcast games on your Android phone.

Update:Well that was fast. The developer has posted a few videos of games running with nullDC on the Samsung Galaxy S. You can check them out after the break.

via Android Central

Dreamcast emulator for Android in the works is a post from: mobiputing

The folks who brought us the first officially sanctioned Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone are ready their encore: an Amiga emulator for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

The new app is called iAmiga, and the developers at Manomio have worked out deals that will allow them to offer classic Amiga games.

TouchArcade got a chance to check out an early build and reports that the app has excellent graphics and audio and gameplay is pretty much perfect on an iPhone 4. The app still has a few rough edges — the onscreen keyboard, mouse and joystick will eventually be replaced with better versions.

It’s likely that Manomio will release the emulator in two different ways. You may be able to download it as a standalone app and purchase games in-app. You may also be able to purchase games directly from the App Store, and they’ll be bundled with a version fo the emulator so that they can run properly on your iOS device.

You can check out a demo video from touchArcade after the break.

via TUAW

Amiga OS emulator coming to iOS is a post from: mobiputing

Google provides an SDK and developer tools for Android that will let you run an Android emulator on a PC. But if you just want to check out Android or try an Android app without buying a phone or fumbling through developer tools, there’s an easier way. YouWave is a free app that lets you install Android and run it as a PC app on Windows 7, Vista, or XP.

YouWave currently runs a version of Android 2.1 which has been tweaked to run on x86-based processors. Some apps, such as Angry Birds, won’t run properly since they require ARM-based chips, but many other apps will run just fine. I tried Newspapers and Robo Defense on YouWave this morning and both worked quite nicely.

Navigating through the Android interface with a mouse and keyboard is sort of a strange experience. The Home, Back, and Menu buttons are all located at the top of the screen and you need to use a mouse to trigger them. On the other hand, it’s kind of nice being able to launch the web browser and enter a URL with a full sized QWERTY keyboard.

YouWave felt a bit slow when navigating through menus on my system, but my primary PC is a couple of years old. It may run better on newer hardware. Once apps were loaded, most of the apps I tried ran at full speed.

In order to run a third party app, you have to double-click on it in the window on the left. This loads it in the Android system in the right window. You can download and install some third party apps directly from the YouWave interface, or manually add downloaded APK files to the apps directory. They won’t show up in the app launcher window in the Android system.

You can check out some more screenshots, as well as a demo video after the break.

via Android Central

Run Google Android 2.1 on Windows with YouWave is a post from: mobiputing

HP has decided to remove the Palm OS ROM from webOS 2.0 — which means that while anyone with an older version of webOS can install an app called Classic to run… well, classic PalmOS apps on the Palm Pre or Pixi, there’s officially no way to run Palm OS apps on webOS 2.0.

Motion Apps, the company behind Classic has already made it clear that there won’t be an official Classic app for webOS 2.0. But it turns out that all hope is not lost.

It turns out that if you extract the Palm OS ROM from webOS 1.4.5 and install it on a webOS 2.0 device like the Palm Pre 2, you should be able to get Classic to work.

It seems likely that HP and Palm left out the ROM simply because many users didn’t need it, but it was taking up space — or because the company wants to encourage developers to write new apps for webOS and for users to upgrade to new apps instead of relying on legacy apps for Palm OS.

You can find step by step instructions for installing the Palm OS ROM at PreCentral.

How to run classic Palm apps on WebOS 2.0 is a post from: mobiputing

Ever wish you could play classic PC games from the 80s on your iPad? Or how about run Windows 3.0 on your iPhone? Now you can. Fast Intelligence has released an app called iDOS for iOS, which is based on the open source DOSBox project. It basically gives you the tools you need to run old school DOS applications on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

iDOS is available from the App Store for $0.99. The app includes an PC-like on-screen keyboard, mouse support, and the ability to force a 4:3 aspect ratio like you would find on most older DOS programs.

In order to load games and other DOS programs onto your iPad, you’ll need to go to iTunes on your computer, select your mobile device, click on the Apps menu, scroll down until you see iDOS in the sharing section, and manually add programs you want iTunes to copy to your iOS device.

Sure, there are thousands of games that are actually written for iOS which offer far better graphics and gameplay on an iPhone or iPad than you’ll get running old DOS games in an emulator. But the nostalgia factor is hard to beat.

Update: And… now it’s gone. Apple pulled iDOS from the app store.

Update 2: But… you can download the app from the Cydia store if you have a jailbroken device. Just follow the instructions at the developer’s web site.

Update 3: As of January 19th, 2011, iDOS is back in the app store — but with some serious limitations.

via Gizmodo

iDOS app for iOS lets you run old PC games on your iPhone, iPad is a post from: mobiputing

Don’t feel like shelling out $5.99 to play Playstation games on your Android phone? No worries. The developer of psx4droid, the first PS1 emulator for Android has released a new “lite” version of the app which lets you play for free (assuming you have the means to either download or rip your own Playstation ROMs and load a Playstation BIOS file on your mobile device).

Scan to download

The only difference between psx4droid lite and the full version is that the full version allows you to load saved games. So if you plan to work you way through Final Fantasy VII in one marathon sitting, you might be able to get by without spending any extra cash. Or you know, the lite app gives you a chance to try out the emulator before deciding whether it’s worth spending your money on the full version.

The app supports BIN, ISO, IMG, PBP, Z, ZNX, and Eboot files and can even work with a WiiMote if you pair the Nintendo controller to your phone over Bluetooth.

You’ll get the best results if you’re using a newer phone with a relatively fast processor.

psx4droid lite: Free version of the only Playstation emulator for Android is a post from: mobiputing

Long before the iPhone, or even the original iPod music player was a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye, Apple launched the Newton PDA. It was either ahead of its time or just a huge flop, but despite having some loyal fans, the Newton never really took off in a big way, and eventually the PDA space was dominated by Palm, Symbian/Epoc, and Windows mobile devices… for a while.

Now it looks like you can relive the golden days though, by installing an Einstein newton emulator on the iPhone. Developer Matthias Melcher has taken the source code from an emulator and ported it to run on the device, and the source code is available for anyone looking to do the same.

Matthias says he plans to submit the emulator to the App Store, but there are plenty of reasons Apple might reject the project.

via TUAW

Einstein Newton emulator ported to iOS is a post from: mobiputing

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.

Scan to download

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

PSX4Droid brings Playstation emulation to Google Android is a post from: mobiputing

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

Playstation Emulator for Android coming soon is a post from: mobiputing

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

FPSECE 0.10.1 Playstation emulator for Windows Mobile is a post from: mobiputing

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

Game Boy emulator ported to the Zune HD is a post from: mobiputing

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

Atari 2600, Amiga 500 emulators coming to the iPhone? is a post from: mobiputing

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

Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone is now available for free is a post from: mobiputing

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

StyleTap lets you run classic Palm OS apps on an iPhone is a post from: mobiputing

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

Windows Phone 7 Series build 7.0.0.6077 extracted from developer tools is a post from: mobiputing