Appnoodle

If you’re a child of the 80s and you’re into your video games you’ll probably have fond memories of the NES, Nintendo’s groundbreaking cartridge based console.

You’ll probably also remember classics such as Zelda, DonkeyKong, and of course Super Mario Brothers. Well, how would it be if you could play them and the rest of the NES back catalogue on your G1? Bloody amazing, that’s what. And guess what? You can – by installing Nesoid, a nifty little NES emulator for Android.

Nesoid is just the enabler though – it’s not enough on its own to get you playing, you’ll also need the game ‘ROMS’ themselves. These are freely available from places like theoldcomputer.com and can be downloaded onto a desktop machine and transferred to your phone or, alternatively, downloaded direct to the phone through a browser. See  end of post for instructions..

One thing to note is that downloading the ROMs (if you don’t already own the original carts) is on the dodgy side of questionable from a legal perspective. Obviously, we wouldn’t condone breaking the law so we’ll move on under the assumption that all our readers are avid NES fans and have those carts tucked away somewhere in their imagination attics.

The games themselves can be stored on the SD card so won’t absorb any of that precious internal memory and all those we tried worked without problems. You can save the game state mid-play which is a nice touch and more than you could do with the original console. Even the sound works pretty well but you can disable it if you run into problems.

The original console used a primitive joypad so mapping keys to the G1 keyboard is necessary (sorry non-keyboard equipped Android device owners). This is handled well by the app and the mappings persist so no need to re-enter them each time you change games. Obviously some games are more suited for playing via a keyboard than others; fighting games, for instance, are ‘awkward’.

Assuming you don’t mind paying for your apps and you understand what you’re buying there can be few complaints about Nesoid. It works surprisingly well and gives you practically unlimited gaming possibilities. But please, don’t expect miracles, before paying for the app remember these games are 25 years old and NOT very sophisticated but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fun.

So fun, in fact, that Nesoid is going in our Essentials category and comes highly recommended. Be aware though that there are some negative comments in the market complaining of in-game lag. We didn’t experience any problems but maybe we’ve just been lucky so far.

Instructions for downloading NES ROMs onto G1

• Download Nesoid from Android Market
• And then, Either:
  • Fire up your PC
  • Google NES ROMs
  • Choose appropriate site
  • Download ROMs to hard drive
  • Connect G1 (using original cable)
  • Mount phone
  • Transfer files to a suitable directory on phone’s SD card
  • Open Nesoid and navigate to /sdcard/wherever-you-put-them
• OR:
  • Visit Android Market on phone
  • Search for and download ‘Steel’ browser (because the standard browser won’t let you download files it doesn’t recognise)
  • Search for and download ‘Androzip’ or similar (to auto unzip downloaded ROMs)
  • Google for NES ROMs in Steel browser on your phone
  • Select and download ROMs of choice
  • Open Nesoid and navigate to /sdcard/steel/downloads
• Enjoy!

Developer:Yongzh
Price: $1.99
Availability: Downloadable from the Android market

Ratings

Stability Rating: (we did have the occasional force close)

Functionality Rating: (it does what it’s supposed to do)

Value Rating: (why shouldn’t developers be paid?)

Overall Rating: