So, I previously mentioned that I’ll be focusing on emulation and see how the Amazon Fire 7 works as an emulation machine and see how much it can get to run. But I’ll be using my Logitech Rumblepad 2 to get a better experience. As we all know, playing console games on a touch screen is a terrible idea, so it’s a must that we can get a controller running too. Note, I wouldn’t have tried this if I didn’t have a controller to use. Which is why I never dared trying this on my other devices.

I don’t delve into a lot of programs, only the ones I can get my hands on. So most of these apps are either free or I got them a few years back. I try once and if works, that’s it. If not, I try other emulators, but I won’t force it if I can’t get it running.

BTW, I won’t say where and how you can get ROMS. You have to figure that our for yourself, since downloading ROMS is a sensitive issue. By the way, getting these emulators are only available on the Google Play Store or on their official websites. There are no emulators found in the Amazon App Store.

Nintendo Entertainment System or Family Computer – Nostalgia.NES Pro

We start with an NES emulator. I install Nostalgia.NES Pro since I already got this a couple of years back I think. But if you want to get the emulator for free, it’s actually easily available at the Play Store, the ads function is not too bothering when I tested it. All games are fully playable, but if you want to actually use a save state function, then you need to get the Pro version. So, I install the app, you need to let the app search for games that are already inside the device, it will automatically do that for you. After that, go to game settings and make sure that te controller buttons correspond correctly. But if you don’t have a controller, it should be fine, you can use a keyboard, anything is good but don’t use the device touch screen. The directional pad is automatically detected. So, you only have to worry about the other buttons.

Once everything is setup, the quality of the NES emulation is outstanding. You can experiment with the shaders to improve the look of the game, but some of the shaders will impact the game performance. But, overall, I think I tested every game I can think of, and all of them worked great.

Sega Mega Drive or Genesis – Retroarch

I couldn’t find a free emulator for this, so I had to try using Retroarch. Retroarch is a multiple machine emulator. It’s designed to play several systems within one application. I wasn’t particularly happy with Retroarch before, because the first time I used it, it felt too confusing. So, I wasn’t really looking forward to see how this goes. Apparently, the second try turned out easily than I expected. So, I install Retroarch, and as usual, I’m greeted to a menu. The first thing on the menu is Load Cores. It turns out, there are no emulators yet, I have to download a particular core, to get an emulator running. It turns out the cores are based on other emulators too. So, once you download a core, you can now play a ROM based on that core. But you have to define the core after loading the ROM.

So, I was able to get Sega Genesis games running easily, but I had problems getting the controller running. I tried a lot of things and it seems that it won’t detect the controller. I did find the input setup, but it could not find the controller. Once in a while, it did, but it will show up as Android Gamepad. I find that strange since the NES emulator found the controller easily.

As I browse through the menus, I did find another section that included where you download cores, you also download Joystick profiles. I try to download that, and see how that goes. Now when I got to the input setup, I now see the Logitech Rumblepad 2. Yey, progress. Now I setup the controller. It won’t recognize the controls. I don’t know why. Also, I noticed that detecting the gamepad is buggy. Sometimes it will detect, sometimes it won’t. The best way to make sure to detect the gamepad was to plug the device when I load the game and go to the input menu, and plug the gamepad. It’s not perfect, and I wasn’t really happy that the gamepad buttons was not being recognized. I’m not really happy with that part, but I’ll see how it goes next time around. But for now, I’m not happy with it.

By the way, one tip regarding Retroarch cores, don’t download everything. If you don’t have a lot of space on your device, it’s not really recommended unless you really want to run everything under Retroarch. Not all cores work perfectly too.

Super NES or Super FamiCom – SNES 9X Ex+

I installed SNES 9X Ex+, again, installation was a breeze. It was a bit problematic accessing folders for some reason to access the roms. It was only reading the internal storage, but I wanted the app to detect the SD card since all the ROMS are stored there. But once you do access the directory properly, it was a breeze. Now to make sure that the controller will work, I go to the Settings page and make sure the keys are working. As expected, the only detected control was the directional pad. I had to again fix the buttons. But other than that, testing any game seems to work well. Although I did notice that Ninja Gaiden Collection didn’t sound right, but it does work nonetheless, anyway, the NES version is still the best anyway. All other games worked great.

Nintendo Gameboy – MyOldBoy FREE

I got this free Gameboy emulator, it’s free in general. You can even finish games and all. The app is ad supported. Interestingly, since the Amazon fire is not connected to Google, the ads won’t show up, but everything works fine. As expected, performance is pretty good. It did emulate Gameboy Color, so some games display color. Although you do have to remember that Gameboy Color had very limited colors, but it won’t look like you are playing an NES game. Same as before, the controller registered properly, but the buttons didn’t. So you have to set it up again. But I suppose, at this point, it’s a breeze. Note that if you are able to connect your device to Google Play, when you load a save state, it will try to convice you to buy the full version and it will show an advertisment. But once you start gaming, it shouldn’t bother you anymore.

Playstation or PSX – Retroarch

I tried installing some PSX emulators, but I had trouble getting them to work. I focused a lot on the freeware stuff since this is mostly for testing, I have no assurance that it will work well on my device. I was about to give up until I thought of using RetroArch instead. After installing the cores, and installed a few games, I can’t install a lot since I really am running out of space. I was surprised that they ran properly even without a PSX Bios, and I’m happy… partially. I realized immediately that the controller was not working, again. I tested it again to configure the gamepad while the PSX game was loaded. And this time, it worked. I was able to configure each button without any issues. I don’t know how and why, but it was working great. I tried Castlevania Symphony of the Night, and I was so engaged that I forgot I was actually writing an article. It was that good.

I still get the problem that the controller doesn’t get detected automatically. I still have to run the game first, go to the input setup screen and plug the controller. Then, that’s the only time, the controller gets detected. But it works after that.

PC Engine and Sega Saturn

I did try a PC Engine (PCE.EMU) and a Sega Saturn (Yaba Sanshiro) emulators but they failed to run. I think it might have been possible to get PC Engine working, but since there was a lot of work to be done to get it working, I just didn’t bother with it. It required coverting disk files into CUE which I have no idea what to do. In terms of the Saturn, it told me that OpenGL is not available, so it won’t start anything.

Nintendo GameBoy Advance – MyBoy! Free

This is a GameBoy Advance emulator, and it’s free! It basically has the same features as MyOldBoy. And setting it up is again, a breeze, same as MyOldBoy. So, if you were able to setup MyOldBoy, this should be easy. Since I got it for free, the same situation with the ads.

Sega Dreamcast – Reicast

I also installed Reicast, a Sega Dreamcast emulator. I had to get a bios though since I can’t flash my own non working Dreamcast, so I have to download it somewhere. I tried Soul Calibur, and it was buggy in the graphics, but it was playable. The controller works, but I had to configure each button for it to work. But other than that, it was playable enough that I can actually enjoy the game. I also tried Resident Evil Code Veronica and it works amazingly well, except for the slow cutscenes. But in general, again, very playable.

Playstation Portable – PPSSPP

I installed PPSSPP and that worked great too. I had no problems except for some slow down with some games. I presume I was expecting a lot on the system, but Castlevania works fine. I couldn’t install too much games because I really didn’t have that much space to play around with. And I only had an 8gb memory card on me. Yup, I haven’t bought anything better because I don’t have the extra money on me, unless someone in interested to donate me a large MicroSD. I think out of all the emulators, I think this is my favorite in terms of how fluid and professional it looks because it’s free and it works amazingly good and the interface is wonderfully done.

Nintendo 64 – Mupen64Plus FZ

I install Mupen64Plus FZ, this is an N64 emulator. It was a breeze to install same as the others, but it took me a while to figure out how to add roms. At first I got lost on how to add them, but I eventually was able to. The controller setup was not setup automatically. You have to go to the input settings and make a new controller profile. Once you’ve setup the controller profile, you have to change the settings to use that profile as the default to make it usable in the games, or else it will use the touch screen by default. Overall experience was that I was just testing Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and I got lost that I forgot I was still testing more stuff. It’s a very good emulator, but I later did find that some games don’t work well on it. It didn’t work well on Resident Evil 2, on my testing. RE2 was playable, but it wasn’t pretty. Turok The Dinosaur Hunter generally works, but a few graphical issues, but the controls are terrible, but I don’t blame that on the emulator.

Nintendo DS

I tested a few DS games using Retroarch, it works fine, but it was having trouble with speed. Based on what I’ve read, the lack of memory is making it difficult for the Amazon Fire to keep up with speed. The emulator requires 2gb of memory, which the Fire 7 only had 1. So, It won’t work on that one. So DS emulation failed.

Arcade Games – Mame4Droid

Testing now on MAME, since that is an arcade emulator, it’s actually more difficult to get games running because of the confusing way how to figure out what files you need to get a game running. One game requires common files here and there which is not really clear. I tried using Retroarch for the Mame emulator but I thought that this would not be a good thing because of the limited space I had with the Amazon Fire 7. I remembered when I tried using Retroarch on my PC, the MAME core files took a long time to download. So, I presume the files might be a little too big. So I try an Android app called Mame4Droid. It installed pretty easily, and after installation, it asked me where I will be putting my files. After setting that up, I was able to put a few files, I tried some NeoGeo games and the Simpsons arcade. Mame4Droid didn’t have any problems detecting the Logitech Rumblepad 2, and it worked flawlessly again. I didn’t have any issues that I found in Retroarch. Once I’ve tried the games, they worked amazingly well too. I think NeoGeo games have a few slow down issues, but it’s not too bothersome. The Simpsons though, that was smooth. Working like a charm. Mame is really hard to tell if it will work or not. Most newer games are difficult to get running, but old ones mostly work, but it’s just difficult to get them running if you don’t know what you are looking for. But nonetheless, once it works, it feels great playing full arcade games on the Amazon Fire 7.

Overall, it was an interesting journey testing out what the Amazon Fire 7 (7th Generation) can do. A few fails here and there, but it still got me fascinated with the system since I was able to get a lot of things running flawlessly. Emulation is not a perfect thing regardless of what system you have been playing around with. Fascinating that you can bring a vast history of games in your pocket. And I’m happy that I can relive my some of childhood again with these games, which is almost close to impossible now since almost all of the systems I mentioned, I did own at one point in my life but are either non working or sold. Emulation is really keeping gaming history alive.

It’s also good that the major game makers are releasing old games too, like Nintendo making the NES Mini, SNES Mini. Playstation also doing the same thing, and NEOGEO also put their own spin on it. And recently, Sony is releasing their own mini console too. But there are limits to what can be released too, and there are games that are almost impossible to be released is the ones that are going to be missed. Because of Emulation, it keeps them running and remembered.