Is Emulation the Best Feature of the Nvidia Shield?




/ 10 years ago

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Introduction


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Emulation is a popular pass time for many PC gamers, and in recent year there has been a big increase in GPU horsepower in the mobile market, allowing us to enjoy many classic games on the go, not just  on our desktops. The Nvidia Shield is one of the most powerful mobile gaming devices on the market, and this is especially thanks to its Nvidia Tegra 4 GPU/CPU, which is not only capable of running many older games such as those from the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, but also a lot more advanced 3D titles from consoles such as the Nintendo 64, Sega Dreamcast and more. What I hope to find out today is whether or not these games work well enough to justify using the Nvidia Shield as a dedicated emulation device.

Obviously there are some grey area legal issues when it comes to emulation, most of which focus around the piracy of compatible roms, so I feel obligated to mention that I do not condone anyone downloading games, but that there are also many other ways to obtain these games. There are tools and apps out there which let you rip games you own, and this applies to both cartridge based games as well as disc based games. Fortunately I’ve been collecting games for many years now and can use games I already own and have at my disposal, but keep in mind that you’re responsible for sourcing your own titles how you see fit, as we here at eTeknix take no responsibility for this, nor will be providing sources to where or how you can obtain the games. Boring stuff out of the way, let us get back to the action!

Getting roms configured on your Nvidia Shield, or to be honest any powerful mobile device can be a little tricky. Generally the more powerful your device, the better chances you’ll have of getting your games to run, as the task of emulating hardware can be quite demanding, especially when it comes to more modern titles such as those from the Sega Dreamcast. So while I am focusing this article on the Nvidia Shield, there is no reason why you can’t try this out on your mobile phone or tablet, so long as you think it’s powerful enough to do so.

The Nvidia Shield has a few extra tricks that make it a great choice for emulation, firstly because it has a controller built directly into it, as well as a high quality touch-screen display. You can use USB OTG to connect wired controllers such as the Xbox 360 controller, a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable to put the device into console mode and play on your big screen and more, so you’re not going to be limited to only playing this as a handheld, but virtually anywhere you want, on whichever screen you want (so long as it has Miracast or HDMI).

Today I’ll be taking a look at the Super Nintendo, Sega Megadrive, PlayStation 1, PlayStation Portable (PSP), Dreamcast and Nintendo 64. There are plenty more emulators and formats out there, but I feel the ones I have chosen cast a wide net over what is possible on mobile device emulation. Even older or less powerful systems such as Gameboy, MAME, NES and Master System generally all work from the same emulators I’ll be testing and already have widespread, proven compatibility with most mobile devices, so feel free to experiment with them at your own leisure.

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Super Nintendo & Sega Megadrive


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Let’s get the ball rolling with the easy stuff, the Super Nintendo (SNES) and the Sega Megadrive (aka Sega Genesis). These two consoles have been the crowning jewel of the emulation world, mostly because each has a rich back catalogue of titles to play through, with many of the most iconic gaming series ever created. Emulation of these consoles has been done for a long time now, so compatibility is virtually 100% and easy to setup. There are several completely free emulators at your disposal on the Google Play Store, and aside from dialling in a few personal preferences, I found them all to work without a need for anything technical.

Emulators used

  • GENPLUSDroid
  • RetroArch
  • ClassicBoy

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All games I tested worked trouble free, all the classics worked as great as they did on their original consoles and Altered Beast, QuackShot, Aladdin, Super Mario 3, Sonic The Hedgehod, SuperMetriod all proved worthy additions for the Nvidia Shield. Even better is that many of the games, especially so the SNES titles benefited from an improved resolution, antialiasing, rendering filters, digital to analogue key mapping (allowing use of the analogue sticks) and more; put simply, they’ve never looked so good.

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PlayStation Portable (PSP)


The PSP was a superb handheld games console, sure a lot of the limelight has been stolen by the immensely powerful Vita, but the PSP had many great games that are still worthy of your attention today. It is a hard console to emulate, and can require some fairly specific and technical tweaks to the emulation app settings to get certain games running, but the end results are certainly worth it.

Emulators used

  • PPSSPP

First up was Final Fantasy: Crysis Core, a stunning RPG continuation of the legendary Final Fantasy VII title from the PlayStation 1 era, long regarded as one of the most iconic games ever to grace our screens. Setting up the game was very easy and compatibility was near perfect. There were a couple of crackles and pops to the sound when things got busy, but certainly nothing to interfere with the game. The frame rate in the most frantic scenes was still steady at 30 and often reached a silky smooth 60fps, the Tegra 4 hardware was even running this scaled up 2x in terms of resolution and with extra filtering and anti-aliasing.

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Gran Turismo was virtually unplayable with stock settings, I had to do a fair bit of research on forums to beat it into a playable state. The graphics looks great, but the frame rate was only 5fps. A few advanced and very specific tweaks to the emulator settings soon fixed things up and with a bit of frame skipping applied I was able to enjoy the game at a steady 32fps, even when there was a long draw distance and other vehicles on screen. The only issue I had was a glitch in the car engine noises, something I suspect can be fixed with more tweaking, but it’s all trial and error. The music worked great though, so just turn up the tunes, turn down the engine noise and enjoy a few laps of some of the most iconic tracks from the GT series.

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The best example of PSP emulation I found was Little Big Planet, it ran straight away with zero issues, no graphical glitches, no sound glitches, in fact it looks and performs better on the Shield than it ever did on the PSP, running more like a native app than anything else.

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Nintendo 64


The iconic Nintendo 64 has a great collection of titles that are prime for emulation such as Mario, Zelda and Goldeneye. It’s not the easiest console to emulate, party due to its rather unique controller and also because of the way it renders certain aspects of some games, which can often lead to visual glitches and slow down when emulating. Fortunately, this console has been emulated for a long time now and while still not 100%, most of the major titles are more than playable. Some roms work in one emulator, but not in another, but all of the emulators are free and similar to use, so trial and error isn’t exactly difficult.

Emulators Used

  • RetroArch
  • Muper64 Plus
  • ClassicBoy

Mario Kart still one of the greatest arcade racers ever created. It has gameplay that is easy to pick and play and difficult to master, as well as some crazy and entertaining multiplayer. The game worked straight away, without any technical tweaks to the emulator. There were a few graphical glitches from time to time, but nothing that would interfere with gameplay. The frame rate was often above 30fps, dropping to 29fps when things got a little busy on screen, of course with auto frame skipping enabled this shouldn’t affect the speed of gameplay.

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Goldeneye is one game I’m always eager to try out on a new emulation device, but it’s also one of the hardest to get running. The game boots just fine, but as you can see, some sky textures are not visible and the frame rate is just 13fps at its lowest, rarely going above 20. Surprisingly it still plays pretty smooth regardless, more than well enough to enjoy a nostalgic jump off of the dam at the end of this level. The real issue you’re going to have is that Goldeneye used a control scheme that is pretty unique compared to most shooters, mapping it is difficult and will take considerable trial and error to get something you’re happy with. I found the best method to be to use touch screen controls, then use the Nvidia Shield software to map the touch controls to face buttons.

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Both Zelda Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask work on the Shield compatible emulators, but they’re a little glitchy at times. Ocarina certainly works better out of the two, with only a few graphical glitches and some slow down when there are a lot of effects going on in the game. Majora’s Mask is prone to slow down in cut-scenes that can leave the audio a little crackly, but in-game you can expect around 20fps, which is more than playable and I’m sure there are a few more tweaks and improvements that you could make to squeeze out extra performance. Perhaps some updates to the emulator will improve compatibility on this device.

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One of the coolest racing titles ever created and still my favourite Star Wars franchise game ever! Episode 1 Racer is a great looking game and runs at an incredibly slick 60fps most of the time, never dropping below 30 when things get really chaotic. This means the game still has a great sense of speed on the Shield and the controls are easily mapped to the Shields dual analogue sticks. When racing on the near camera you do get a depth glitch that makes the polygons of the ship invisible, but playing from the bumper or chase cam easily solves this issue.

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PlayStation 1


The PlayStation1 has a huge library of games at its disposal, and it was also the console that started many great Sony franchises. It wasn’t an especially powerful console, and that’s a good thing for us today, because it means that it’s incredibly easy to emulate. The emulators I tried required little or no modifications to their settings to work and the controller layout matches the Nvidia Shield very well.  The only downside being that the game roms are .iso files and tend to take up a fair bit of space (around 700mb per disc) and you’ll soon fill up a memory card if you plan on storing a lot of them. Of the two emulators I used for PS1 games, I found some games worked on one, but not on the other, however it doesn’t take much trial and error testing to work out which is best for each game.

Emulators used

  • RetroArch
  • ClassicBoy

The Final Fantasy series saw some of its greatest ever titles land on the PlayStation 1, I tried all the ones in my collection, FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX and Tactics. All of them worked without a hitch and actually benefitted from swifter loading times since I was loading from microSD rather than an optical drive. There are a few filters in the emulators that you can apply to improve colours, scanlines and antialiasing, as well as image scaling to make the games fit a widescreen display; all of which help make the game look better than ever on the Shields HD display. Performance was flawless, no glitches, no slowdown what so ever.

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The Spyro games are another prime example of the PlayStation 1 back catalogue, having tried out Spyro 1-3 on the Shield, I’m happy to say the game is perfectly playable, much like Final Fantasy I didn’t experience any issues what so ever with these games, the graphics and sound quality was fantastic.

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Metal Gear Solid did prove a little troublesome to get running, switching emulators and tweaking a couple of settings eventually fixed it. Performance was a little off on some of the cutscenes, but certainly nothing to hamper your gaming experience. The game is really well suited to the small screen and controller of the Shield, leaving you to enjoy one of the greatest action games ever created.

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Dreamcast


I’ve been saving the best till last, the Dreamcast has long been one of my favourite games consoles and it’s by far one of the most entertaining for emulation. The console didn’t have the best life, in fact it was the console that killed SEGA’s hardware producing career, but not for lack of trying, because the Dreamcast was a great bit of hardware with some truly iconic games. There is an open source emulator for the Android that is still constantly being tweaked and improved with regular builds of the .apk being made available for download, plus it’s completely free. Setting up the emulator was a little harder than the others, as you need to get the correct bios and flash files onto your Shield, as well as have the .iso files of the game, which can be up to 1GB per disc in size since the Dreamcast used a custom CD type that makes ripping your games a tricky task.

Emulators used

  • Reicast

Metropolis Street Racer was one of the most definitive racing games of the generation, a series that later became the Xbox 360 smash hit Project Gotham Racing (PGR).The graphics look great on the Shield and getting the game up and running was really easy, I’m currently experiencing a glitch similar to my test on Gran Turimo where I cannot hear any engine sounds, but the music plays through perfectly and I was able to enjoy the games superb soundtrack. The game runs over 30fps, so gameplay is really smooth throughout and despite the audio glitch, which I suspect can be resolved with some tinkering of more advanced settings, it’s a joy to play.

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Sonic Adventure 2 is the crowning achievement of the emulation tests, running at (more or less) 60FPS throughout, the games incredibly fast pace doesn’t falter at all. All visual effects are rendered beautifully and if it wasn’t for the fact that the resolution and antialiasing are better than they ever were on the Dreamcast, you wouldn’t know it was running on an emulator. If you’re going to emulate a Dreamcast game, then I doubt you’ll find anything that runs better than this.

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Soul Calibur, one of the best games to ever hit the Dreamcast also ran superbly well, I had no graphical glitches, the sound was perfect and the FPS was always above 50, and often hitting 60FPS. The resolution is higher than it was on the Dreamcast and overall this was as fast paced a gaming experience as it ever way, another prime example of how powerful the Tegra 4 processor can be, you won’t find anything close to this level of fighting game action in the Android market place.

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No Dreamcast emulation test would be complete without one of the most highly regarded actions RPG’s to ever hit a console. Shenmue I and II both worked very well on the Shield, although not without some minor technical faults. The sound can often crackle, but it’s a rare issue and as you can see in the screenshot below, some polygons tend to overlap (see his right eye). The game runs steady at around 30fps, making it more that playable. Even when involved in some of the games larger environments and bigger action sequences it didn’t have any issues.

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Final Thoughts


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The capabilities of the Nvidia Shield never cease to amaze me, of course the same can be said about a few high-powered Android devices, as much of the credit here goes to the underlying hardware in the Nvidia Tegra 4 graphics processor. I’ve already reviewed the Nvidia Shield (which you can read here) where I tested the limits of its Android performance, then I’ve also covered its ability to stream your PC games to the device (which you can read here) and now with the addition of emulation performance, the Nvidia Shield is starting to define its self as one of the most versatile gaming devices on the market.

The thing I love the most is that I can play all these games on the go, sure you can do the same on your smartphone, but mobile battery life doesn’t hold up as well as that of the Shield. Then you have the issue with touch screen controls, often not the best way to emulate games designed to be played with an analogue controller; the Nvidia shield has a fully remappable dual analogue controller, with gyroscope and one of the best touch screens around, so you’re unlikely to find anything better for mobile gaming anyway. The real magic comes with the Shields console mode, hook up an HDMI cable and you can close the lid on the device and pop it under your TV, pair up some Bluetooth controllers, or a USB hub and a couple of Xbox 360 controllers and you can play all the games on the big screen. This means you can still enjoy multiplayer games from your emulation software.

Sure you can emulate games on your PC, but you can’t take them out with you on the bus, train, plane or to work with you to enjoy on your break. Sure you can hook your PC up to a big screen TV and play games that way, but with the Shield you can take it with you and plug it into any HDMI compatible TV where ever you go. Of course you can also emulate games on devices such as the Vita and PSP, but this often requires modification of the hardware to allow it to perform functions it wasn’t designed to do, the Shield is just an Android device, so adding emulation functionality is as simple as downloading the required apps from the Google Play Store, something that won’t void your warranty.

There are plenty of options for those wanting to emulate their games, but the Shield is easily my favourite so far. Sure I can enjoy more recent emulation stuff such as PlayStation 2 games via my PC, but with a huge catalogue of titles available that are compatible with the Shield hardware, I don’t think I’ll be getting bored of it anytime soon.

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