- Runs on Android 12
- Supports, at the very least, GB, GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, and Game Gear
- Takes input from physical buttons
- Lets you hide on-screen buttons
I have a Sidephone with the Mini Controller keypad and I want to play games on it. There’s a bespoke (unofficial) emulator for the phone called SideRetro, but it only supports GB, GBA, NES, and Genesis, and it’s vibe-coded, so I’d rather use something else. Tried Lemuroid but it doesn’t take input from the physical buttons and can’t hide the on-screen buttons.
Edit: It’s been tough finding a good selection of apps that recognize my physical buttons, let me hide the on-screen buttons, and play what I want. RetroArch seemed to do the trick, but if I hide the on-screen buttons there’s also no way to open the RetroArch menu that I can find.
For now it looks like I’m sticking with SideRetro for the games it can play – even if the dev uses AI to code it, I don’t think it can actually harm my phone, and it’s not like I’m paying for it. Nostalgia GG works great for Game Gear (it has ads, but thankfully only on the launcher) and an option no one mentioned yet for SNES, Snes9x, which turned out to be perfect.
Second Edit: Too many weird bugs in SideRetro, which isn’t a surprise. I’m going with the Nostalgia apps for GG, GB, GBA, and NES, sticking with Snes9x for SNES, and found MDemu for Genesis.
Thanks for all the input, everyone!
You can definitely hide the on-screen buttons, and I’m fairly sure it has controller support as well but you may need to mess around in the settings for it to work. Your other option is probably RetroArch but don’t get it from Google Play because that one is outdated, get it from the official site.
Lemuroid has controller support, but it won’t recognize my phone’s built-in physical buttons. I guess I’ll give RetroArch a try, thanks.