# is there any leagel way to play retro nintendo games on android/ios



## TyDye (Jan 26, 2017)

title


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## The Catboy (Jan 28, 2017)

Has Nintendo ported them to Android/iOS? 
No.
Thus there's no legal way to do so.
Also please put a little effort in your threads. Members will be more likely to reply if they actually see some effort put into a thread.


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## FAST6191 (Jan 28, 2017)

If you mean Nintendo as in made and sold by then I am not aware of any per se.

If you mean I play my Nintendo where others would say NES or SNES or something then you may have something.

There is a popular thought among game developers that anything made for the NES or SNES is going to be blocked by Nintendo. http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just-Emulation covers some of that. Whether it is or is not matters little as it does tend to stifle things compared to the likes of the Atari or similar vintage consoles and thus few things make it. 

Other things might have been remade or ported if versions appeared on the megadrive, amiga or PCE. This says nothing of things like Ducktales remastered which is a remake of sorts of the NES classic and was released for android and IOS.

Equally emulation is not illegal. To that end if you own the game you have options to emulate it within the bounds of the law.


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## Shawnj (Feb 24, 2017)

No, as emulation is technically illegal. You can still use GBA4iOS, iNDS, Provenance, Happy Chick/New Gamepad and some other emulators through Cydia Impactor on a computer (for a 1-week profile), paid yearly signing services such as the Build Store, or enterprise certificates (which get revoked erratically-there's no rhyme or reason to when they'll work or stop working) through sites such as iEmulators.com on iOS or through the Play store on Android.


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## Deleted User (Feb 24, 2017)

Shawnj said:


> No, as emulation is technically illegal. You can still use GBA4iOS, iNDS, Provenance, Happy Chick/New Gamepad and some other emulators through Cydia Impactor on a computer (for a 1-week profile), paid yearly signing services such as the Build Store, or enterprise certificates (which get revoked erratically-there's no rhyme or reason to when they'll work or stop working) through sites such as iEmulators.com on iOS or through the Play store on Android.


why name all those when retroarch is a thing?


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## Shawnj (Feb 24, 2017)

LiveLatios said:


> why name all those when retroarch is a thing?


Retroarch doesn't really run well on iOS, so...

Also, retroarch wouldn't really run very fast on iOS. the closest thing to retroarch which works well on iOS would be Happy Chick or New Gamepad, which have a bunch of emulators built in. Plus, each different console has a different button layout, which needs to be changed on a per-console/emulator basis.


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## Deleted User (Feb 24, 2017)

Shawnj said:


> Retroarch doesn't really run well on iOS, so...
> 
> Also, retroarch wouldn't really run very fast on iOS. the closest thing to retroarch which works well on iOS would be Happy Chick or New Gamepad, which have a bunch of emulators built in. Plus, each different console has a different button layout, which needs to be changed on a per-console/emulator basis.


ios is horrible anyway. and retroarch has a per-core configuration, if you set it up that way


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## FAST6191 (Feb 24, 2017)

Shawnj said:


> No, as emulation is technically illegal.


Since when? Some might not like it and if you are playing in their house they may block it by some means but that is far from illegal.


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## mikey420 (Feb 24, 2017)

Only way to play legally is to buy the actual cart dump it yourself and then play it on there. To download a rom is illegal regardless of weather you own it but you are allowed to dump and use the backup for your own needs.


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## lostboysteve (Feb 24, 2017)

mikey420 said:


> Only way to play legally is to buy the actual cart dump it yourself and then play it on there. To download a rom is illegal regardless of weather you own it but you are allowed to dump and use the backup for your own needs.




 Very true. Don't forget to have all the equipment setup in case the Nintendo police show up at your door. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## FAST6191 (Feb 24, 2017)

mikey420 said:


> Only way to play legally is to buy the actual cart dump it yourself and then play it on there.


That might depend where you are in the world, and I am not sure if the "I own it but downloaded it anyway" approach, or an equivalent, has been tested in court. Being a civil thing in most places the owner would have to demonstrate loss, and if you downloaded a copy after purchase of a cart/disc/whatever and did not share it in the process (there is a reason they go after p2p types for the uploading) then loss gets hard to demonstrate.
Now doing it yourself is still going to be the suggested method, and the above is still something of an unknown than a tried and tested court defence, to say nothing of some other law maybe sneaking in (did you bypass a protection which is not covered by a dmca exemption or something and thus open yourself up there) but it is perhaps not as clear cut as you imply.


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## ieatducks4655 (Mar 1, 2017)

FAST6191 said:


> Equally emulation is not illegal. To that end if you own the game you have options to emulate it within the bounds of the law.



It's not exactly legal either in alot of cases


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## xtheman (Mar 1, 2017)

Shawnj said:


> Retroarch doesn't really run well on iOS, so...
> 
> Also, retroarch wouldn't really run very fast on iOS. the closest thing to retroarch which works well on iOS would be snip, which have a bunch of emulators built in. Plus, each different console has a different button layout, which needs to be changed on a per-console/emulator basis.


The two you mentioned use retroarch for PS1 and N64 so wtf is the bullshit you speak of. (and they run fullspeed on my 5s)
Also those two things allow you to download roms in app so you can't mention them.


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## FAST6191 (Mar 2, 2017)

ieatducks4655 said:


> It's not exactly legal either in alot of cases


Point me at any case that stated emulation was illegal, the closest we have that I am aware of is the bleem case and they were on track to win that one before they went bankrupt.

Alternatively any popular emulators that are illegal thanks to stolen code from another emulator, bundled ROMs (including things like BIOS images) they have no agreement to distribute or demonstrably stolen specs (see also clean room reverse engineering).

The wording changes but you usually get a phrase like "substantial non infringing use", that being writing or running homebrew. Even in places where interoperability (the other big legal concept underpinning a lot of it) is not a thing, or it is more dubious owing to some measure of protections being bypassed in the dumping, that it runs commercial games tends to only speak to it being more accurate and you can't really legislate against that.

The closest I get to any ruling that might distantly trouble it is from the same logic that gave us "hacking tools" laws, widely held to be a bad idea for my hex editor has both fixed a database that was broken and hacked a file before, and my port scanner has found a way through a firewall... for someone I was running a security check on.

Anyway this then means that any infringement, usually a civil law broken if any, is a user choice and not one the emulators make.


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## ieatducks4655 (Mar 2, 2017)

FAST6191 said:


> Point me at any case that stated emulation was illegal, the closest we have that I am aware of is the bleem case and they were on track to win that one before they went bankrupt.
> 
> Alternatively any popular emulators that are illegal thanks to stolen code from another emulator, bundled ROMs (including things like BIOS images) they have no agreement to distribute or demonstrably stolen specs (see also clean room reverse engineering).
> 
> ...



what I was trying to say is that emulation is a big gray area. it's not necessarily illegal to have the emulator but what you do with it can be. in most cases people will use emulators to emulate games that they do not own which is illegal when it comes to most games nowadays but it does depend on the copyright laws of the users country. I like emulators I've used them a lot in my lifetime but I don't always condone emulating a new or recent game that you don't own since people are still making a living from it


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## FAST6191 (Mar 2, 2017)

That is less an issue with emulators and more with what the end users might do.

What about video players? How often do you think VLC, media player classic and co are used to watch home made videos, or those they ripped themselves, or own on DVD?


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