[General Topics] Menneisyys:
Display

The emulators use the Portrait orientation by default, which may not be the best solution because it leaves a lot of screen estate unused (and, what is more, on-screen buttons / tap areas are far more awkward to use in this state, if not downright impossible, as is the case with the Tala OpenGL ES-enabled version). Therefore, you will want to switch the game display to Landscape mode. You can do this in Options / Display…, by clicking in either Landscape Left (Stretched) if you're right-handed or Landscape Right (Stretched) if you're left-handed. Stretched means the app (if it's capable of doing so - many, for example, PocketSNES/03, don't) will try to fill in the entire screen.

Note that if you run Tala's version, you will need to use the system-level orientation change support instead of this menu. That is, with the Tala version, leave the default "Portrait" mode in Options / Display… always intact - as opposed to all the other emulators.

Note that, as far as on-screen buttons are concerned, with n0p's ports, they are correctly relocated in the lot less widely used left-handed Landscape mode; Tala's version doesn't support this. This is certainly bad news for left-handed Dell Axim x50v/ x51v users.

It's also in Options / Display… that you will want to disable Auto Frame Skip and use a value of 1 (or, if your PDA or the emulation is particularly slow, 2 or even higher) to drop frames in order to provide a consistent, jerkiness-free emulation and, what is even more important, sound (if you enable it at all).

SNES emulation on other platforms

Desktop operating systems

Here are three, excellent emulators for desktop OS'es:

Snes9x

ZSNES

bsnes

Please check out the above links for more information.

Symbian

I've also tested the Symbian SNES emulator, vSun Plus 1.0 (and its ancestor, the still sound-enabled vSun 1.1) on my Nokia N-Gage. Note that the N-Gage is a very old (2003) phone and only has a 104MHz ARM9 CPU and some 3 Mbyte of free RAM. This is why most games run pretty slow (but some of them are still playable) and sound emulation (with vSun 1.1) results in unbelievably bad results. If they start at all, that is - it's only with ROM images smaller than 3 Mbytes that they are loaded at all.

Note that, with newer, faster Symbian devices with much more RAM, these games (can) become very nice (and 3+ Mbyte cartridges also loadable). Therefore, if you, say, have a Nokia N93 or N95, make sure you download vSun Plus 1.0 (or even the earlier, less compatible but sound-enabled vSun 1.1 to check out whether the sound emulation is OK on your model).

What I've provided here is more of compliance information to see how vSun Plus compares to the Windows Mobile emulators because many state vSun Plus is superior to WM titles (see for example THIS). As can be seen, Windows mobile has nothing to be ashamed of - in general, WM-based emulators are more compatible with the tested titles than vSun.

Also see this for more info on generic Symbian emulators.

Comparison and game compatibility chart

It's available HERE. The first section discusses generic questions like on-screen buttons, operating system / device compatibility, support for ZIP archives etc and, based on this article (and my past, emulation-related ones), is pretty easy to understand; the second has a LONG list of the best, most popular SNES titles and their compatibility with the three most recommended PPC emulators (Tala, n0p, MorphGear) and, as far as the Symbian S60 operating system is concerned, vSun Plus; in addition, I've now and then tested the other emulators with these games too. In order to help authors/developers to fix problems (or, for people that really want to see a given title indeed doesn't run) with a particular non-working title, I've also provided links to the non-working games (but only them! I haven't linked in working games. Sorry, I won't breach the (C) laws.)

Recommended links

My other game emulator reviews in the Games section of the Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine's Expert Blog. I plan to cover / discuss ALL emulators available for Windows Mobile and have already published some of these articles. Do make sure you follow / read this articles - nowhere else will you find a better source of emulation-related information, I'm pretty sure.

Additional links

Note that these threads / articles may have outdated or plain bad info. You should NOT believe anything in them that is in strong contrast with the information in the above article. You, however, may want to give them a read.

PDAGameGuide's Top SNES Emulator Downloads Guide For Your Pocket PC

n0p's PocketSnes vs Tals's OpenGL-ES PocketSnes vs...

How to do SNES games

SNES Emulation on Pocket PC

How is game playing?

hx2750 with morphgear

MorphGear 2.0 Review

Good news, MorphGear now can run on Smartphone 2003!

working smartphone snes emulator(s)! and avalon5's new smartsnes