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Android Nintendo Emulator Plays Nice with NES Controller

Categories: Android, Gaming, HTC
By: , IntoMobile
Friday, September 3rd, 2010 at 7:51 AM
Android-NES

An enterprising hacker has rigged up an original Nintendo controller to play nice with an Android emulator, letting you hardened old-school gamers play NES games the way they were meant to be played. Except, y’know, on your phone, and not on the other end of a cathode ray tube. The NES controller plugs into an Sparkfun prototyping shield which has a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth modem attached, which then in turn talks to the Sprint HTC EVO 4G using the Arduino programming language on the board and the Amarino toolkit on the device to translate the code. After all is said and done, Android recognizes inputs as keyboard commands, letting you play Super Mario Bros. 3, as well as any other games you load up in the Nintendo emulator.

This project is still in alpha, but if you’re interested in trying your hand at getting the same results, details and code can be found over here. If you’re willing to sacrifice some authenticity, a Wiimote can give you some good manual control without all of the technical hassle, but apparently it’s not possible with the HTC Evo 4G because of some Bluetooth stack limitations.

Here it is in action.

[via Hackaday]

http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/

About The Author

Simon Sage

Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.

  • http://mikeriosiawhore.com Mike

    Yeah, about those bluetooth stack limitations… HTC needs to fix this like last week! I’m probably going to Root just for this (and wifi tethering of course). Also, how about 1 to 1 screen mirroring through the inbuilt HDMI port for the Evo while you’re at it HTC?…