WP App Review : Snes8x

Snes8x (Version 1.1.4)

m.k

Free

If you're a fan of classics games, then emulators are the way to go. There's a handful of emulator apps for Windows Phone such as vNESLight which I've reviewed, along with Purple Cherry which emulates Game Boy Color and Blue Tomato which emulates the Sega Master System/Game Gear. Snes8x emulates the SNES console and it does it amazingly well.

Snes8x is free to download and within the first minute of testing it out, I was amazed at how well it emulates SNES ROMS. I threw a handful of popular games at it and they all played without a hitch. Frame rate is wonderfully smooth and the audio is solid. Even with "graphic intensive" games such as Donkey Kong Country, the graphics look beautiful on the Lumia 920 and the emulator handles the ROMS well.

Just like in vNESLight, you are only provided a sample ROM and you'll need to locate your own ROMS to play more games - but a simple search online will yield hundreds of results. You add your games via SkyDrive (no direct link downloads are available) and they'll need to be uncompressed but the process is extremely simple. Once you create a folder in SkyDrive with your games, sign in using the Snes8x app and you can tap on the games you wish to download onto your phone. Another feature found on this app is the several save states you can have at one time.

Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past were both tested and both games played smoothly. Donkey Kong Country which featured amazing graphics at the time (and which I still think looks great) rendered beautifully as well. In order to further test out the frame rate capability, I tested F-Zero which held a silky smooth frame rate. Super Turrican which has a lot of on-screen action with it's bullets and multiple enemies were handled with ease.

The only thing holding this emulator app from being perfect is the control layout. The first thing might be nitpicking but the "Select" button should be on the left and the "Start" should be on the right. But the main thing as you can see from the screenshots is that the D-Pad and Buttons are laid completely over the game playing screen. If you're pressing right and have your thumb positioned over Y and B, almost 50% of the bottom of the screen is covered by your fingers, making it extremely difficult to see the action and play.

You do have the option of positioning the buttons to the top of the screen but the same problem exists. A setting for adjusting the size of the D-Pad doesn't really help either. If the screen could be a bit smaller so that the controls aren't laid on top of the game screen and/or have a virtual D-Pad it should help a lot. This is the one thing that makes this app less than perfect. The current setup makes it less enjoyable to play your old school SNES classics and unfortunately gives me reason to dock two stars for now. Also, action games where you run and jump at the same time is a bit difficult.

Other than that, Snes8x has a whole lot of potential. Other than the controls which will hopefully be updated via an update, the ability of this app to play SNES ROMS is excellent. Snes8x provides an overall entertaining game play experience with smooth frame rate and audio without any noticeable hiccups. It's currently free so it definitely doesn't hurt to try.

Update Version 1.0.1

The new update makes running and jumping (holding Y and pressing B to jump) a whole easier. This makes playing the games like Super Mario a lot easier. Still, the button layout remains the same and covers a large portion of the screen. The update also removes the setting to adjust the button size. Now all this emulator needs is button size adjustment ...

Update Version 1.1

The latest update now includes the much needed controller size adjustment as well as a portrait mode. These two things were pretty much the only thing holding back this app from being perfect, and now that they're added, Snes8x is one of the best emulators on the WP market.

Pros : Emulates amazing well, super smooth frame rate

Cons : None