Over the last week or so, a crazy thing has happened in the Android Marketplace. All of Yong Zhang’s emulators for Android-powered smartphones have been pulled from the market. These emulators, such as Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid and Gameboid, allow smartphone owners to play old video games on their phone by emulating the game console via software.
Engadget reached out to Yong Zhang and discovered that his Android Publisher account has also been closed, a sign that Google is cracking down on these emulators, likely due to pressure from Sega, Nintendo, and others. To use these emulators, you often need to use illegal methods to find the ROM of the game that you’re wanting to play. To be honest, the gaming companies are totally in their rights to request these emulators be taken down. However, that’s not the problem.
The problem is that smartphone owners realize that the phone in their pocket is typically more powerful than the gaming console they used to have on their entertainment center in their livingroom. We’re a nostalgic people, and thus we want to use our phone’s power to enjoy some old-school video games. The problem is, the gaming companies like Sega, Nintendo, etc, haven’t recognize this, and haven’t built their own emulators for consumers to use.
Of course, Sega and Nintendo would rather you buy one of the current portable gaming systems and then stock up on games, but those don’t often have the old games that we grew up with available. I’ve been playing Boogerman on my T-Mobile G2 using Gensoid for several months now. It’s just like having a Sega Genesis console in my phone – I can even map the buttons on the G2′s hardware QWERTY keyboard so I don’t have to use onscreen controls.
I wonder how much revenue Nintendo could create if they built a business around emulating their old discontinued products? How much more could they endear consumers to their brands and characters like Sonic the Hedgehog or Mario if they made original, out of print games available on our smartphones?
