OffWorld
Senior Member
- Oct 5, 2010
- 460
- 67
If you like old school arcade games see if "TigerArcade" will work on your tablet. It is an Android port of the MAME arcade emulator and is free in the Market. However, much like the regular versions of MAME you have to find exactly the right game roms (for those who've never used MAME before, roms are usually dumped for specific versions of the emulator and they aren't always backwards compatible, so you often have to hunt for a rom dump that matches your emulator version. That's usually trial and error because even if you know what MAME version you're running [I have no idea which version Tiger Arcade was built upon] the rom files don't typically include compatibility information).
The "Help" file for the emulator has a list of roms known to work with it (but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily run on YOUR Android device), but no links to download them. You'll have to search for them yourself, there is some info at the developer's web site, a number of emulation web sites that can point you to roms, and a few freely available roms at the main MAME web site. I'm not going to get into the legal issues surrounding the roms other than to say it's your responsibility to know what they are where you live.
Once you acquire some rom files, keep them zipped and put them on your SD card. The emulator will scan for them there (instructions say in a "mameroms" or "roms" folder, but since it scans they just need to be on the SD card - I think they can also be in /nand). If they don't show up in the game list at all or are sluggishly using too much memory you may need to "align" them to the DSA standard and then see if they show up - realize that just because a rom shows in the game list doesn't mean it's playable.
I found the sound during gameplay is VERY choppy (it drops out every time I hit the virtual controller pad overlaid on the screen). This is a common problem with emulators it seems.
It does a good job of stretching/scaling the game to fill the screen and runs nicely given how much the tablet's specs exceed the original arcade hardware. However, when you expand the game parts of it are under your controller in landscape mode. Thankfully there are settings to run it in portrait mode and where to position the virtual controller. Since my tablet is rooted I can also adjust the LCD density to a low number which means the virtual controller takes up less of the screen.
On my Haipad M701-R it can output your gaming action to HDMI and you can still use the touch screen as a controller. Unlike when you output a video to HDMI, the touch screen on the tablet doesn't go blank. If I turned the game sound on it came through the HDMI to the television, but it also comes through the tablet speaker. I found plugging in the headphones worked well to silence the tinny tablet speaker, but as I mentioned the sound during gameplay is very choppy.
In theory the remote control should work as a controller, but it doesn't fully work (the DPAD buttons are assigned as controls, but ignores them. The other "hardware buttons" like "Search," "Volume Up," "Volume Down," etc., however DO actually send control signals to the game. Darn, so close to having a wireless game controller for this too!
You can turn off the "virtual controller" overlaid on the screen and use a key assignments (yes, it will accept hardware buttons on the device itself, but most of these tablets - having touchscreens - don't have many buttons). I plugged in a USB keyboard which works well for controlling the games. What that means is, even though nobody seems to have found a game controller that works with my tablet, I could buy a cheap USB keyboard, tear it apart for the (usually very tiny circuit board) keyboard controller, and wire my own buttons to it to build myself an Android-compatible gamepad.
There are also emulators for NES, SNES, C64, and Atari you may want to check out. I think these old-school emulators are probably the best bet for gaming action on these low-end Android tablets.
The "Help" file for the emulator has a list of roms known to work with it (but that doesn't mean they'll necessarily run on YOUR Android device), but no links to download them. You'll have to search for them yourself, there is some info at the developer's web site, a number of emulation web sites that can point you to roms, and a few freely available roms at the main MAME web site. I'm not going to get into the legal issues surrounding the roms other than to say it's your responsibility to know what they are where you live.
Once you acquire some rom files, keep them zipped and put them on your SD card. The emulator will scan for them there (instructions say in a "mameroms" or "roms" folder, but since it scans they just need to be on the SD card - I think they can also be in /nand). If they don't show up in the game list at all or are sluggishly using too much memory you may need to "align" them to the DSA standard and then see if they show up - realize that just because a rom shows in the game list doesn't mean it's playable.
I found the sound during gameplay is VERY choppy (it drops out every time I hit the virtual controller pad overlaid on the screen). This is a common problem with emulators it seems.
It does a good job of stretching/scaling the game to fill the screen and runs nicely given how much the tablet's specs exceed the original arcade hardware. However, when you expand the game parts of it are under your controller in landscape mode. Thankfully there are settings to run it in portrait mode and where to position the virtual controller. Since my tablet is rooted I can also adjust the LCD density to a low number which means the virtual controller takes up less of the screen.
On my Haipad M701-R it can output your gaming action to HDMI and you can still use the touch screen as a controller. Unlike when you output a video to HDMI, the touch screen on the tablet doesn't go blank. If I turned the game sound on it came through the HDMI to the television, but it also comes through the tablet speaker. I found plugging in the headphones worked well to silence the tinny tablet speaker, but as I mentioned the sound during gameplay is very choppy.
In theory the remote control should work as a controller, but it doesn't fully work (the DPAD buttons are assigned as controls, but ignores them. The other "hardware buttons" like "Search," "Volume Up," "Volume Down," etc., however DO actually send control signals to the game. Darn, so close to having a wireless game controller for this too!
You can turn off the "virtual controller" overlaid on the screen and use a key assignments (yes, it will accept hardware buttons on the device itself, but most of these tablets - having touchscreens - don't have many buttons). I plugged in a USB keyboard which works well for controlling the games. What that means is, even though nobody seems to have found a game controller that works with my tablet, I could buy a cheap USB keyboard, tear it apart for the (usually very tiny circuit board) keyboard controller, and wire my own buttons to it to build myself an Android-compatible gamepad.
There are also emulators for NES, SNES, C64, and Atari you may want to check out. I think these old-school emulators are probably the best bet for gaming action on these low-end Android tablets.
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