The iPad has more than demonstrated its capabilities in terms of electronic entertainment thanks to the huge number of games in the App Store. However, for many the touch control is not so friendly and they miss having a controller in their hands. Well, thanks to the jailbreak and emulators we can carry an authentic desktop console under our arm anywhere and relive the great classics of the video game.
In this article we will focus on how to turn the iPad into the great consoles of the 16-bit generation: Mega Drive and Super Nintendo , as well as its ability to emulate arcade machine games ( MAME ).
There is still a lot of work to be done on other emulators
Before fans of the 32-bit generation and beyond throw themselves around our necks, we'll explain why we're not going to talk about other consoles yet. The reason is that the emulation experience in this case is quite disappointing.
The Dreamcast emulator, nullDce , is still under development and, for now, has only been announced for Android. Meanwhile, the Nintendo 64 emulator, N64iPhone, is for iPhone, so it doesn't scale the image well to the iPad screen, and its controls, consisting of only a D-pad and two buttons, are extremely limited and not very useful. Finally, PSX4All, the emulator for the original PlayStation, still displays an awkward mosaic of controls on the screen and doesn't run all games at full speed.
Previous requirements
As you can suppose, it will be necessary for our iPad, of whatever generation, to have the jailbreak done, which you can get with this Tabletzona tutorial. In addition, you must have the SSH access of the tablet open, a process that we have also explained in detail in this other tutorial: "How to access your iPad folders via SSH«.
First step: Installing the Wiimote as an emulator driver
All the applications that we are going to discuss have virtual controls on the screen, however, like the touch of a traditional pad there is nothing. For this we can use a Wiimote, the Nintendo Wii controller is more versatile than it seems and both an original and a licensed one will serve us (there are them for about € 9). Both the Super Nintendo emulator and the MegaDrive support up to 2 connected controllers, in case you want to share the fun with a friend, as well as the possibility of connecting the classic Wii remote to the Wiimote.
To connect the Wiimote to the iPad, we'll use the versatile app Bstack (which we already used to connect a Bluetooth mouse in another tutorial). Since it's part of the Telesphoreo repository, one of the default repositories in Cydia, you just need to search for it, install it, run it, and connect the Wiimote. To put the Wiimote into "pairing" mode, press and hold the sync button (the red button under the battery cover) for a few seconds until the lights flash. It will automatically appear in the Bstack list, and you just need to tap its name on the iPad screen to connect.
Turning the iPad into a 16-bit console: GENESIS AD Plus and SNES AD Plus
1. Install the Big Boss repository in Cydia . To do this, within the "Sources" menu, click on "Edit" and then on "Add", both buttons located in the upper corners, and enter the corresponding URL.
2.- Once this process is done, we look for both the GENESIS AD Plus and SNES AD Plus applications and install both packages.
3.- To add the ROMs of the games, there are three possibilities:
WARNING : ROMs are not illegal if you own a physical copy of the game. Otherwise, you are pirating them, and we leave it to your discretion whether to proceed.
- From the emulator itself: both apps have a button that says “Find games”. Through it it connects us to various ROM sites from which we can directly download the game we want.
- Through SSH access: if we already have some ROM files on our computer, we can, through SSH access, install them manually if we save them in these routes:
MegaDrive -> / var/mobile/Media/ROMs/GENESIS.
SNES ->/ var/mobile/Media/ROMs/SNES
- It is also possible to pass the ROMs through the iFile application with a USB stick, pasting them in the corresponding path.
4.- Open GENESIS AD Plus or SNES AD Plus, choose the game and enjoy!
Turning the iPad into a recreational one: iMame4All.
1.- We look for the iMame4all application. Being a well-known application, it is included in the default repositories and we only have to install the package.
3. To add ROMs, which must be saved in ".zip" format, you can only do so from the application you selected for SSH access to the path. Place the files in the following location: /Var/mobile/Media/ROMS/iMAME4all/roms . Alternatively, you can transfer the ROMs using the iFile application with a USB drive, copying them to the appropriate location.
4.- Open iMame4All, choose the game and enjoy!
Playing big: connect iPad 2 or new iPad to TV
And it is that if we already want to round off the play, thanks to the possibility of showing the screen of the iPad 2 and the new iPad, the famous "mirroring", we can enjoy the emulators on a TV. For this you can use the HDMI connector of the iPad (€ 49) or if you have an AppleTV you can do it completely wirelessly thanks to AirPlay.