Old School Console Games on BB10

Inspired by the post on CrackBerry, I gave RetroArch a go to try and experience some childhood nostalgia. I went for RetroArch as it is not only the most flexible, but also it is available on other platforms as well. Running these emulators is something that has been around for quite a well, but this time there is finally one on BB10 that I think works well enough.


First off, you have to know that to use this app, you need to sideload it yourself, since normal app stores would not allow such apps to be distributed in their storefront. Reason being that the acquisition of the Roms required is not exactly…”legal”. So just keep that in mind as well.

This is the first screen you would be greeted with once you launch it. First you select what core you would like to use (what type of games), then select where the roms are located. In my case, I stored them on my SD card inside Document/Roms folder.

The cores (emulators) it supports are as follows:

• Arcade


• Nes/ Famicon (FCEUmm)


• Gameboy/ Gameboy Colour


• Sega (MS/GG/MD/CD)


• Neo Geo Pocket (Colour)


• PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16


• Virtual Boy


• WonderSwan (Colour)


• NES/ Famicon (NEStopia)


• NXEngine (Cave Story)


• PlayStation1


• PrBoom (Doom)


• SNES/ Super Famicon (SNES9x Next)


• TyrQuake


• Gameboy Advance

Honestly I don’t know more than half of them, but I do know that they support games that I want to play.

I tested Pokemon Silver Version for the GBC emulator and it works pretty well, so I assume that if you wish, the other Pokemon franchises should work just as well. I also had Pokemon Trading Card game loaded as well.

For PS1, I tested Final Fantasy VII as well as Vandal Hearts II. The latter ran pretty well, but for FF VII I encountered some audio lag. Anyway, for games as such, I really recommend getting a supported Bluetooth gamepad for BB10 devices. Like a Moga Controller for example.

The on screen keys are pretty hard to use for games that provide omni directional control, like moving character around. In this instance a controller with analogue stick might work better (assuming its supported, since I don’t have one to try out)

The gaming experience can also be enhanced by hooking your BB10 device to a larger screen, and playing it with a bluetooth gamepad. As we know the Z10 and Q10 does have a separate micro-HDMI port for video output.

The app is apparently also supported on the Q10, allowing controls using the physical keyboard as well. But I can’t comment on how well it might work since I don’t have one to try out as well. But I assume that for Gameboy games like Pokemon, they should provide a better gaming experience with a tactile control.

Anyway, if you look at the screenshots between the one for Pokemon and the one I posted above, you would realise that the on-screen controls are actually different. I realised that the settings could be changed only after playing around with it for a bit. So the Pokemon was still using the default controls rather than GB controls. This allows for a better experience as you can customise the controls to suit the game’s need.

Anyway, so far everything runs pretty nicely, and I am enjoying some retro games that I used to spend so many hours on as a child. So I took this time to share this information with you guys so that you guys can have a go if you are interested in it too. Do note that this is ultimately still an “emulator”, so they might not run as smoothly as games developed for Mobile devices, but still, i think they ran well enough for me to enjoy myself thoroughly.