Today’s mobiles are way more powerful as the gaming consoles of yesteryear, so why not use them to play retro games?

Those of you who can tell your Sonic the Hedgehogs from your Alex Kidds will already know that it’s possible to run old titles on a PC. It’s all thanks to a smart piece of software called an emulator. As the name suggests, this creates a virtual replica of the games system inside your computer’s memory.

Today’s mobiles are way more powerful as the gaming consoles of yesteryear, so why not use them to play retro games?

Those of you who can tell your Sonic the Hedgehogs from your Alex Kidds will already know that it’s possible to run old titles on a PC. It’s all thanks to a smart piece of software called an emulator. As the name suggests, this creates a virtual replica of the games system inside your computer’s memory.

Very nifty indeed, particularly for aging thumb bandits like us, and you can now grab a whole heap of the things for your Nokia (just make sure it’s running S60 3rd Edition): the latest releases on the web are iNES, which lets you play classic Nintendo NES games like Super Mario Bros; VGB for Game Boy titles; MG for Sega Master System and Game Gear games; and VGBA for Game Boy Advance titles. Each costs about £7.50.

The only stickler is getting your hands on the games, or “ROMs,” to play on your mobile. It’s illegal to own a ROM made from copyrighted software, unless you perhaps own a copy of the original game, so the sites that allow you to download them don’t often hang around for too long.

We’ll be looking into getting an emulator up and running on your Nseries mobile soon but if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dust down my bright red plumber’s outfit, eat some mushrooms and take a trip to a magical kingdom. And when I recover, I might even play a bit of Super Mario.