Those of you who have ever been interested in reviving their childhood memories by playing some old-school video games have probably heard of emulators. In a nutshell, an emulator is an application that enables software to be executed on platforms that it has not been originally intended to run on. And guess what – emulators for various game consoles, including the NES, Super NES, and the SEGA Genesis, are available for Android as well. The more popular amongst them are free to download from the Google Play store and can perfectly run those classic games that many of us have spent so many hours on in our teenage years.

There is one small hurdle in the way, however, namely obtaining an actual copy of a game you are interested in. Games that can be played on emulators come as files called ROMs – files that are basically a copy of the data contained on the original game cartridge. Whether downloading these ROMs is legal or not is a matter of dispute, with game companies claiming that doing so is a copyright violation, while others argue that it is fine, as long as you own and still have the original game cartridge.

Nevertheless, emulators are indeed legal. It is playing an illegally obtained game ROM on them that is in violation of the law. Checking out homebrew titles, on the other hand, is absolutely fine. In addition, there are these ROMs of games that were developed by companies that do not exist anymore, and these can also be played without any fear of men in black suits coming at your door.

With that out of the way, let's get to the fun part. Here is the top 5 emulators for Android.
Top1: John NES. $3.8
The one we use frequently, can cheat, good settings and mapping to Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY. there's a lite version for free, but not good with limitated functions.
- High quality rendering
- Very fast
- Search ROM files in SDCard & Internal storage
- Virtual On-screen keypad
- Zipped ROM support
- Save States (with previews)
- Customizable keys
- Turbo buttons
- X2 Speed play
- Cheats (Game Genie/PAR)

Top2: HappyBay. free
Just emerging out at the early of 2012, but the best we've seen. It's a NES/SNES/MAME/MD all-in-1 game portal, with good user experience, and easy to find ROMS, not need to search and download from all the internet.
- Metro user Interface
- Support NES/SNES/MAME/MD/Flash, the one who can support the most type on internet.
- Engine and Controls suit different game automatically, not need to configure for most people, easy to start up.
- Well edited ROM introduction with Pics and download links, not need to find ROM any more. (that's why it's not on google market).
- High quality rendering
- Virtual On-screen keypad
- Save States
- Customizable keys with size and transparency.
- Custom screen size
- Joystick, 4 way or 8 way D-Pad,Turbo buttons switch.
- Trackball Support
- Xperia Play special buttons supported.

Top3: SuperGNES. $3.99
Supports SNES with the full console experience, running very fast, maybe the fastest.Save your progress at any time and return instantly to where you left off, thanks to a quick save state system.
- Ultra-fast SuperFX core support for playing StarFox & Yoshi's Island
- Slick user interface
- On-screen multitouch controls with optional rumble feedback
- Advanced layout editor for on-screen controls
- Custom screen size and orientation
- Auto-detects games and displays cover art
- Custom control mapping
- Save games with screen shot and instantly
- Thousands of cheats
- Fast-forward games using turbo skip


Top4: VBGA. $4.68
VGBA emulates the GameBoy Advance handheld game console. It will run GameBoy Advance games,but Please notice that VGBA will not play classic GameBoy games: you will need VGB for that.
- Specifically optimized for Android devices, using ARM assembler to run at maximal possible speed.
- Full screen landscape and portrait mode emulation, with options for simulating scanlines and fuzzy display.
- Records soundtrack to MIDI files.
- Play with your accelerometer.
- Save gameplay at any point and go back to that point once your character gets killed.
- Xperia Play special buttons supported.


Top5: NES-FC lite. Free
The high quality and fast NES&FC emulator,Play almost all your NES/FC games,but Lite version with some features disabled.
- Hardware keyboard support
- On-screen virtual gamepad with optional viberation feedback
- Support trackball
- Game Genie support(Buy Full version)!
- FDS support(Buy Full version)!
- Zapper/Light gun support, touch screen to fire, need to disable virtual gamepad!
- Fast Forward
- Wiimote support
- Turbo buttons


Anyone thinking of spending the rest of the day playing old-school video games on their Android smartphone? Have fun!


See More: Top 5 Android Emulators or Simulators,to play NES, SNES, MAME and MD games