Game emulators are a lil' pastime around WPCentral. What can we say other than we like our old games as much as our new Xbox LIVE ones? We've covered Purple Cherry (Gameboy) and Blue Tomato (for you Sega fans) and now we're very happy to see Nudua's vNESLight come to the Windows Phone Marketplace for emulating games from the Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated as NES).
Version 1.0 of the emulator actually arrived two weeks ago after a two-month hold up by Microsoft and v1.1 is about to go live in a few days with some minor bug fixes. Version 1.0 now features Skydrive support, including recognition of ZIP and RAR files making ROM imports very easy. You can also save your games to Skydrive too in case you want to switch devices and the UI has been re-worked to be more "Metro".
Emulation of Nintendo games also now supports sounds from varying bitrate quality (8000, 22050 and 44100 Hz) as well as Auto-frame skip for older Gen 1 devices. But if you're like us with a Titan, Titan II, Focus S or Lumia device, you can easily run at no skips and max bitrate. Audio emulation is pretty good but there are distortions here and there, but since we know sound emulation is hard stuff, we're just glad it's here.
Other features include the ability to pin any game to your Start screen for 1-touch launching, a recently-played section, redesigned virtual controls and overall just a fluid UI. We still find Purple Cherry/Blue Tomato to have a little more pizzazz in terms of design but ultimately this is about the emulator and the developer, Nudua, has done a bang-up job there making this a must have for any serious NES fans out there.
The app comes in two versions: free (with minimally intrusive ads) or $0.99 with no ads. Both versions have the same feature set so it's up to you with what you prefer (we always opt for the paid version, but that's us).
Update: Nudua let us know that the crackling sound will be fixed in an upcoming update, just a temporary hitch.
