Tiger Arcade – free MAME arcade emulator for Android

Update: apparently, this app is now listed on the Market under TigerArcade(MAME) – some of the info may be out of date. If anyone finds the official site for this app, let me know.

Yesterday I found Tiger Arcade in the Android Market. It’s an arcade machine emulator, based on MAME, for Android, and it’s free.

I installed it, grabbed the arcade ROMs for Final Fight and Street Fighter II and was surprised to see how well it’s working so far. It ran a bit slow on my HTC Magic, and the graphics were a bit glitchy, but it was just about playable (though of course it’s a bit easier for those of us with a gamepad or physical keyboard).

A few more features could make a big difference to the fun factor:

• smoother play (speed optimisations or maybe just a frameskip option)
• fewer graphical glitches
• save states
• more customisable on-screen controls (the latest version of Snesoid is a good example of the kind of options that are useful)

But there’s plenty of hope that these features may get added soon: today an update was released which includes a feature that was missing until now: support for more than 4 buttons! (The Streetfighter games are a lot more fun with this).

If this sounds like your thing, search for tiger arcade in the Android Market.

Shoryuken! (search for that in the market too)

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