If you have an Android smartphone and are reading XDA, then you're likely familiar with the litany of apps and other modifications you can make to any of the best Android phones. Emulators are one such perk of the Android ecosystem (while they exist on iOS, they're a lot harder to set up). These are some of the best emulators you can get on Android, covering devices from the PlayStation 2, the Nintendo Wii, and more.

Best PlayStation 2 emulator on Android: AetherSX2

If you grew up gaming in the nearly 2000s, you probably have memories of your PS2 and games like Ratchet & Clank and The Simpsons: Hit & Run. Thanks to AetherSX2, you can relive those experiences on the go with any modern flagship Android smartphone. Best of all, it works with touchscreen controls, so you don't need to invest in a separate controller.

AetherSX2 is available on the Google Play Store (download link below), and all it needs is an official BIOS taken from your PS2. The app developer has since ceased its development, though it's in a pretty good place currently and is still our top pick for PS2 games.

Best Nintendo Switch emulator on Android: Yuzu

With Skyline now out of the picture, as the developer team behind it is finished with the project, Yuzu has come in right on time to continue providing users a way to play Switch games on their Android phones. It's in its first iteration, and therefore, your mileage will very much vary, but it's a great first step and bodes well for the future. We noticed a number of graphical glitches that made it unplayable on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but other devices apparently fare a lot better, and we expect that it will improve in the future.

All you need is to ensure that you have your production and title keys along with your games, and you can get those by dumping your keys with Lockpick RCM on your Nintendo Switch.

Second-best Nintendo Switch emulator on Android Skyline/Strato

Skyline is an emulator that has been in development for nearly two years and is built specifically for Android smartphones. It also uses community projects to boost its accuracy, with Ryujinx being one such resource. On top of that, its shader compiler is a fork of yuzu's, and the teams behind Ryujinx and yuzu have even offered assistance to the Skyline developers. There have been some other emulators that have cropped up in the past, but those have been pretty shady and shrouded by allegations of stolen code. You don't need to have any of those concerns with Skyline.

This particular project has come a long way from its humble beginnings, and games such as Super Mario Odyssey are now completely playable. All you need is to ensure that you have your production and title keys along with your games, and you can get those by dumping your keys with Lockpick RCM on your Nintendo Switch.

Skyline is now defunct, though, with much of the team behind it stepping away. If you still want to continue using it you can, but Strato is where some of the old team's developers have now gone to. You can download Skyline from the team's website, and you can check out Strato on GitHub.

Best Nintendo DS emulator on Android: melonDS

The Nintendo DS has such a wide back catalog of games to play, many of which are both incredible and not very computationally taxing. melonDS is the best way to enjoy those games on the go, and that's thanks to its ease of use. It's a free emulator that you can download from the Google Play Store, though it's not an official port (as melonDS is made for PC originally), and it's never updated there. Instead, you'd do better to check out GitHub.

Honorable mention: DraStic

DraStic is one of the best-performing Nintendo DS emulators on Android, but the reason it's an honorable mention and not our top pick is twofold. Firstly, it's no longer supported with updates, but the second (and bigger) issue is that it costs money. In contrast to melonDS being free, it would be absurd for most people to pay for DraStic instead.

However, there is one big reason why you may want to use DraStic instead, and that's if you're playing on a lower-end device. Budget smartphones sometimes have trouble running with melonDS, but DraStic will run on pretty much anything.

Best Nintendo 3DS emulator on Android: Citra

The Nintendo 3DS was a unique handheld in that one of its selling points was, well, 3D. That was the aspect that Nintendo stuck to advertising at the time, but if you were like me, you probably remember turning it off. 3D didn't actually matter to the 3DS, and there were a lot of great games released for this device that all worked perfectly fine without it. Citra allows you to enjoy those games on the go from anywhere with excellent performance. Not only that, but you won't be missing out just because you can't play those games in 3D.

Citra hasn't been updated in a while on Android, and users on Reddit have spotted that another port called Citra MMJ tends to have better performance. Your mileage may vary, so give the MMJ fork a try if the performance isn't great on your device.

Best GameCube and Wii emulator on Android: Dolphin Emulator

Dolphin Emulator is one of the most famous emulators on the planet thanks to its compatibility with pretty much everything on the GameCube and the Wii. It runs on many devices, the development team is very transparent in what they're working on with blog post updates every few months, and the team even worked to preserve Nintendo Update Server (NUS) support by creating a fake Dolphin URL to act as a go-between for users who need to download system files for the emulator from Nintendo.

In other words, if GameCube and Wii emulation is your goal, Dolphin is the only emulator you need to think about. You can download it from the Google Play Store or the team's frequent releases on their site.

Best PlayStation 1 emulator on Android: DuckStation

If you want to emulate PSX games, look no further than DuckStation. It's lesser known (or at least was) than ePSXe, but it focuses on accuracy and new, useful features. It supports the Vulkan graphics API, upscaling to 4K, and even upscaling to 8K. There's also a libretro core that you can add to RetroArch, and, best of all, it just has a ton of settings.

One important fix that's present in DuckStation is PXGP, which fixes a lot of jumping and wobbling in 3D geometry. You can see a pronounced example of that in the video above, which shows the game Silent Hill running with and without PXGP.

DuckStation is definitely the best PSX emulator, and you can grab it from the Google Play Store below.

Best retro console emulator on Android: RetroArch

RetroArch is a popular open-source front-end for emulators. If you’re into playing retro games, RetroArch is your one-stop shop for all your emulating needs. It's not an emulator by itself but instead allows you to add "cores" that act as the backend to emulate several legacy consoles. While most of its most popular emulators are already covered here by dedicated apps, it has a large variety of retro consoles that you can think of.

Some of the best cores include:

• NES
• SNES
• Nintendo 64
• Sega Megadrive
• Game Boy
• Game Boy Advance

You can play basically every console on an Android smartphone

There are so many amazing emulators on Android, made by talented developers who all want to make it so that the only device you ever need to carry for your games is your smartphone. We've come a long way with most of these emulators, where the likes of Nintendo Switch emulation was merely a pipe dream just a couple of years ago. Now that's no longer the case, and your smartphone can truly become the heart of your gaming experiences.

If you use any other emulators or have a favorite game to emulate on your smartphone, then be sure to let us know in the comments!