How to play SNES games on your Nvidia Shield

The Nvidia Shield might just be the perfect gizmo on which to play your old-school games on the go.

It's got a huge screen, great controls, the processing power of a NASA supercomputer, expandable memory, and even HDMI out for gaming on your telly.

So, we wanted to tell you exactly how you go about getting those classic SNES games on your Shield. Yep, we're going to tell you all about the best emulator for this job.

Note: Pocket Gamer does not condone the use of images for piracy. You should only ever emulate games of which you own the original, physical cartridge.

Boot up your Shield, head to the Google Play Store, and search for RetroArch. Install this free app on your Shield.

This is an all-in-one emulator that can mimic everything from the NES to the PlayStation and is chock-full of features. It will even detect the Shield when you load the app and automatically configure all the buttons in each emulator.

With the emulator on our Shield, we now need to get some games. We won't tell you where to find them, but we will show you how to get them onto your device.

If the ROM file is on your computer, simply plug the Shield in with the micro-USB cable and find a device under 'My Computer'. Make a folder called 'ROMs' or 'Games' or 'Illegally Acquired Content' and drag-and-drop the .SMC file into this folder.

If you're on a Mac, you'll need to use Android File Transfer.

You could instead use a microSD card. Plug one into your computer (you may need an adaptor), drag-and-drop the ROM file onto the card, and then slot the SD card into the back of the Shield.

Or instead of doing all that, you could just get the game on the Shield itself. Find a website with ROMs in a web browser app and download the game straight to the system memory.

So, you have a SNES ROM on your shield. Perfect. Let's load up RetroArch.

On first load, you will see the screen above. Read through the waiver and tap 'Keep cores'.

Choose 'Load Core' from the RetroArch menu and choose 'bsnes/higan Performance'. Then, hit 'Load Content' and find the ROM from Step 2.

If your ROM is on the microSD card, hit 'Parent Directory' twice and then look in sdcard1 to find your ill-gotten games.

Wherever your game is located, tap the ROM to start playing.

You can press the 'Play' button (top right of the Shield's central buttons) to enter the settings. From here, you can save and load a temporary save state. You can also fiddle with options for audio, visuals, inputs, and more.