Tested - Can the Galaxy S20 Ultra handle GameCube and Nintendo 3DS emulators - Android

In the world of console emulation on Android phones and tablets, few emulators tax the system more than Dolphin (GameCube/Wii) and Citra (Nintendo 3DS). Since the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is one of the most powerful phones on the market today, I wanted to know how it would handle GameCube and Nintendo 3DS emulation.

Inside the Galaxy S20 Ultra is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 processor paired with the Adreno 650 GPU and an absurd amount of RAM. Theoretically, you shouldn’t be able to get faster gaming performance on an Android phone with anything other than these components.

So, can the most powerful Android phone to date run the two most demanding retro gaming emulators for Android without any issues? Let’s find out!

Related: 15 best emulators for Android to play old favorites

My setups for GameCube and Nintendo 3DS emulation

Before I got the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra, I did all my emulation on my OnePlus 7 Pro. For this article, I installed all my games onto the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and also updated all my emulators to the latest versions. This way I could play one game on the OnePlus 7 Pro and then the same game on the Galaxy S20 Ultra and get a decent idea of how much better the Galaxy S20 Ultra is in comparison.

For the sake of disclosure, here’s what that means specifically:

• Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra & OnePlus 7 Pro
  • Citra (Nintendo 3DS emulation)
    • Version: aac77142b, sourced from here
    • No settings tweaked aside from physical controller setup and turning FPS counter on
  • Dolphin (GameCube emulation)
    • Version: 5.0-11824, sourced from here
    • No settings tweaked aside from physical controller setup and turning FPS counter on

Obviously, I could very likely get better performance from both systems by tweaking lots of settings, even going so far as to tweak settings for each game. However, the purpose of this is to see if the Galaxy S20 Ultra hardware is really much better than that of the OnePlus 7 Pro’s (or any other sub-Snapdragon 865 device), so I didn’t add any tweaks to keep things fair, at least at first.

I used an Xbox One Wireless Controller connected to a mobile phone holder clip on both systems as I absolutely cannot stand on-screen controls. Since the controller was the same for both system tests, it’s not a variable.

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As a final note, I thought I’d throw it out there that I use the amazing app OneSync to sync all of my ROMs, emulators, and save files across all my systems via OneDrive. This enables me, for example, to play a GameCube game on my phone, save it, and then pick up that same save file on my PC or Steam Link. I’m super happy with this (and it was incredibly helpful for this article) so give it a shot if you are interested!

With all that out of the way, let’s get to the testing and my experience with the two emulators.

GameCube emulation: Galaxy S20 Ultra wins, but not by much

There are a few GameCube games that are difficult for Dolphin to render well, even when you’re running the PC version of the emulator on a high-end system. Granted, if you have a $6,000 gaming rig, you’re not going to face too many issues playing nearly any GameCube game, but your system will still need to work harder for some games in comparison to others.

For this test, I started by playing The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on each phone. This is a relatively simple game to emulate — it has a five-star compatibility rating on the Dolphin Wiki, indicating that it can be played from beginning to end without any issues. Both the OnePlus 7 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra had steady 60fps speeds during all gameplay for this title, indicating that each phone had no problem.

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I next moved on to a more taxing game: Metroid Prime. This game has a four-star compatibility rating but is well-known as being a tough game to emulate on low-tier or even some mid-tier PCs. The OnePlus 7 Pro ran the game fine, but there were definitely noticeable drops in framerate as well as some audio distortions, especially when moving from room to room in the opening five minutes of the game. This also happened with Super Smash Bros. Melee, another difficult-to-emulate game.

Even on some hard-to-emulate GameCube games, both phones did very well.

Meanwhile, the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra rendered both Metroid and Smash slightly smoother. There was still some lag and framerate drops in Smash moving from the title screen to the actual fight, for example, but it wasn’t as glitchy as the OnePlus 7 Pro.

Finally, I ran a notoriously tricky game to emulate: The Simpsons: Hit and Run. Interestingly, my OnePlus 7 Pro wouldn’t even start this game. The splash screen showed up when I first started it and then Dolphin immediately shut it down. The S20 Ultra, though, ran the game just fine, albeit with some audio crackling and some notable framerate drops when moving from title screens to gameplay. Still, I could actually play the game without much issue on the S20 Ultra, which I definitely could not do with the OnePlus 7 Pro.

Ultimately, there wasn’t a GameCube game I tried that I couldn’t play and have a minimum of a “good enough” experience with the Galaxy S20 Ultra, while the OnePlus 7 Pro had trouble with just a few.

Nintendo 3DS emulation: S20 Ultra is better, but far from perfect