How to Install Retro Emulators on the Amazon Fire TV

If you like the world of consoles and games, you have a lot of possibilities to re-enjoy those titles of your childhood. You can play all those titles from your tablet, computer or mobile but, if you have an Amazon Fire TV, you will be able to do it on the big screen. Today we explain the process to install a retro console emulator on your Amazon Fire TV .

Emulators + ROM’s, how do they work?

Install Retro Emulators on the Amazon Fire TV

If you’ve never heard of the world of emulators and ROMs, you’re probably wondering what they are and how they work. In order to play retro titles we need two fundamental elements:

  • Emulator or kernel : this section, explained in a simple way and without going into too many technicalities, is the application that will act as the console. It will emulate any old game console that you can imagine like the SNES, Amstrad, Neo Geo Pocket, Spectrum or even some more modern ones like the PS1.
  • ROM’s or games : well, as its name suggests, it is the game (with an extension compatible with the emulator, yes) we want to play.

So the first thing you need to find are these two elements to start using and enjoying the titles of your childhood. We cannot give you information about where you can find the games (although you can find everything on the internet), but we can explain how the process of installing the emulators on your Fire TV is.

How to install emulators on Amazon Fire TV

We get down to work with this procedure. You have to know that, if you follow the steps that we will now comment on, it will not be too complicated and it will only take about 10 – 15 minutes.

First, to use the emulators, we will need to install the RetroArch application. The disadvantage of this is that you will not find it in the Amazon app store, but we will have to download it from its own website. In order to do this, we must first install another application (which is in the Amazon store) called Downloader .

Once this application is functional on the Amazon Fire TV, you must follow these steps:

  • Open Downloader .
  • In the top bar you have to place the RetroArch website to access it. That is, type “www.retroarch.com” .
  • Once the downloader app shows you the interface of this website, you must download the Fire TV driver courses until you find the RetroArch download button. The correct option is the one named “Download Stable”.
  • Pressing that button will start the download. Once finished, click on “Install”. You will probably see a poster mentioning that you must access the Fire TV settings to give permissions to install unknown apps. Accept all the permissions that this process requests because each and every one of them is necessary.

At the end of all this process, you will already have RetroArch installed among the rest of your applications on the Amazon device. Now we need to move the games to the Fire TV to continue the process.

Send ROM’s to Amazon Fire TV

As we have already mentioned, we cannot tell you from where you can download the games compatible with these emulators. But, what if we can explain the procedure to transfer them from your computer / mobile to the Amazon gadget, since this can be somewhat cumbersome. We have two possibilities to send those files:

  • USB : Luckily, all Amazon Fire TVs support USB HUB use through their microUSB port. Therefore, in this way we will only need to insert the ROM in a pendrive (formatted in FAT32 from the PC) and connect it to the Amazon equipment. We will discuss the following steps a little further ahead.
  • Wireless : in case you do not want to buy one of these accessories to carry out this process, you should know that you can also do it simply by using your mobile phone and an app called Send Files to TV.

To do this last method, the first thing to do is to install this app on both the phone and the Amazon computer. Then, with the ROM previously downloaded to your smartphone, you will only have to:

  • Go to the phone’s downloads folder.
  • Select the game file in question and click on the share icon.
  • Among the different options you will see “Send Files to TV” . Press on it with the app open also on Fire TV itself.
  • After a few seconds of waiting, your Amazon accessory should appear in the list of devices available for shipping. Click on it to start shipping.

In the event that you get a bug, it is most likely that this application is missing a permission within the Fire TV. Give it all that it asks for because, once again, they are important for its proper functioning.

Now we have the app that will be in charge of supplying us with the emulators (RetroArch) and the ROM that we want to play in the download folder of the Amazon accessory. But, before opening RetroArch, we must place the ROM in the proper directory. For that you will have to download one more application, a file manager . In our case we have used ES File Explorer , which you can find within the Amazon app store.

Once again, after installing this application on your computer, you just have to follow these simple steps:

  • Enter ES File Explorer .
  • Access the download folder.
  • Here you will see the file of the ROM in question that you sent from your smartphone. Select it by pressing and holding the action button on your remote control, then scroll to the three-dot menu on the bottom toolbar and click on it.
  • In the options that you can see now, you have to choose “Move to” . This will allow us to select the new route where we want to send it.
  • Click on the back button to go to the path of the internal memory of the device, then you must go to RetroArch> Downloads and select this folder to send the file.

The truth is that any folder in the internal path of RetroArch would do us, but the most logical thing is to locate it here. And that’s it, now you just need to choose the right emulator.

Another detail that you should know before entering this application is that its use must be done through a Bluetooth gamepad. Therefore, before accessing, we must link the remote with the Fire TV through the settings, which are as simple as:

  • In the main menu go to “Settings”.
  • Once here, go to the option “Bluetooth controllers and devices”.
  • Now click on “Game Controllers”.
  • Activate the gamepad synchronization and, once it appears in this list on the screen, select it.

If you do not have a controller of this type, you can take a look at the large number of offers that you can find on Amazon. We leave you an interesting option below that you should take into account when making your purchase.

Install emulators from RetroArch

Now it is time to open RetroArch. When doing so, with the gamepad previously paired, you should not touch any button other than the one on this controller. When you press any key, a message will appear stating that the pairing has been successful. Now you can handle this interface through the gamepad.

Once inside, we need to load the emulators into the application. We will do this from the “Load core” section and, of course, depending on each title we will have to choose one or another emulator. In this list there are different options for each emulator so that, if one gives you some kind of problem or incompatibility, you can eliminate it and load another option. Once the correct emulator is installed, you have to access the games from the “Load content” option and accessing the path where we had previously placed the ROMs. By clicking on one of them the game will start automatically.