How to Install Retro Console Emulators on the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick

A Smart TV anywhere with the Mi TV Stick

As we explained to you during its review a few days ago, the Xiaomi stick is a device based on Android TV with which you can turn any television into a smart one and give those older screens a second life. This will provide them with all the functionalities that these most current devices have, such as: surfing the internet, watching content from the main streaming platforms such as Netflix or Prime Video, or even installing applications and games from the Play Store .

And it is in this last section where we find a slight drawback. The technical specifications of this stick with Android TV are enough for those more normal or light tasks but, when trying to play games, those heavier actions with a higher graphic load make the lag appear quickly . Therefore, despite being able to connect Bluetooth gamepads, the gaming experience of this equipment is not as fluid as we would like.

But of course, like many other things, this also has a solution. We can install older game console emulators that require much less resources than any game in the Android store. These will allow us not only to be able to have a good time playing on our TV, but we will also be able to recall old times for those who lived a childhood surrounded by those games that are now considered classics. How can we do this? Well that is just what we are going to explain to you now.

Emulators + ROM’s, how do they work?

The first thing is that, if you are not related to the world of emulators, you should know what the key points of this game replay system are. It has two parts:

• Emulator or kernel : in a simple way we can define it as the application that will act as the console. It will emulate any old game console that you can imagine such as the SNES, Amstrad, Neo Geo Pocket, Spectrum or even some more modern ones like the PS1.
• ROM’s or games : there is little to explain about this element. It is about the games in a compatible extension that allows emulators to play them and start playing.

Therefore, if you want to enjoy one of your childhood games, you only need to find these two elements, that is, the game and the corresponding console emulator, to begin remembering those games that you played in the past. We do not know on which websites you can find any of these but, as you already know, the internet is very wise and it sure has a solution for this.

How to install retro console emulators on the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick

Now we go to the really interesting thing about this article. This process is quite simple and, once you know it, you can do it in just 15 minutes. You only need this stick, obviously, in addition to a Bluetooth gamepad, an Android mobile phone or a PC, and install 3 applications that we will now explain what they are and how they work.

First you need to locate the ROMs of the games in question. As we have already mentioned, we do not know exactly where you can download them from but surely doing an internet search you will be able to locate them. Once you have them, you just have to save them in a folder on your PC or, in the event that you prefer to use an Android phone as is our case, put them in the internal memory of this. Why do you need to do this? Because the next step is to send these files to the internal memory of My TV Stick, but the problem is that we cannot connect any type of USB memory to it. Therefore, we will have to use the Send files to TV app that you must download on both computers.

With this app installed, you must open it on both computers and, from the mobile phone in our case, select the “Send” option. Here you will have to select the files in question that you want to send to the television and once you complete the selection, click on send. After a few seconds of waiting, the app will locate other devices that have the same application open and are close to you to make the shipment. Just select the equipment in question, that is, the Mi TV Stick and the process will begin. At the end we will have the games in the internal memory of this. But not just any folder will serve us, you will need it to be in a specific path and for this you will have to install two other applications: RetroArch and File Commander .

The first will be in charge of providing us with the emulators of the different retro consoles that we need to be able to play. The second app is a file manager with which we can place the games on the correct path.

When you have both installed on the Xiaomi Stick, enter File Commander and access the device’s download folder. Here you must select the games and click on the “move” icon to move them to another folder. The correct path is any of the folders that are inside RetroArch so that this application can read them. So when we click on “move” we move until we enter the RetroArch path (which is at the root of the internal memory) and here you can place the files, for example, in the downloads folder as we have done.

Before entering RetroArch, we have to synchronize the Bluetooth gamepad to continue with the process. This is done through the settings of the Xiaomi Stick itself. Now we can start the emulation app but it is essential that when entering it the remote is synchronized in slot 1 to be able to operate the interface. We will see this message in the lower left part of the screen. If we do not perform this synchronization correctly, RetroArch will not respond and we will have to restart it to continue with the process.

Once inside, we need to load the emulators in the application. We will do this from the “Load core” section and we must choose the correct option depending on the games we want to play. As you can see, in this list there are different options for each emulator, so if any of them give you problems, you just have to delete 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 and we can now enjoy hours of fun on our My TV Stick.

As you have seen, the process is quite simple and if you follow this article step by step, you will be able to enjoy retro console emulators on your Smart TV . If you have any questions about the process, you can consult the video tutorial that we leave a little above, or leave us a comment with your question and we will try to solve it as soon as possible.