I turned my old phone into a retro gaming machine with this app, and the UI alone makes it worth trying

Published Aug 3, 2026, 11:30 AM EDT João has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem. I also love all things tech and videogames, especially Nintendo, which he's always happy to talk about. Prior to joining XDA in 2021, he worked at Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/jo%C3%A3o-carrasqueira/ I'm a big fan of finding new uses for old technology you may have lying around, and we've seen examples of old phones being used for things like smart home sensors, dashboards, and even servers. But I like gaming, and the idea of turning an old phone into a retro gaming machine is especially enticing. Enter iiSU, a relatively recent project that caught my eye on YouTube a while back. It's exclusively a frontend for retro gaming (meaning no emulators are included), and it's tailor-made for Android smartphones. After spending some time with it, I'm already in love with the idea. It needs a little more polish, but it's seriously cool. A beautiful launcher designed for controllers It's all about gaming If you're repurposing an old phone into a gaming machine, you probably don't need all the fluff of other apps getting in the way, and you may want to attach a controller to the phone. I don't have one of these mobile controllers, but I do have an Xbox controller, and iiSU is designed to work perfectly with it. Every aspect of the initial setup, all the way to each element of iiSU's UI, works just as well with a touchscreen as it does with a controller, and it might be even better for the latter. It's very natural to navigate, and button actions are always made clear, so navigation is as easy as it gets. iiSU is also designed to replace your home screen altogether if you want it to be your main focus, which makes sense if you're looking to repurpose your old phone exclusively for gaming. It's obviously focused on gaming, but it can actually still do some work as a proper launcher. You can add Android apps and widgets to the home screen, in addition to enabling notification access, so iiSU can relay system notifications through its UI. Plus, it needs to be said that iiSU just looks stunning. The UI is heavily inspired by some of the best console interfaces of the past two decades, though it's mostly influenced by Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS. You can also enable a view in the style of Sony's XMB (short for XrossMediaBar) — the UI language used for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable — when navigating the full game library, which I did. In fact, there are quite a few customization options here, with all sorts of visual effects and animations you can adjust or turn off to suit your style. It's great to have a dedicated frontend with such a unique focus on customization. iiSU doesn't include any emulators, but you can choose which ones to use for each platform. I went with RetroArch, since its core system makes it easier to support all platforms with a single app. An impressive feat Your retro games are front and center on iiSU, but that doesn't mean this launcher does nothing more than open them. There are a few important integrations here that make this really special. First, you have the basics, with game data scrapers such as Screenscraper and many others available to provide artwork and other information about your games. This lets you present them more beautifully, and you have a handful of options so you can choose what you prefer. I just use Screenscraper because it doesn't require me to create an account, but you have options like TheGamesDB, too. Then it gets a little more interesting. iiSU can also integrate with a website called RetroAchievements, which has community-created achievements for retro games that never had them officially. I'm far from a completionist in this sense, but I did create a RetroAchievements account and linked it using my API key, and it all seems to work well. You can view the list of achievements for a specific game as you're browsing your library, and there's also a dedicated Achievements tab on the home screen that logs recent activity so you can see all the achievements you've cleared recently. Finally, there's even Discord integration. Not so much for calls, but you can access your friends list, pin favorite contacts, and message them directly from iiSU, without needing a dedicated Discord app. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of a keyboard app for Android that works well with a controller, so you still need the touchscreen to type, which may be uncomfortable if you're using a controller for the rest of the experience. You don't even need a local library It integrates with RomM, too It's not just social integrations, either. iiSU has a couple of extra features that can make a huge difference to how you manage your library. One is the ability to import a library from ES-DE, another popular frontend for emulation. This just makes it easier to get started, though you still need that data to be stored locally on your phone. But if you want to stream your games from a self-hosted RomM server, there's an option for that too. You can connect to your RomM instance and play your games remotely, saving storage space on your phone. It's not something I personally have a use for in this case, but it's great to have so many useful options. It's still early in development Expect some bugs iiSU is undeniably an exciting prospect, but it is also a very recent one. The first alpha release happened back in October 2025, and the project is still in its alpha testing stage, so there are going to be problems. I experienced a couple of crashes during the initial setup, such as when I was trying to connect my Discord account, as well as randomly throughout my time with the app. Thankfully, when it crashed during setup, the app actually saved my progress through the guide, so at least I didn't have to re-do everything. The most notable problem came when I tried to add a widget to my iiSU home screen, though. I went to add a RetroAchievements widgets, and the app crashed — not just once, but permanently. Upon reloading the app, I would be met with a blank screen each time. Clearing the app cache would allow me to launch it again, but it would crash again as long as the empty widget was on the home screen. The good news is iiSU has been getting fairly frequent updates. The latest public release was a little over a month ago, but a newer version is already available for paid supporters, and there have already been 15 public releases in total since the October debut. Things are progressing quickly, so I would expect more bug fixes and features to be coming frequently. More platforms are also planned It won't be Android-only forever Right now, iiSU is exclusively an Android app, but the team does plan to make a version for desktop platforms at some point. The focus is naturally on the existing Android version at this time, but according to a post on the project's official Discord server, support for Windows, macOS, and Linux is planned. Some components already have desktop versions. It will probably be some time before iiSU comes to other platforms, but it will be fantastic to have a real alternative to ES-DE, which powers most of the popular emulation platforms like EmuDeck, RetroDeck, and Batocera. Not that ES-DE isn't fantastic as well, but iiSU has an interesting, unique take, and both would be great options to have. iiSU is incredible It's been great to see this project from its very early days and how far it's already come during development. iiSU looks fantastic, and playing retro games on an old phone is a great way to experience some of the best titles of all time. If you have a phone you're no longer using, this may be your chance to bring it back into your life. iISU