u/BackboneOne_Support

We've heard a lot of your feedback on emulation in the Backbone App, mostly around compatibility, performance, and overall reliability. So we went back and rebuilt the underlying emulation system from scratch.

Backbone now runs custom, native emulator cores built directly into the app for:

• NES
• SNES
• Game Boy
• Game Boy Advance
• Sega Genesis / Mega Drive

Moving to native emulator cores means wider game compatibility, better performance, refined button mapping, and a more reliable emulator experience across all your games. Simply click the tile and add any ROM of the supported cores. No need to shuffle between which core to use! We’ll handle that on our end and instantly let you play your ROM.

What’s next?

N64 is coming next and should roll out in the next few weeks. We’ll be launching it as a Beta while we continue testing and improving compatibility.

We’ve also added save states on a per-game basis, so your progress is maintained individually for each game. 

We’re also exploring ways to bring richer retro artwork, metadata, and other assets into the experience over time.

Where you can help us:

We’ve spent a lot of time testing the new cores across games and devices, but emulation can have plenty of game-specific edge cases. If you run into something that doesn’t look, sound, or play correctly, please let us know.

We’ll share more as N64 gets closer. In the meantime, give the new cores a try and tell us what you think.

TL;DR: We rebuilt Backbone’s emulator with native cores for NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, and Genesis / Mega Drive. Better compatibility, performance, reliability, and per-game save states. N64 is coming soon and we’d love to hear your feedback on these new updates!

Over the past few months, we’ve been listening closely to your feedback about the Backbone App, and today we’re excited to start rolling out one of our biggest app updates yet. These features are FREE for all Backbone users.

Here’s what’s new (no subscription required):

🎮 Works with any controller!
The Backbone App now supports docked, wired, and any Bluetooth wireless controller across Android and iOS!

📱 A Completely Refreshed Home Screen
We’ve redesigned the app experience with new tab bar navigation, better Game Library organization, and improved touch support to make finding and jumping into games faster and easier.

📰 Introducing What’s New in Backbone

Keeping up with your favorite games shouldn’t mean bouncing between news sites, YouTube, patch notes, reviews, and guides.

With What’s New, Backbone brings the most relevant gaming updates into one personalized feed inside the app. We scan trusted gaming outlets, creators, YT channels, official updates, and more, then organize that content around the games you actually play and follow. 

Be sure to check out the “For You” feed where you’ll see all the latest content for games you care about most, right where you already play.

📲 All new Backbone iPad and tablet app
We’ve heard your feedback and now the Backbone App is fully supported on iPadOS and Android Tablets! Check it out on the app store and game on the big screen!

This update is just the beginning, over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing deeper dives into each of these features and more.

We’d love to hear in the comments what you’re most excited to try first. What features should we add next?

App updates for both iOS and Android will be rolling out in a few weeks.