C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
TL;DR
- CHD files allow emulators to save space by compressing disk images.
- The tools available for creating CHD files are mostly PC-based.
- CHDroid offers a native Android solution for creating and managing CHD files.
Whether you’re using your phone by itself, pairing it with a controller grip, or picking up a fully-built dedicated handheld console, Android powers the best mobile gaming emulation experiences out there. Today’s emulators it can handle some of the best retro games ever to be released, and while it’s fun to access mountains of PlayStation or Saturn games right in your pocket, all those disc images can start eating up your memory fast. Thankfully, there’s a new tool coming out of beta ready to help you do something about it.
Don’t want to miss out on the best Android Authority?
As games expanded from ROMs to optical storage, file sizes shot through the roof, and while you might not mind a single 700MB CD ISO image, it quickly becomes a different story when you want a library of dozens of games at your disposal. Fortunately, the emulation community has an ace up its sleeve: the CHD file format. And this week marks its arrival CHDroid v1.1.0.
CHD files started back with arcade emulators, they were used to compress hard disk rips from arcade titles. Remember the classic light-gun shooter Area 51? It’s basically an Atari Jaguar with a hard drive that stores all the video footage, and anyone emulating it will need a CHD copy of the game data.
Nick Fernandez / Android Authority
Apparently, there are no CHDs there is to be hard disk images and the format is equally compatible with optical disks. By converting ISO to CHD, you can compress game data to take up less space. The best part is that since many emulators support CHD files natively, you don’t need to unzip them before playing – they’re all seamless.
I wonder what the catch is? Well, until now, the best way to convert disc images to CHDs was to use a tool on your PC. And while this works, it’s a little less than elegant if you’re developing a mobile-first game library. That’s why we’re so excited CHDroid getting out of beta and having version v1.1.0.
CHDroid is an Android CHD conversion tool that allows you to convert your large game drive images into slightly smaller CHD files. You can even restore them to their original form, but with emulators that can play CHDs directly, there’s little reason to do so.
If you want to see what it can do to reduce the storage toll your game library places on your Android phone, you can get it CHDroid from Play Store and now start minifying those files.
Thank you for being a part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before deployment.
