by Doc – Owner, Founder, Friggin’ Loves His Thor
Some Games Don’t Work Well on the Thor
Hey, so fun fact: if you drop this thing or play it too intensely, it’ll break and you’re out five hundred bucks. This gizmo isn’t exactly designed for you to play Wii Sports Tennis, and the sticks don’t lend themselves to the most extreme or precise games like Smash Bros Melee or F-Zero, so your options are limited in those areas. You’re also limited to the quality of Android emulators for the console you want, and some of the newer consoles (*cough* 3DS) don’t have emulators that are universally compatible yet. Consider this a safe list of recommendations for games that’ll work on your Thor without much finagling.
Pokemon (all of ’em)
In every Nintendo console you’re going to read on this list, there’s a Pokemon game worth recommending. Guess what: there’s going to be a crap ton of them here! I’ll just give you a bulleted list of the Pokémon games for these consoles you should play instead of going into detail on each one like I will below.
- Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, Pokémon Black and White, Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum are all for the Nintendo DS
- You also have Pokémon Mystery Dungeon in its various forms, which is an excellent side game spinoff.
- Pokemon Colosseum for the Gamecube
- Pokemon Generation III for the GBA and its many ROM hacks
For the 3DS, your options are a little bit more limited right now, as Azahar on Android seems to be having some compatibility issues with Pokémon games. I played through Pokémon Y all the way through and had only a few stops and stutters along the way, but it doesn’t seem to be able to run any other Pokémon games effectively right now. I couldn’t even get Pokémon Omega Ruby or Alpha Sapphire to boot.
For the non-Pokémon games on the DS and 3DS, here’s a few suggestions:
3DS and DS
New Super Mario Bros and its 3DS counterpart, New Super Mario Bros 2 (which I should add is the third New Super Mario Bros game), are both excellent side-scrolling adventures that if you somehow haven’t played are well worth the time. If you’re looking for something at the level of complexity Super Mario Wonder or New Super Mario Bros U brings to the table, you’re not going to find it. Each of these games has its own charm that Nintendo stopped feeling the need to replicate in their later games. I think they’re good reflections of the culture of Nintendo at the time, right around that awkward 2014 “Year of Luigi” time in Nintendo history, where the company was struggling to deal with the changes in both executive and creative leadership, so it produced some odd results.
There’s also Nintendogs for those of us who are more interested in something a bit calmer and more relaxed. If you spend a lot of time with your Thor on you, Nintendogs is a fantastic choice.
And in that same vein, Animal Crossing: Wild World as well! If you’re playing both of these games, I’m assuming you really love animals and time-based simulators. The Animal Crossing series is legendary for its relaxation focus and, as my girlfriend likes to point out regularly, the fact that it looks something like the Littlest Pet Shop toy craze. I grew up on Animal Crossing for the GameCube, which I will recommend later on in this list, and I’ve played Animal Crossing: City Folk for the Wii extensively, which is effectively a port of Animal Crossing: Wild World, so I can say quite assuredly that you’re going to enjoy this game.
For the 3DS, there are also Nintendogs games available for it, but the Azahar emulator isn’t able presently (August 2026) to emulate Animal Crossing: New Leaf. If you get Animal Crossing: New Leaf running, make sure you get the Welcome Amiibo edition. I still remember when the Welcome Amiibo edition came out, and it was like New Leaf had become an entirely new game. There’s so much niche content available in New Leaf, like DLC items, amiibo minigames, and such, that it truly is the best Animal Crossing game in the franchise and likely to be your favorite game on the Thor if you are a daily player.
For those of us looking for some nostalgia, Club Penguin has two Nintendo DS games that are really quite good. The first one is entirely original, called Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force. Remember back in early 2010 when the popcorn bomb took the Penguin Secret Agency offline and it was replaced by the EPF? Yeah, that was done to promote this game.
The second game is called Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force: Herbert’s Revenge. The first seven missions of Herbert’s Revenge are ports of various Penguin Secret Agency missions found in the online game, and the last three are entirely original to the DS game. I know that the most beloved Flash game in history has been offline for almost 10 years now, but if I ever win the lottery, I’m buying the rights to Club Penguin from Disney, so consider this segment a little bit of wishful thinking.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story
As it happens, both of these games were originally on the DS and received 3DS ports and remakes that are listed as having been quite compatible with Azahar. I’ve not played through either game in their original form completely, and haven’t tested the 3DS iterations on the Thor, but my research online indicates they are pretty functional. Really it comes down to which one you feel you ought to play, but both of these are great entries in the Mario & Luigi RPG series.
Mario Kart DS
To tell you the truth, just about every Mario Kart game doesn’t handle that well on the Thor because the base L and R triggers seem to be just slightly too wobbly. However, Mario Kart DS pulls it off really well because it was built for the DS! The Thor feels like a DS with Xbox 360 style L&R triggers stuck on the back, so you’ll find that this feels pretty solid in your hands when you’re playing. It’s not the only Mario Kart you should try on the system, as Mario Kart: Double Dash is extremely underrated if you like a racer that feels like it has some real character to it, but Mario Kart DS is also a solid bridge between the more modern, bouncy post-Mario Kart Wii era and the heavier, slower Mario Kart 64 era.
Hannah Montana
Just kidding.
Kirby Superstar Ultra
I don’t like Kirby games. They’re repetitive, overly cartoony, and don’t feel like there’s any real accomplishment besides moving to the right and beating a boss occasionally. Kirby Superstar Ultra is the exception to this. It’s a remake of Kirby Super Star on the Super Nintendo, and the content that it adds over the original makes for a platformer that just feels good to play. If you’re not a Kirby fan, consider picking this one up, as it’s apparently the quintessential Kirby game according to most Kirby fans, but it’s so good that it even pulled me in.
The Denpa Men
I’m cheating a little bit here because none of the three games in this eShop series are actually compatible with the existing emulators, but I hope and pray that they someday will be. The Denpa Men games are centered around a game mechanic that I have been absolutely obsessed with ever since I first learned about it: you take your 3DS/Thor around the world in real life, and different Denpa Men appear based on the Wi-Fi signals it’s picking up. You can catch them in a small shooting minigame and then use them in your JRPG-style grind. If you like the JRPG format, this game is absolutely vital for you. I consider the first and third ones to be better than the second, as the second one requires far too much grinding to be enjoyable, even for a JRPG game, but still they are all well worth playing. If you happen to have a cell phone or Nintendo Switch, there’s also The New Denpa Men currently out now, which is a much more boiled-down and microtransaction-heavy iteration on this formula, but the first three truly are better games.
Pokémon Virtual Console games
Specifically, Pokémon Yellow and Crystal.
Since you aren’t on a 3DS, you don’t have the infrared trading that was built into the Virtual Console games, but Pokémon Yellow unlocked the Pikachu Beach minigame using only your starter Pikachu, which was not originally available on the Generation 1 game without a stupidly long process of Pokémon Stadium Nintendo 64 unlocks.
Pokémon Crystal features the famous Celebi event, unlocked after defeating the Elite Four and entering the Hall of Fame. Just go to the Goldenrod Pokémon Center to get the GS Ball and then leave. Unlike the original game, you don’t need to get all of the Kanto badges either, just the Johto badges.
Gamecube
Pikmin 1 and 2
People love Pikmin, but for some reason they’ve decided that buying the significantly inferior Nintendo Switch version will suffice. While the Wii and Switch versions do have different physics that allow you to break the game in a lot of ways, they just aren’t quite the same experience as doing all the diligence with the analog stick as intended. Pikmin is a fantastic game for a handheld like the Thor because it’s played in 13 to 15 minute increments unless you’re playing Pikmin 2 and have entered a cave, in which case it’s still in about 13 to 15 minute increments because of the length of each sublevel. If you’re traveling or don’t have all the time in the world, you can flip it open, knock out a day or a cave or something, and then call it good.
I will add that the Thor prevents you from using a button and an analog stick on that side of the controller at the same time. Pikmin 1 and 2 are on the GameCube and so use GameCube controller layouts, but on the original GameCube controller it was often much easier to hold a Pikmin with your pointer finger and angle your squad with the C-stick in preparation for surprising an enemy and killing them before you could get the drop on them. This isn’t possible on the Thor. You might also find that because of the small screen space, if your eyes aren’t that good, it’s a little bit imprecise to play compared to a proper GameCube analog stick, but that’s okay as they are still both very enjoyable games and I’ve 100% completed both games on the Thor.
Animal Crossing
The first Animal Crossing game in the series is significantly more rustic and cozy compared to later entries and, while it doesn’t make use of dual screens, is starting to be modded in a lot of ways. If you’re looking for the sort of game that you can pop in once or twice a week and really enjoy, or pop in every day and enjoy, the first Animal Crossing is for you. It’s not intense or a game that requires you to play every day. Your flowers can’t even die in this game unless you run them over! You just show up, talk to villagers with significantly more interesting dialogue than the later games, do some chores when you want to do them, fish, hunt for bugs, and so on.
I believe there are also ways to set up the emulator so that you have access to the Game Boy Advance content, Animal Island. I’ve only experienced Animal Island on the actual hardware but getting access to the island in Animal Crossing is one of the downright coolest experiences you’ll have in a video game. I realize it’s a small bit of content, but it’s just so neat when you think about how these systems were all put together 25 years ago to be so interconnected and to result in unlocking something like an island.
I will say though, to my knowledge emulators don’t have the interoperability that they would need to fully emulate all of the various hardware and e-Reader functions that Animal Crossing has, so if it’s at all possible for you to play the game on a physical GameCube or version 1 Wii, get a Game Boy Advance link cable and a proper GBA, play it that way. It’s one of those few games that are infinitely better if you have all of the original hardware for it.
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Mario Sunshine is another GameCube game that’s getting a lot of mods lately, and it deserves them. This game is a pretty natural fit for the Thor, and it feels just as at home on your home television screen as it would on an itty bitty screen in your pocket. Frankly I’m shocked they never ported it to the 3DS.
When Sunshine was super glued into the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection for Mario’s 35th anniversary, the internet discourse seemed to decide that Super Mario Sunshine didn’t age well or was some kind of buggy mess. That’s just an internet circle jerk; this game is well polished, looks great, and feels awesome to play. I’ve never been a fan of how later Mario games feel to play, but Mario Sunshine just has that sensation of a pat on the back when you pull off good moves.
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door
If you haven’t bought the remake on the Switch and aren’t worried about spending the money, that’s probably the better way to play PM:TTYD, but let me tell you that you’re in for a treat either way. The first two Paper Mario games are absolute home runs in every way. The Thousand Year Door is one of those rare games that I think I can say are perfection, a true 10/10 game. It starts off pretty immersively, immediately thrusting you into one of the story branches of the game with the X-Nauts’ pursuit of the Thousand Year Door, and takes the time to build the main game’s narrative in such a way that it really sticks with you. And there’s tons of worldbuilding and lore hiding in nooks and crannies of the game that makes you feel like Rogueport is a place that has long preceded you, and will survive long after you.
The battle system is the shining point of the game, as you’ll get about three chapters in and suddenly it hits you that there’s some real depth starting to come into play here. Sure, it’s an easy game regardless, but you get the sense that the battle strategies can really be pushed to a limit you haven’t seen yet by about the time you hit the third chapter boss. Then, in the Pit of 100 Trials, you get to do exactly that if that’s your cup of tea, but you’re perfectly fine not to as well.
It’s just such a fantastically well-made game, and it’s a mistake not to play it.
What about the Nintendo Wii, Wii U?
I’ve never tried to emulate Wii and Wii U games on my Thor, but most of them are so dependent on the Wii Remote that I’ve never felt the need to try. Frankly, I’m not sure how you would. The AYN Thor is… not the kind of system where you ought to use motion controls, especially not as expensive as it is.
Amiibo Doctor 