I love my Motorola DROID, and I love gaming. While I've played a bunch of games from the Android Marketplace on my phone, nothing really piqued my interest until I checked out a few NES emulators. At first I tried playing with my touch screen, but just like an iPhone, most of your screen is covered by your thumbs and it just didn't feel right. Playing with the keyboard worked decently, but it felt clunky, and turning left and right was a hassle.

That's where the Game Gripper comes in. When I first saw it I thought "Wait a second, could it be? And now I know for sure, I just added a new accessory to my wolfpack". After playing with this for a few minutes its apparent that this is a "must have" for anyone who likes to play games on their Motorola DROID.

When the Game Gripper came in I went directly into my mobile gaming test office (aka bathroom) to put it through its paces. It attaches to the DROID by sliding the screen up to reveal the keyboard, and hooking the Game Gripper around the edges of the phone. After mapping the buttons, I was up and running. I loaded up Super Mario Bros. and gaming "nerdvana" was achieved. I was easily able to fly through the first few boards of SMB with no problems.

Game Gripper On Motorola DROID
Game Gripper On Motorola DROID

The Game Gripper has a D-pad and 8 buttons, which is more than enough to play NES, Genesis, and Gameboy emulators. While there are also emulators available for the SNES and Gameboy Advance, these might be harder to play because of the need for shoulder buttons, which could be mapped to the extra buttons on the controller but could be very difficult to contort you hand to use them.

Currently, the Game Gripper is $14.99 and available for the Motorola DROID (Milestone in the EU). It comes in either black or gray with your choice of red, green, blue, clear, orange, pink, white or black buttons. If you like playing emulators and have a DROID, you are doing yourself a disservice by not picking this up.

Since it is a great product, they are currently manufacturing versions for Motorola DEVOUR, Motorola BACKFLIP and Nokia N900. These versions should be coming shortly.

With the advent high powered phones and and advanced mobile operating systems, handheld gaming is rapidly expanding off tradition consoles and onto phones. Operating systems like Windows Mobile, iPhone OS and Android are allowing developers to create some immensely deep and fun games (check out our list of 5 great free Android games). The Game Gripper is an accessory that lets you harness the power of these devices and play games the way they were meant to be played.