Ouya, the open-source game console running Android, has come under fire for the look and feel of the games demonstrated so far on the system. Ars’ own Florence Ion talked last month with several developers currently involved with Ouya launch titles, and while they were clearly enthusiastic about the promise of developing for an open system, the games themselves so far lack, well, a bit of polish.

A console typically lives and dies by its launch titles (see the unfortunate Sega Saturn), but Ouya now has the opportunity to stand directly on the shoulders of giants with its initial content offerings. According to Ed Krassenstein, the Ouya forum administrator, Ouya will launch with NES, SNES, and Nintendo64 emulators available (hat tip to TechCrunch). NES emulation will be provided by EMUya, SNES emulation will be via SuperGNES, and N64 emulation will be via Mupen64Plus.

As TechCrunch observes, the noteworthy thing here isn’t necessarily that emulation is coming to the platform, but rather that the emulators themselves appear to have been officially blessed by Ouya and can be installed directly, without side-loading.