Emulator

Apple updated its App Review Guidelines this month to allow "retro game console emulator apps" on the App Store for the iPhone and other devices. Below, we outline everything to know about these emulators and available options so far. This information is up to date as of April 2024, but Apple's policies could change over time. What is Allowed Apple told us that emulators that can load...

The first approved Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone and iPad was made available on the App Store today following Apple's rule change. The emulator is called Bimmy, and it was developed by Tom Salvo. On the App Store, Bimmy is described as a tool for testing and playing public domain/"homebrew" games created for the NES, but the app allows you to load ROMs for any...

Apple today said it removed Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store for violating the company's App Review Guidelines related to spam (section 4.3) and copyright (section 5.2), but it did not provide any specific details. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut's open-source GBA4iOS app. The emulator rose to the top of the App Store charts following its release this weekend,...

A week after Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to permit retro game console emulators, a Game Boy emulator for the iPhone called iGBA has appeared in the App Store worldwide. The emulator is already one of the top free apps on the App Store charts. It was not entirely clear if Apple would allow emulators to work with all and any games, but iGBA is able to load any Game Boy ROMs that...

Mac OS 8 is now available as an app for macOS, Windows, and Linux, reports The Verge. Slack developer Felix Rieseberg has transformed Mac OS 8 into a single downloadable app for modern macOS, Windows, and Linux devices. Having previously transformed Windows 95 into an app in 2018, Rieseberg turned his attention to transforming an entire 1991 Macintosh Quadra with Mac OS 8.1 into a single...

Developer Gabriel O'Flaherty-Chan recently shared a project where he managed to get a Game Boy emulator he dubbed "Giovanni" running on the second-generation Apple Watch, allowing it to play Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. According to O'Flaherty-Chan, it was a challenge finding the right balance "between framerate and performance," but he says the end result is a "surprisingly usable...

Developer Riley Testut has begun teasing the launch of a new emulator, called "Delta," coming this December in beta form, presumably for iOS devices. On Delta's teaser site, hazy images of controllers for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64 are shown alongside the Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color. Testut tweeted out the information for Delta yesterday, while also saying...

Earlier this month, developer James Addyman got his emulator, Provenance, working on the Apple TV Developer Kit provided to developers via lottery, and now developer Kevin Smith has gotten the popular MAME game emulator running on the device. In the video below, a tvOS version of the MAME emulator is demonstrated on the fourth-generation Apple TV. For those unfamiliar with MAME, it stands for M...