App Store video game emulators: all the news on retro console ports for iOS

It’s the PlayStation Portable’s turn to get an emulator on the iOS App Store thanks to PPSSPP, which just went live today. This emulator, from developer Henrik Rydgård, has been in development for more than a decade, and it’s free to download for the iPhone and iPad.

Rydgård says in a blog post that the version approved this morning has some limitations versus previous builds of the app that were available through various exploits and workarounds. The biggest is that Apple doesn’t allow Just-in-Time recompilers that retranslate code for the OS and can lead to smoother performance. (It’s why we might never see a GameCube / Wii emulator.) “Fortunately,” he writes, “iOS devices are generally fast enough” for almost all PSP games.

Another emulator with tons of history and development, RetroArch, is now freely available on the iOS App Store today. This is great news for retro gaming fans with iPhones because it can emulate a truly eye-crossing number of retro consoles once installed.

In fact, there are too many to list here. But some notable emulation cores — the actual separately developed emulation software — included in this version of RetroArch are the NEC PC Engine, Nintendo DS, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Boy, Neo Geo Pocket, and even the PSP (using the same core that drives the PPSSPP app that went up today). You can see the list in full by clicking “more” on RetroArch’s description in its App Store listing.

iPhone users without a penchant for jailbreaking can finally enjoy the blocky polygons and shifty textures of the original PlayStation with Gamma, a free PS1 emulator that hit the iOS App Store last night. Gamma comes courtesy of developer ZodTTD, which has been creating emulators for the iPhone since the earliest days of third-party iOS apps.

The app has both iPhone and iPad versions with support for Bluetooth controllers and keyboards, as well as customizable on-screen controller skins. It uses Google Drive and Dropbox syncing for backing up your game files and save states (those are the snapshots you can save at any time and reload, a little like pausing your game — great for old-school games that don’t let you save any time you want). Like the Delta emulator that ruled the App Store’s top free apps list for weeks before being unseated by free donuts, the app will also go grab game cover artwork for you automatically.

DolphiniOS, a fork of the popular Dolphin emulator for Nintendo Wii and GameCube games, has confirmed that it’s not coming to the Apple App Store even though emulators are now supported. In a post on Friday, the developer behind the emulator says it’s because Apple doesn’t allow DolphiniOS to use its underlying performance-boosting tech.

As explained by developer OatmealDome, DolphiniOS — along with other Wii and GameCube emulators — uses something called Just-in-Time (JIT). This is a compiler that “translates” the GameCube and Wii’s PowerPC-based code into a language other devices can understand, making emulations run a lot smoother.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 35, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you’re new here, welcome, get ready to open some tabs, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) 

This week, I’ve been rewatching Killing Eve now that it’s on Netflix, reading about Maggie Rogers and flying cars and the Today in Tabs newsletter, nodding along as MKBHD talks about gadget reviews, testing the Godspeed to-do list app, talking to everyone I know about the Papyrus 2 sketch, listening on repeat to The Tortured Poets Department, and playing with the Plaud AI voice recorder.

The launch of the Delta emulator on iPhones is a big deal in a lot of ways. But for users, it’s also just really cool. Here’s an excellent piece of software that can emulate the NES, SNES, N64, Game Boy, GBA, and Nintendo DS so that you can play classic games on a device that’s always in your pocket.

Even better: even though there’s no Delta app for the Apple TV (yet), it’s still really easy to use it to play games on your television.

The Delta emulator is officially available on the Apple App Store — for free. You should be able to find in Apple’s official store in many countries outside of the European Union. If you live in the EU, it should be available in the new third-party AltStore PAL app marketplace that just went live.

The app marks the first significant and officially sanctioned game emulator for the iPhone since Apple began allowing them, with wide-ranging console emulation from the original Nintendo Entertainment System to the Nintendo 64 (and even the Sega Genesis, for when you want to play those games that Nintendon’t).

Just two days after Apple removed the iGBA emulator from the iOS App Store, an NES emulator called Bimmy briefly appeared before being taken down. MacRumors reported that the app was described as being for homebrew games but also supported ROMs provided by players. Unfortunately, when we attempted to download Bimmy, we received an error message saying it’s no longer available.

Now, clicking on a link to Bimmy shows “This app is currently not available in your country or region.” This time, it wasn’t Apple that removed it but the developer. Over on MacRumors’ forums, the developer said it pulled the app “out of fear.”

I played Game Boy Advance games on my iPhone this weekend thanks to a new emulator called iGBA, which appears to be the first Game Boy Advance emulator on the App Store since Apple started allowing emulators worldwide. The only trouble is, it doesn’t look like iGBA is developer Mattia La Spina’s own work. Something seemingly confirmed by Apple after it pulled the app for violating its copyright and spam rules, according to MacRumors.

In an email to The Verge, developer Riley Testut said the app is an unauthorized clone of GBA4iOS, the open-source emulator he created for iOS over a decade ago (and recently resurrected for the Vision Pro). He said his app uses the GNU GPLv2 license. A Mastodon user found that iGBA does not reference the license, which may violate its terms.

Yesterday afternoon, I was playing Mario vs. Donkey Kong on my Vision Pro (using the visionOS testflight version of app developer Riley Testut’s GBA4iOS) with an official Nintendo NES controller for the Switch. All the while, I was thinking about what a shame it was that Apple doesn’t allow emulators on its App Store. I hadn’t yet seen the news of Apple’s surprise decision to allow emulators on its digital storefront worldwide.

While we still don’t know exactly how emulators will work on the iPhone, Apple’s play here would put its App Store in a better place to compete with alternative app stores in the EU. Assuming that means you can actually play games from the consoles they emulate, it could be a huge deal for retro gaming fans. As great as the Steam Deck and Switch are, the embiggening of portable game consoles has come at the crucial cost of portability (unless you have cargo pants and don’t mind them banging against your knees while you walk).