If you’re looking to relive the good old days of the Nintendo DS, Game Boy, N64, SNES, or even NES, you’ll no doubt be excited to hear about Apple’s most recent change of heart.
The iPhone maker recently announced that developers would be allowed to list game emulators in the App Store, making it possible for users to download retro games on their smartphones.
Keep reading to learn more.
Can I play emulators on iPhone?
Game emulators have long been banned on the iOS App Store. Before 2024, if you wanted to reminisce over your favourite childhood games of your iPhone, you’d need to jailbreak the device, voiding your warranty in the process.
However, Apple changed its tune on emulators at the beginning of April when the company updated its App Store guidelines to address the nostalgia-driven apps. More specifically, section 4.7 states that “retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games”.
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What is the best free iPhone emulator?
As of publishing this guide, one emulator in particular has taken the iPhone’s App Store by storm. That is Delta, a Nintendo emulator created by Riley Testut, the developer behind the hugely popular open-source GB4iOS Game Boy emulator.
“Delta is an all-in-one emulator for iOS. Delta builds upon the strengths of its predecessor, GBA4iOS, while expanding to include support for more game systems such as NES, SNES, N64, and DS”, reads the app’s description.
The emulator supports a range of controllers from the Switch’s Joy-Cons to the PS5’s DualSense controller and the Xbox wireless controller.
It also saves your progress automatically so you can easily pick up where you left off, and accepts all of the cheat codes you remember from your childhood.
Delta is free to download, though it doesn’t actually come with any games ready to play. To use the emulator, you’ll first need to import a ROM of a game from your files or a cloud service.
Are iPhone emulators legal?
Games are where the legality around hosting emulators on the App Store becomes a bit cloudy.
To import a game into Delta (or another game emulator) you must legally own that game as each title is protected by copyright laws.
This isn’t exactly easy when many retro games are rare and difficult to find. Because of this, some users resort to pirating their games instead of going about it the proper way, which is where gamers step into illegal territory when using emulators.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
