Nintendo Games! On Your iPhone!
Joe Rossignol
Well, Apple giveth, Apple taketh away.
To be fair, I was surprised this Game Boy emulator was allowed in the App Store given that not only did it allow you to run Nintendo ROMs, but that it was apparently a copy of another popular emulator, that just wasn't in the App Store because none were until yesterday. Worse, it was a copy with ads injected into it.
Still, it worked well!1 For a brief moment in time, you could play Nintendo games on your iPhone. The dream. And because this software let you run Game Boy Advanced and Game Boy Color games, you essentially could run NES and Super Nintendo games which were ported over to those systems – so I was playing both Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. On my iPhone!
Forty-two year old me was in heaven. Ten year old me's brain exploded. I used to play these games on a 12" old school CRT television in my basement. It had dials – DIALS – to change the channels! Fast forward thirty years and I was playing these games on a device I could carry around in my pocket. Roughly as tall as a Game Boy, but much more svelte. Also about a billion times as powerful. And with access to all the world's information. Goddamn wizardry.
Alas... I still fear the only way we'll ever get real Nintendo games on the iPhone is if Apple buys Nintendo. Which, given the massive success of the Switch, will not be happening anytime soon. Still, maybe there's hope if we get another, less seedy emulator?2 You know, the kind of thing Apple is supposed to be guarding against with the whole App Store thing in the first place...
Update 4/16/24:
Joe Rossignol
Joe Rossignol at MacRumors was able to get more information from Apple as to why they removed the app:
iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut's open-source GBA4iOS app, with the addition of ads on top. While it did not explicitly name GBA4iOS, Apple told us it removed iGBA from the App Store after learning that it was a knockoff app that copied another developer's work and attempted to pass it off as its own.
Notably, Apple confirmed to us that emulators on the App Store are permitted to load ROMs downloaded from the web, so long as the app is emulating retro console games only. Apple also said it had approved iGBA's functionality, before learning that it was a knockoff app, suggesting that Game Boy emulation is permitted on the App Store, but the company has yet to share any other examples of retro game consoles.
All in all, it appears that iGBA was removed from the App Store entirely because it was a ripoff of GBA4iOS, rather than due to piracy concerns resulting from users being able to load any ROM downloaded from the web. However, exactly which consoles Apple considers to be retro, and if there will be any other restrictions, remains to be seen.
That's obviously good news, though, as noted, the "retro console games" distinction seems nebulous at best. And exactly what Nintendo thinks about the iPhone being able to run Game Boy ROMs from the web is another matter...
Update 4/18/24: This is the emulator you're looking for...
M.G. Siegler
1 The touchscreen controls still leave a bit to be desired...
2 Honestly have no idea if Apple can block these emulators that easily let you play such ROMs. Technically, you're supposed to be able to play them if you own the titles, I believe. But they're also quite easy to find all over the internet. All of this is why it was surprising Apple is allowing these emulators in the first place, but in this particular case, I suppose regulation wins out for consumers...