The Apple iPhone is officially a “closed” architecture, at least that’s what Apple would like us to think. In reality, the platform is anything but closed.
As seen in the upcoming video in my post, hackers have dug deep into its software and figured out how to run applications, including Nintendo games. Oh how I love classic game emulation.
Officially, the only third-party apps that run on the iPhone are supposed to run inside the Safari browser but when have hackers played by the rules?
As you can see from the video above, a programmer brought the InfoNES core to the iPhone, along with games like Mario and Zelda.
According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog:
As you can see, it’s not quite done — the emulator runs too slowly to be playable, and the controls are implemented with an actual controller image which, as the programmer says, “…while cute, sucks.”
I expect that the iPhone’s closed, proprietary architecture is temporary and that Apple will soon come out with a Software Development Kit to allow developers to build supported applications.
Until then, the iPhone is a hackers’ playground.
August 20th, 2008
6 Comments at "Apple iPhone Hacked To Run Nintendo Games"
Sweet! Where can I download this?
Hi Justin. Look over my post again
I provided two links (not my MAME page link) that will be very useful in getting your hands on this.
Oh. I see.
Only bummer is you don’t get the tactile feedback from the original controller…I have my special edition class NES Game Boy Advance with an emulator on it, I’ll stick with that for now.
@Matt: If you really wanted tactile feedback, you would not have purchased an iPhone
Here is a link to download the code if you’d like.
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