After Apple loosened its policies on allowing retro game emulators, developer Riley Testut launched a new, free emulator on the App Store yesterday, offering support for several Nintendo consoles from yesteryear.
In a blog post, Testut revealed Delta serves as a successor to GBA4iOS, providing support for not just GameBoy games but also NES, Sega Genesis, SNES, N64, and even the Nintendo DS. More interestingly, Testut teased that it would support more emulators on the App Store listing but did not specify which emulators exactly.
Delta — the app that started it all — is available NOW in the App Store!
— AltStore.io (@altstoreio) April 17, 2024
Yes, you read that right: our long-rejected game emulator has been approved by Apple themselves ?
If you live outside the EU, download now from the App Store — no DMA required https://t.co/jytQgVJFp9 pic.twitter.com/jIN7Ru2alN
The app is free to download in Apple's official stores worldwide, including the United States. Those in the EU can download it through AltStore PAL, a third-party marketplace released yesterday thanks to the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which allows third-party app stores to be hosted within the App Store. As noted in a post on X/Twitter by the developers, the AltStore PAL costs €1.50/year. The blog post explains the reason EU has to charge for those to use the third-party App Store is due to Apple not waiving App Marketplaces Core Technology Fee, thus it was "unsustainable" to make the app free on this particular marketplace.
The app itself is interesting because prior to Apple loosening up its policies, if you wanted to run an emulator on an iPhone, you needed to jailbreak it. But the emulator would not have launched entirely on the App Store if not for Apple tweaking its policies earlier this month to make it easier for the App Store to host retro game emulators.
Though Delta is not the first Nintendo-themed emulator to drop on the Apple App Store, a few days ago, a developer released Bimmy NES. This NES emulator briefly appeared on the App Store before the developer removed it. On a MacRumors forum, the developer behind Bimmy NES said it pulled the app "out of fear."
Though the developer did not go into further detail, it was likely due to Nintendo's prior history of going after emulators. The most recent example is the Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu shutting down after Nintendo sued them. The creators behind the GameCube and Wii emulator, Dolphin, announced last year that it was giving up putting the emulator on Steam after it revealed that Valve received a legal threat from Nintendo.
Blogroll Credit: Riley Testut
Taylor is a Reporter at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
