Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Odds and ends, Freeware, Open Source, Apple, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
The question of emulators
Gizmodo recently posted this video, which is beautiful to any PSX-era gamers: it's Final Fantasy VII running right on the iPhone, like buttah thanks to the 3GS hardware. How is this possible? Through the magic of emulation -- ever since computers got powerful enough to pretend to be other computers, people have resurrected old consoles and hardware by writing code that makes old games and software think its right at home in the computer it belongs in (an old NES system, a Genesis, or even a Playstation or Nintendo 64). As a result, by loading up ROMs into an emulator program, you can play old games you can't find (at least working) in the store any more.But the problem, as it usually does, lies in the legality. Even though those games are hard to find, companies still often own the copyrights on them (Square, for example, just released FFVII in an official emulator on the PSP, and they wouldn't be very happy with someone else releasing it on the iPhone). So while it's very easy for someone to write software that pretends to be an old NES (and there are lots of jailbroken apps around that will do just that), it's not easy to get all the rights and legal sign-offs to make it legit. Legit enough for Apple to keep it in the App Store, anyway. And while the video Gizmodo shows is awesome, and is possible on a jailbroken phone, it's not likely we'll ever see that app make it through Apple's approval. Not to mention that even when people jump through the legal hoops, Apple isn't happy with running other systems' code on their hardware anyway. Lame.
That doesn't mean that the old games are gone forever -- there are certainly emulators of open-sourced or expired hardware on the App Store (here's one for Chip-8), and obviously there's a commercial reason for companies who do own the copyrights on popular games to bring them into the App Store officially. But as great as it would be to have a GBA emulator that automatically played any GBA game ROMs you loaded into it, that kind of stuff will have to stay in the jailbreak underground for now.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
marosh said 3:21PM on 6-26-2009
There's also a way to play the great old adventure games on the iphone:
http://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/IPhone
A port of ScummVM for the jailbroken iphone is needed, but then it should work.
Haven't tried this yet myself - does anybody have any experience with scummVM on the iphone?
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NipsMG said 3:47PM on 6-26-2009
Yes, I played DOTT on the iphone, it worked perfectly. It lends itself perfectly to the whole "Point-and-Click" adventure genre (obviously).
mckinleytabor said 3:26PM on 6-26-2009
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA - the law which in part governs the reverse engineering necessary to make emulation work) has a specific exception that would imply that emulating old cartridge games is NOT agents the law.
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=50009562&f=174096756&m=9770920395&r=9770920395
http://www.copyright.gov/1201/
Ergo, copyright should be "less" of an issue.
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Paul Tow said 5:07PM on 6-26-2009
You mean "against." "Agents" is pronounced "age ints" and is a plural noun. For example, a "secret agent" (spy) or an agent for an actor/actress.
Zimmie said 5:19PM on 6-26-2009
Correct, but that only applies to ROMs you create yourself. This means that you still need to build or buy a ROM dumper, and those devices can be illegal if they bypass any sort of copy protection.
Giving people ROMs of games that they already own is definitely illegal.
ZildjianKX said 3:52PM on 6-26-2009
"Square, for example, just released FFVII in an official emulator on the PSP"
Not to be anal, but they released a DRMed FFVII disk image on the Playstation network, which is playable on the PSP and PSN through a software emulator built into the Playstation OS by Sony. Square Enix did not releaseFFVII in an official emulator.
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ZildjianKX said 3:55PM on 6-26-2009
Errr, meant playable on the PSP and PS3...
artysx said 4:36PM on 6-26-2009
Btw, as you know sonic on iphone is only emul + rom, so maybe in future will see a Sege Genesis application from Sega with in app roms purchasing for 99c or more. This will be great.
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Duncan said 5:05PM on 6-26-2009
This is true, jail-broken phone owners have used the Sonic 2 rom in the sonic 1 emulator for great justice.
Johan said 5:24PM on 6-26-2009
Ah, the joys b0rken of copyright law. "Ve own ze copyright of this ancient game from the 80s, have no plan on doing anything with if but forbid you take any measures towards playing it in the 00's". Geez...
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Mystic said 5:23PM on 6-26-2009
MAME emulator please.
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Galley said 8:29PM on 6-26-2009
Amen, give us a MAME emulator, and let us download the ROMs for a buck each.
Jordan said 11:09PM on 6-26-2009
I use an SNES emulator on my Macbook. Using the application DarwiinRemote, a Wii remote connects to the Macbook's bluetooth and you can play SNES games with the Wiimote and it is like playing it for real on the old console. I love it! Super Mario All Stars ROM takes up all my time!
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AS said 11:14PM on 6-26-2009
Does anyone know a good N64 emulator for OS X? I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Thanks.
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milkmage said 11:05AM on 6-27-2009
this one is AWESOME
http://tinyurl.com/ll956o
Lucas said 12:18AM on 6-27-2009
Haha i love this line,
Through the magic of emulation -- ever since computers got powerful enough to pretend to be other computers,
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Benoit Cerrina said 12:45AM on 6-27-2009
independently from any legal right regarding emulators (they are legal as long as no rom is included, it is then up to the user to get a rom legally), the iphone sdk agreement specifically forbid executing code in an emulator or a vm or a scripting engine or a ...
except for the scripting engines provided by apple
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Victor said 3:26AM on 6-27-2009
its the developers own fault for not releasing games on the platforms consumers demand. If these companies really want to be successful they would contact the developer, buy, or license the emulator in some way and release it for money. Instead they just push the product further underground and encourage piracy because of their own stupidity.
However I guess I do understand that playstation would not want to allow a playstation emulator on an iphone. But even then, the demographics for both systems don't likely overlap, so license it and at least make some money off it.
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bud said 2:43PM on 6-27-2009
It may be a way for developers to put the screws to Sony regarding their wishes for Sonys various platforms to succeed. It might be nudging a grey area in their contracts and any exclusivity to redevelop a game that was a huge hit in the past for another platform.
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