The days of jailbreaking your iPhone to play emulated games are over. Here’s how easy it is to play retro games on iOS and iPadOS, for free.
Emulators Are Now (Officially) Available for iPhone
In April 2024 Apple sent an email to developers informing them of several changes to what is and isn’t permissible on the App Store. This included allowing “retro game console emulator apps” for the first time. Before the change, installing emulators required a jailbreak or building and sideloading the app yourself.
Though emulators are legal, the games they run are a point of contention. It is illegal to download ROMs for games that you do not own. Downloading or ripping ROMs for titles that you do own is a grey area. You are responsible for following the laws in your part of the world.
Emulators you download from the App Store will not come with any copyrighted materials. That means no ROMs will be included, so you’ll need to source and import games on your own time. Any additional files required to make a platform run (like BIOS images) will also need to be provided by you, legally.
So why the sudden change? Apple is probably jumping before it is pushed. The EU has mandated that the iPhone open up to third-party App Stores, so Apple may be trying to avoid future problems. There’s also nothing inherently illegal about emulators, even though big players like Nintendo are vehemently opposed.
How to Play Classic Nintendo Games With Delta
Speaking of Nintendo, the first emulator to arrive on the App Store is Delta, a multiple system emulator that includes cores for the NES, SNES, Nintendo 64, Game Boy (Color), Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. There are also plans to support the Sega Genesis in a future update.
Delta brings together many different emulation projects like Nestopia, Snes9x, mupen64plus, and melonDS under one simple application. The project is a spiritual successor to GBA4iOS, an emulator you may have heard of if you’ve dabbled in the iOS
Video Games
Game Emulation