The forgotten Super Monkey Ball game that launched the iPhone app store has been preserved with a new emulator

gamesradar.com:

In 2017, Apple's introduction of iOS 11 effectively killed thousands upon thousands of games and apps built for the early generations of iPhones and iPads. Now, a new emulator is aiming to bring them back.

That emulator is called touchHLE (opens in new tab), and it launched earlier this month. The 'HLE' stands for 'high-level emulator,' which essentially means that it's more focused on getting old games and apps running well on modern hardware than it is in recreating the idiosyncrasies of the iPhone hardware itself.

Right now, touchHLE is built to run the iOS version of Super Monkey Ball, and it does an incredible job at it. Getting the game running isn't entirely user-friendly (you'll want to follow a YouTube tutorial (opens in new tab)), but once it's loaded it plays incredibly well. Touch controls are emulated through mouse clicks and the gyro movement you use to actually get around the stages feels great on a gamepad analog stick. By all accounts, the emulator remains stable even through the game's final levels - it's an impressive implementation for something so early in development.

You can see it in action below.

Why Super Monkey Ball? Developer hikari explains in a lengthy blog post (opens in new tab) that it's because Super Monkey Ball was one of the first games used to demonstrate the potential of the Apple app store, and one of the titles there at the store's launch in 2008. hikari had a lot of nostalgia for that game, and after a chance encounter with a trailer for a modern Monkey Ball title, decided to take advantage of the free time provided by a bout of unemployment to build an emulator that could once again run the iOS Super Monkey Ball.

As it stands, the only way to continue playing old iOS games is to