Developers working to emulate old iOS games on new iPhones

Last year we wrote about touchHLE, an open source tool created by developers. dream of light Emulate older iOS apps on macOS and Windows. Building on this project, another developer was able to successfully emulate these older iOS apps on Android, and nowShishi Plus Plus” has successfully ported this tool to iOS (yes, that’s right).

Developers are sharing their progress with the touchHLE tool. on X social networks. In recent weeks, he has not only managed to emulate some more complex games, but also ported the tool to run on his latest iOS devices. In one of his examples, the developer showed the classic Super Monkey Ball running on his iPhone SE with iOS 15.8.

But what’s the point in emulating iOS apps on iOS? As detailed in a previous article, the idea behind touchHLE is to keep old games alive. As iOS evolves and some APIs are deprecated, apps that are too old to receive updates are no longer compatible with the latest version of the operating system.

For example, modern iPhones and iPads can’t run 32-bit apps, so they won’t be able to run most early apps from the App Store. With touchHLE, those who miss these apps and games will have the chance to play them again without their old hardware.

In addition to Super Monkey Ball, we’ve seen developers use TouchHLE to successfully run games like Shrek, Resident Evil, and Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D. Of course, it’s all very experimental and limited at the moment, but it’s always interesting to see how a developer works to run his iOS apps on different platforms.

The source code for the touchHLE project can be found on GitHub. Do you have an old iOS game you’d like to emulate on a modern device? Let us know in the comments section below.

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