Several game developers have been working on apps for the iPhone and iPod touch since the App Store was first introduced in 2008.
Super Monkey Ball, Flight Control, and Angry Birds are just a few of the wildly successful mobile apps that helped make Apple's smartphones popular. Due to their age and lack of development, several of these games are no longer playable on newer devices.
But, one programmer has found a technique to simulate them on a computer.
Bringing iOS Apps to PC
9to5Mac featured Hikari no Yume, who created a new app named touchHLE in celebration of the iPhone software development kit's (SDK) 15th anniversary. It allows users to run applications originally developed for the iPhone operating system (OS) on a Mac or Windows computer.
Since that iOS is both Apple-exclusive and built to function exclusively on certain hardware, it is not surprising that relatively few people have succeeded in effectively emulating the system.
Nevertheless, as other developers have shown, it is considerably easier to emulate previous versions of the OS since these versions have many more known vulnerabilities and depend on less complicated hardware. Instead of attempting to emulate the complete iOS, Hikari developed a method for running just selected apps.
Supported Games
In particular, Hikari hoped to reboot the popular retro game Super Monkey Ball. Hence, touchHLE was geared toward gaming simulation. The program can mimic button presses, play audio, and even utilize joysticks to control games that normally rely on accelerometer controls, such as Super Monkey Ball.
Hikari claims that she conceived and developed this idea in her spare time. She told Top Tier List that she has also taken precautions to prevent allegations of copyright infringement by avoiding the usage of any code developed by Apple.
"I don't use any code written by Apple, I have been careful to avoid reverse engineering iPhone OS itself. And in order to use the project, in order to use the code I've written, you don't have to violate Apple's copyrights."
Hikari notes that the program works well with games like Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D since the system requirements are almost identical to those of Super Monkey Ball, given that both games were launched around the same time.
Naturally, the emulator cannot run the most modern and difficult games because of hardware requirements.
As a result of Apple's removal of support for 32-bit programs in iOS, many users were left unable to ever again enjoy some classic games. Because of initiatives like Hikari's, we are able to play these games again. It is also fascinating to see the development of iOS emulators for other platforms.
There is a video demonstration of touchHLE in action on the YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting. If you want to give the emulator a whirl yourself, the source code for touchHLE is available on GitHub.
