Go back in time: the emulator lets you play old games from the app store. Do you miss your iPhone games? This emulator has the solution
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to play some of your old favorite iPhone games again? Thanks to a developer called Hikari no Yume, now you can. On its 15th anniversary, the iPhone SDK inspired Hikari to create a “touchHLE”, a tool for running old iPhone games on a Mac or Windows computer.
There aren’t many emulators for iOS as the operating system is designed to run on specific hardware and is owned by Apple. So much so that there are people who have exploited the system’s vulnerability, as Martijn de Vos managed to emulate the first version of iPhone OS.
However, Hikari focused on creating a tool to run specific applications from old video games, rather than trying to run the entire iPhone operating system. The tool has been optimized for game emulation, and you can simulate screen touches, play sounds, and even use joysticks to replace the accelerometer commands used by some games.
Give users the opportunity to play old and missing App Store games on their iPhone thanks to this emulator
The project is completely original and uses no Apple-written code to avoid accusations of copyright infringement. touchHLE can be downloaded from github and does not contain anything that infringes Apple’s copyright.
“I’ve been extremely careful with this project, perhaps more careful than most people, to avoid infringing Apple’s copyrights as much as possible. I’m not using code written by Apple, I’ve been careful to avoid reverse engineering the iPhone OS. And to use the project to use the code I’ve written, you don’t have to infringe Apple’s copyright. You can download the project and it doesn’t contain anything you like, it’s not legal to distribute.”
What games can touchHLE run?
The tool is capable of running games like Super Monkey Ball and Crash Bandicoot: Nitro Kart 3D that were popular in the past. However, you cannot run newer and more complex games that require advanced hardware.
In general, touchHLE is an interesting piece of software programmed to revive some of your missing iPhone games and run them from PC, which is particularly useful for those who have lost access to these titles after Apple removed support for 32- Removed Bit Apps in iOS.
As you will see, the introduction of touchHLE was a breakthrough in emulating old iPhone apps and can have a major impact on preserving the history of old games.
What other games will be able to run on this tool in the future? How could iOS emulation affect the way we interact with mobile devices? Only time will tell, but what is certain is that Hikari has opened a door to new possibilities in the world of emulation.
