New Release: Homebrew Indie Games – Multi-System Emulation
Update
And it’s gone
Emulator fans, start your downloads: Homebrew Indie Games brings a full multi-system emulator to The App Store. Well actually, don’t start your downloads yet, there are some pretty major caveats here for 8.3 users; read on…
This app is superficially a collection of 78 indie games, but behind the scenes, it’s actually a powerful, full-featured multi system emulator! The indie games included here are actually ROMs for the GBA, NES, SNES, Genesis, and the app plays these game ROMs back through emulating these systems.
Developers have been sneaking emulators on to The App Store for as long as The App Store has existed, and historically Apple has cracked down on these emulators very quickly.
Before you download this emulator, be aware of one important catch: you can’t add your own games to it if you’re on iOS 8.3. The only way to add your own ROMs to an app like this is using a third-party file system access tool like iExplorer or iFunBox, and Apple has blocked these programs from getting access to iOS in 8.3.
It’s unclear if a workaround for this restriction will be coming any time soon. Developers of iOS filesystem management software are hard at work on it, but Apple seems to be more committed to security than ever before.
If you’re on 8.2, and want a high-quality emulator with full MFi controller support, give this one a download immediately. If you’re on 8.3, and you’re willing to take the risk that a workaround for filesystem restrictions will never be discovered, you should download this one while you can; based on Apple’s history with this kind of thing, you might not be able to download it for long.