A Guide to Emulation on iOS
Become any device — Emulators are a hot topic on iOS at the minute. The EU’s gatekeeper legislation has had the knock-on effect of loosening Apple’s App Store restrictions around the world and has given users a wider choice of applications. Each new emulator has gone on to top the charts as a whole new range of customers rediscovers the videogaming classics of their youth.
Android has had emulators for years on the Play Store so what made Apple so recalcitrant to them? Piracy. Whilst it is perfectly to legal to create backups (read: copies) of software you already own the high prices often commanded by old videogames as well as the difficulty in extracting their data means that most users will just download an illegal copy from the internet and play it that way. Gaming publishers have come down hard on software pirates over the years but only tend to go after those that allow the emulation of currently-available hardware.
Software piracy of any sort is a crime. If it is still possible to obtain a video game from an open storefront then it should be paid for. How does this relate to emulators? Well as it turns out games for older systems have been available as paid-for downloads for decades. Whether its a stack of old Virtual Console purchases locked away on the Nintendo Wii in your loft or a stack of old PSP games attached to your PSN account, you might have already…
