The retro PC game emulator UTM SE is now available on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro, marking the first time Apple has allowed a PC emulator for iOS onto its marketplace, per The Verge. UTM SE will let you run classic PC games, but you’ll first need to either download a pre-built virtual machine — several of which UTM offers for free on its website — or you can create your own from scratch.
We are happy to announce that UTM SE is available (for free) on iOS and visionOS App Store (and coming soon to AltStore PAL)!
Shoutouts to AltStore team for their help and to Apple for reconsidering their policy.https://t.co/HAV5JnT5GO
Apple previously rejected UTM SE, but the team behind the app shared on X that it was able to move forward with a “JIT-less build” thanks to the help of another developer, so it could comply with Apple’s restrictions. The developers also said UTM SE would soon hit the alternative app marketplace AltStore PAL as well, which would open it up to users in the EU. “Shoutouts to AltStore team for their help and to Apple for reconsidering their policy,” the UTM team posted.
Good news for anyone who’s been waiting for a better way to run the Delta game emulator on an iPad — with version 1.6, which is available now, iPad support is here. The latest update is a major one, not only bringing a version of the emulator that’s optimized for iPad, but also seamless switching between iPhone and iPad, some improvements to DS compatibility, new skins and menu button gestures, and a new logo. (Delta had to scrap its old logo after Adobe threatened to sue over similarities to its signature ‘A’).
The Delta version 1.6 update is live on both the App Store and the AltStore PAL. It comes barely three months after Delta creator Riley Testut promised iPad support was on the way, and will allow for both full screen play and multiple windows using Stage Manager and Split View. Before you run and download it, though, take note of the devs’ warnings about DS games: “This update is incompatible with existing DS save states. Please save normally in-game before updating to avoid losing progress.” The Delta team has also created a new app, Delta Legacy, to help users migrate their save states. Instructions for the process are on the Delta website.
Forget your phone cameras and laptop built-ins; your next webcam could be your old Game Boy Camera. The team (sort of) bringing this peripheral into the modern age is Epilogue. The company makes the GB Operator, which lets people play original Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color cartridges on a current PC or a Steam Deck.
Today, Epilogue announced that it is working on an update that will make the Game Boy Camera into a webcam, but one that’s a fuzzy, lo-fi, 16 kilopixel experience. The magic happens through the Playback emulator app that powers the GB Operator.
“We now have a live feed from the Game Boy Camera, but still need to fine-tune some things and allow for configuration options,” the company said. “We wanted to share this update because it was exciting to see it finally work, and [we] can’t wait to see everyone having fun with it. It’s the worst and the best webcam you’ll ever have.”
We’ve seen adapting the Game Boy Camera before, and even of the hardware. Considering the original Game Boy is now more than , it’s amazing to see the hardware continuing to inspire strange and creative experiences.
GamesIndustry.biz first reported on the DMCA notice, affecting 8,535 GitHub repos. Redacted entities representing Nintendo assert that the Yuzu source code contained in the repos “illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Switch games.”
GitHub wrote on the notice that developers will have time to change their content before it’s disabled. In keeping with its developer-friendly approach and branding, the Microsoft-owned platform also offered legal resources and guidance on submitting DMCA counter-notices.
Nintendo’s legal blitz, perhaps not coincidentally, comes as game emulators are enjoying a resurgence. Last month, Apple loosened its restrictions on retro game players in the App Store (likely in response to regulatory threats), leading to the Delta emulator establishing itself as the de facto choice and reaching the App Store’s top spot. Nintendo may have calculated that emulators’ moment in the sun threatened its bottom line and began by squashing those that most immediately imperiled its income stream.
Sadly, Nintendo’s largely undefended legal assault against emulators ignores a crucial use for them that isn’t about piracy. Game historians see the software as a linchpin of game preservation. Without emulators, Nintendo and other copyright holders could make a part of history obsolete for future generations, as their corresponding hardware will eventually be harder to come by.
The popular Nintendo emulator, Delta, that to much fanfare a few weeks ago is now getting a version that’s optimized for the iPad. Developer shared an update on Threads this weekend revealing that an iPad app has been in the works, and is now being prioritized since Apple changed its tune on game emulators. The iPad app is “near completion,” and subscribers to Testut’s can get it now through the AltStore, an alternative marketplace the developer created a few years back for sideloading iOS and iPadOS apps. Otherwise, you can wait a little while for it to come with Delta’s next big update, version 1.6.
In the post, Testut also shared a little preview of how it’ll run on iPad. Delta was released as the successor to Testut’s Game Boy Advance emulator, GBA4iOS, and supports a slew of other Nintendo systems, including NES, SNES, N64, and DS. It shouldn’t be long before the iPad version is finished — Testut wrote that the team just needs to “finish up controller skins [and] fix some last bugs.” They’re also working on device-to-device multiplayer, Testut (but that’s still a couple of items down on the checklist). And, as an added treat, he said a SEGA Genesis emulator is on the way too. That’s still in beta, but will become available “soon-ish.”
Tropic Haze, the popular Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator developer, appears to have agreed to settle Nintendo’s lawsuit against it. Less than a week after Nintendo filed the legal action, accusing the emulator’s creators of “piracy at a colossal scale,” a joint final judgment and permanent injunction filed Tuesday says Tropic Haze has agreed to pay the Mario maker $2.4 million, along with a long list of concessions.
Nintendo’s lawsuit claimed Tropic Haze violated the anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). “Without Yuzu’s decryption of Nintendo’s encryption, unauthorized copies of games could not be played on PCs or Android devices,” the company wrote in its complaint. It described Yuzu as “software primarily designed to circumvent technological measures.”
Yuzu launched in 2018 as free, open-source software for Windows, Linux and Android. It could run countless copyrighted Switch games — including console sellers like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Wonder. Reddit threads comparing Switch emulators praised Yuzu’s performance compared to rivals like Ryujinx. Yuzu introduces various bugs across different titles, but it can typically handle games at higher resolutions than the Switch, often with better frame rates, so long as your hardware is powerful enough.
A screenshot from Yuzu’s website, showing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Tropic Haze / Nintendo)
As part of an Exhibit A attached to the proposed joint settlement, Tropic Haze agreed to a series of accommodations. In addition to paying Nintendo $2.4 million, it must permanently refrain from “engaging in activities related to offering, marketing, distributing, or trafficking in Yuzu emulator or any similar software that circumvents Nintendo’s technical protection measures.”
Tropic Haze must also delete all circumvention devices, tools and Nintendo cryptographic keys used in the emulator and turn over all circumvention devices and modified Nintendo hardware. It even has to surrender the emulator’s web domain (including any variants or successors) to Nintendo. (The website is still live now, perhaps waiting for the judgment’s final a-okay.) Not abiding by the settlement’s agreements could land Tropic Haze in contempt of court, including punitive, coercive and monetary actions.
Although piracy is the top motive for many emulator users, the software can double as crucial tools for video game preservation — making rapid legal surrenders like Tropic Haze’s potentially problematic. Without emulators, Nintendo and other copyright holders could make games obsolete for future generations as older hardware eventually becomes more difficult to find.
Despite the settlement, it appears unlikely the open-source Yuzu will disappear entirely. The emulator is still available on GitHub, where its entire codebase can be found.
Some wonderful maniac is developing an emulator that will one day let people play Zeebo games. And…oh wait, you might be asking “What’s a Zeebo?” Fair question! Well, it’s a fairly obscure digital-only console released outside of the United States in 2009 in just two countries. And while it’s not a great console with a library of beloved classics, it’s still nice to see that someone is working hard to preserve this odd piece of gaming history.
Comparing Resident Evil 4’s Chainsaw Demo To The Original Game
The Zeebo launched in Brazil in June 2009, and later that year came out in Mexico. (And by 2011 it was all over.) The budget console was basically a phone with a controller that connected to your TV. Games and apps on the Zeebo were built using BREW, the same software that powered many early flip-phone games, though the specs inside the Zeebo were a bit more powerful than your average non-smartphone. Still, it wasn’t a powerhouse of a console, and that was kind of the point: to provide people in parts of the world who might not be able to afford expensive, imported consoles with a way to play video games and surf the web via 3G. It was also digital-only to circumvent piracy, forcing players to buy games through its online store. And now, someone is building a PC-based emulator for this strange, nearly-forgotten machine.
As spotted by GamesRadar, on August 1 developer Tuxality uploaded a video of themselves fiddling around with their made-from-scratch Zeebo emulator. While only a few games will boot in the emulator—and they don’t work very well yet—it’s still impressive to even see this much work being put into a device that most folks haven’t even heard of.
In the video, we see Tuxality boot up Zeebo Family Fun Pack and Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D. While Family Fun Pack loads up fine, Crash Nitro Kart 3D displays some intense graphical issues. Still, progress is progress. And yes, big publishers and studios including Activision, Capcom, EA, Disney Interactive Studios, and id Software saw their games released on the Zeebo.
Tuxality calls their emulator Infuse, and says it’s a “high-level” Zeebo emulator that’s been written entirely from scratch based on “clean reverse engineering attempts.” The developer also says that Infuse supports macOS and Linux and could (in the future) be easily ported to the Nintendo 3DS as a fully native application.
As for when you’ll be able to play the Zeebo edition of Resident Evil 4, aka the worst way to play that game, Tuxality doesn’t say. It’s likely at least a year or more away from being fully released to the public.
While some might post the very overused Ryan Reynolds “Why?” gif in response to someone making a Zeebo emulator, I’m excited that fan developers and modders out there are continuing to do the work that game companies won’t do to preserve video game history. Yes, even the weird and less-than-great parts of game history need to be preserved. If anything, those are the bits that will disappear first, and that would be even worse than playing Crash Bandicoot on a flip phone console from 2009.
Valve removed the Steam listing for Dolphin, a popular emulator for the GameCube and Wii, after it received a cease and desist from Nintendo, developers behind the project claim. The company behind MarioandZelda accuses the emulator of illegally circumventing its protections, and says it’s merely protecting the “hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers.”
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A listing for Dolphin on Valve’s digital storefront first appeared back in March. “We are pleased to announce our great experiment—Dolphin is coming to Steam!” the creators wrote at the time. While the open-source project has been available online for years, interest in retro emulators has increased since the release of the Steam Deck, and an official store page would make the tool even easier to access.
On May 27, however, Dolphin’s developers announced the Steam port would be “indefinitely postponed” after Valve removed the listing following discussions with Nintendo. “It is with much disappointment that we have to announce that the Dolphin on Steam release has been indefinitely postponed,” the emulator team wrote in an update on the project’s blog. “We were notified by Valve that Nintendo has issued a cease and desist citing the DMCA against Dolphin’s Steam page, and have removed Dolphin from Steam until the matter is settled. We are currently investigating our options and will have a more in-depth response in the near future.”
According to a copy of the legal notice reviewed by PC Gamer, Nintendo accuses Dolphin of using “cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime.” While emulation is itself legal, providing users with ways to bypass protections on individual game ROMs could potentially violate Nintendo’s intellectual property rights. It’s an issue that would have to be hashed out in court, though the power imbalance between large corporations and homebrew projects like Dolphin means that rarely actually occurs.
“Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers,” a spokesperson for Nintendo told Kotaku in an email. “This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.”
While the company has rarely looked the other way when it comes to piracy of its games and the tools that could facilitate it (like mod chips sold online), Nintendo has been particularly aggressive lately in clamping down on leaks and what it believes to be illegal misuses of its games and technology. In February it subpoenaed Discord for the personal information of someone suspected of leaking the official The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom art book. In April it issued multiple copyright strikes against dozens of popular Breath of the Wild gameplay videos on YouTube that relied on modded versions of the game. And in May it seemingly had a Switch emulation tool, Lotpick, removed from Github after illicit copies of Tears of the Kingdom began spreading like wildfire online prior to the game’s official release.
It’s not yet clear how Dolphin’s current developers will respond, or how willing Valve will be to bring the store page back unless the matter is resolved in court, which could take years. Last year, Valve accidentally included the Switch emulator Yuzu in its YouTube trailer for the Steam Deck. The video was later edited and re-uploaded to remove the reference. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One of the most interesting developments in the emulation and coding scenes in recent years has been the increasing trend in taking classic old video games and completely reverse-engineering their code.
We’ve seen fans do this for everything from Mario 64 toOcarina of Time to Grand Theft Auto, all with varying degrees of legal opposition. The reasons for doing this are multitude; there’s the challenge of the reverse-engineering itself, of course, but also the benefits it brings, mainly in the form of being able to create genuine PC versions of classic console games, rather than relying on emulation.
What’s the difference? As we’ve explained previously, emulation relies on your computer pretending it’s an old console to run a game coded to run on that console. A reverse-engineered port is able to be built for the PC (or other platforms!) from the ground up, allowing for the seamless insertion of stuff like widescreen support and even (in the case of polygonal games) graphical tweaks like ReShade.
The latest game to receive this treatment is The Legend Of Zelda: A Link to the Past, first released in 1991 on the Super Nintendo and then re-released a number of times since on everything from the Game Boy Advance to Nintendo Switch Online.
As Nintendo Lifereport, a team of 20, led by xander-haj, managed the feat after working their way through 70-80,000 lines of code, and in the process “key enhancements have been added, such as faster transition times, speedier text, widescreen support, pixel shaders, and a more detailed overworld map. Perhaps most significantly, a secondary item slot has been added, allowing users to quickly switch between two items on the fly without having to go into the inventory screen to pick them out one by one.”
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Here’s footage of the original game (running in an emulator on PC) compared to this new PC “port”:
zelda 3 emulation vs pc port
Neat! This is now the part of the post where we point out that, legally, this is still a very weird grey area. Reverse engineering itself isn’t illegal, but the use of a company’s assets can be, and these projects are a mix of both. Only they’re also not; the creators or reverse-engineered games like this simply provide the underyling code and ask you to get the assets from a ROM yourself. This game’s description, for example, says “You need a copy of the ROM to extract game resources (levels, images). Then once that’s done, the ROM is no longer needed.”
Nintendo would argue that doesn’t matter, the creators would argue it’s an important distinction, and until we start getting some definitive rulings in disputes like this I’m going to have to keep typing this out at the end of every post about it!
