3 replies to this topic

[Doomsday]

Yeah, so I'm a big kid and I've never grown up.  One thing I've always wanted to do was be able to play Pokémon with me wherever I go but not have to carry around my Gameboy.  This is more of a retro thing, but I've always liked the old school Pokémon (Red, Blue and Yellow) with the original 151 (Mew WAS an original) Pokémon and never a huge fan of all the extras they introduced over the years.

 

If you're like me, and own your old GB cartridges but they have started to fail (did you know that they have batteries in them, and they can go flat, I didn't till I lost my save games) then playing an emulated copy of your game is completely legal (provided you own a copy) and want to play all your old GB games on your iPhone or iPad (Android users there is something else for you and it's been around forever) without Jailbreaking your phone, now you can!

 

You can do so by using an awesome piece of software called GBA4iOS.  The thing is, Apple did not like this piece of software (much like Neopets don't like Abrosia), so they banned it from the App Store.  The developer managed to work out how his fanbase could download and install it using their Safari browser, without the need for Jailbreaking your iPhone / iPad.

 

The current version, which has been long anticipated, and months in development is the new version 2.0 which has only just been released (10 days ago now actually).  This version introduced the ability to input Gameshark Codes and speed up the gameplay if you so wish.

 

Because you can't actually trade Pokémon to get those not available in your version (or final evolve some of your Pokémon), the gameshark codes do wonders for allowing you to capture those missing from your version of the game.

 

It's been years since I played Pokémon Yellow (I loved this version because it allowed me to replicate Ash's team by catching the same Pokémon he caught in the series including having my Pikachu follow me around) and now I can take it with me and play it wherever I go!

 

You can download GBA4iOS directly onto your phone / iPad from the Safari Browser from the official website:  http://www.gba4iosapp.com

 

Note, because of the way it is written, his publication date was the 18th February, 2014 so in order to install the App / Roms for emulation, you need to set your iPhone time to BEFORE this date.  Once the App is installed, you can then return your date to 'set automatically'.  Every time you power off your device completely (ie battery completely dies or you've updated your phone and it required a restart) you will need to reset the time, open the App and then set your time back to automatic.

 

You do NOT need to keep the App open (meaning you can kill the task and fully close it so it doesn't continue to draw power) and you will be able to open it again.  You only need to reset your time if your actual device powers off completely.

 

Enjoy!

 

[arcanum]

Ohh, this is neat. i may have to dl it.

 

I had a GB & SNES emulator on my droid awhile back, which I loved. Played all sorts of games (mario party, zelda), it was the bees knees.

[redlion]

Emulators aren't exactly new; I've been emulating NES, SNES and N64 for years now, just so I can get my barrel rollin', battletoads and double dragon fixes.

But the fact that you can put it on a highly closed-source sort of platform like the iPhone is pretty neat. Hopefully other app developers won't steal his work around method, and thus alert Apple to a "problem" that needs fixing.

For those who need the nostalgia factor to be 100%, it is possible to replace your GB, GBC and GBA games' batteries after they die and continue to play on the original console. I think it was Napiform that told me.

[Doomsday]

I know it's possible to replace the batteries in the cartridges when they die, but if you aren't 100% sure in what you're doing then you run the risk of breaking it! 

 

I know emulators are nothing new (I've been playing Pokémon n a PC emulator since the early 2000's!) but the fact it's been brought to the iPhone is something I didn't see happening without jailbreaking and using Cydia (I used an emulator when I jailbroke my iPhone 3).

 

Apple apparently already know about the work around method he uses as he had to change it from 1.6 (old version) to version 2.0 and the deployment workaround was what took most of the time (the update was originally slated for October last year!) 

 

From the looks of it, he's actually also posted the source code on a link in that page (I think it was called 'Source').  So other app developers could use his deployment method and also shows Apple exactly how it's being deployed so I don't think he's too concerned about that!