Here at Cult of Mac, we’re big fans of GBA4iOS, an app by developer Ryan Testut that allows you to play Gameboy and Gameboy Advance titles on your iPhone or iPad. But pretty soon, it’s possible that GBA4iOS won’t be the only way to play emulated Gameboy games on your iOS device: Nintendo looks like it might be moving into the iOS emulation scene too.
According to a new patent discovered by MyNintendo News, Nintendo has just filed a patent for emulating classic GameBoy Titles on various devices, including smartphones and tablets. Here’s the patent description:
A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY.RTM., GAME BOY COLOR.RTM. and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE.RTM. on a low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone) uses a number of features and optimizations to provide high quality graphics and sound that nearly duplicates the game playing experience on the native platform. Some exemplary features include use of bit BLITing, graphics character reformatting, modeling of a native platform liquid crystal display controller using a sequential state machine, and selective skipping of frame display updates if the game play falls behind what would occur on the native platform
As we’ve seen with Apple, holding a patent on something doesn’t mean it’s a real product. But with Nintendo’s once dominant hardware having ceded the crown of king of portable gaming to Apple, it’s possible that Nintendo could be positioning itself to go, say, the Square-Enix or Sega route, and release many of its classic titles as emulated apps on iOS. All true Nintendo fans want a legal way to do this. Fingers crossed!
Source: My Nintendo News
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
8 responses to “Nintendo may release a Gameboy emulator for iOS”
They have renewed the patent, the same patent that they put in 2000. This is just to stop anybody else making emulators on other systems and helps with claims for all the illegal emulators on iOS and Android.
His name is RILEY TESTUT. Get it right.
Apple should buy nintendo, use the A9 in the next gen apple tv that can double as a console quality device, have exclusive nintendo title games on ios, improve game center to compete with xbox, etc.
Completely Agree, my kids would love Mario on their iPads. It’s pretty stupid of Nintendo to think they can keep up with hardware now that Apple is far superior and portable.
Although it may sound good on paper, this would be a bad decision for Nintendo. Apple makes devices and products, they are a computer company, they don’t understand the Gaming Industry. Apple buying Nintendo could destroy Nintendo forever.
“All true Nintendo fans want a legal way to do this.” Do what? Play portable Nintendo games on the go? They have that, its called Nintendo 3DS.
Wouldn’t buy a 3DS for my kids, they already have iPods and iPads and they’re better at gaming and have a lot more games available. Nintendo need to wake up and start developing iOS apps or be left for dead.
I love GBA4iOS, but if there was an official app, I’d have ZERO hesitation about putting down money for it and any accompanying games.