Nintendo may release a Gameboy emulator for iOS

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Photo: MyNintendoNews
Photo: MyNintendoNews

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

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