The first Game Boy emulator has taken iOS by storm… and it didn't even last 24 hours in the App Store

The soap opera of the weekend was starred by iGBA, the first GameBoy emulator to be published in the App Store. It has become, as we saw last night, the third most downloaded free application in the Apple application store, and later ended up disappearing completely after a few hours.

And not. The reason is not simply that it was an emulator. What could have happened is still being debated and, although two scenarios are mainly being considered, neither of them offers a decisive explanation of what happened to iGBA.

What was iGBA. iGBA, during the hours it was active in the App Store, marked a before and after in iOS. After being Apple forced to support emulators in the App Storethis past Sunday iGBA, the first GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance emulator, was published.

The emulator, on the one hand, allowed something unusual: running any .gbc or .gba ROM from Files. It was enough to download any game from our browser, open it from downloads, and automatically open the application. iOS recognizing ROM files, something never seen before.

On the other hand, to make things easier for users, it integrated search within the app itself. This section was somewhat tricky: the game did not have a ROM repository, but it did allow you to search for ROMs through Google. Technically this technique is not illegal: when we were going to do the search it was done through Safari, not the emulator.

iGBA interface.

How iGBA worked. The interface and usability of iGBA were outstanding and simple. An emulator that saved the ROMs that we loaded in its list, with the possibility of loading cheat codes, and a fast speed mode for classics, some classics in which it is appreciated to have this faster execution.

In fact, I'm not hiding, just yesterday I was playing Pokémon Radical Red with this emulator, a Fangame from the PokéCommunity which I have been following for quite some time.

Doubts about why it disappeared. This morning, we woke up to the news: iGBA disappears from the App Store. Although there are several theories on the table, none offer clear answers. Riley Testut, project developer open source GBA4iOScomplained in Threads that Apple had allowed a developer to publish a “knockoff” of its emulator and fill it with ads.

This is a delicate matter. Indeed, iGBA was nothing more than an adaptation of GBA4iOS. But precisely, GBA4iOS is an open source projectso it was a matter of time before someone relied on it for their own projects.

“To be clear, I'm not mad at the developer.
What pisses me off is that Apple went to the trouble of changing the App Store rules to allow emulators and then approved a knockoff of my own app, even though I was already prepared to launch Altstoreio with Delta since March 5″.

In fact, the developer states that on March 5 the App Store will be published with Delta, its emulator based on GBA4iOS. This will be a store with paid apps and without an advertising model.

The key here? In response to Verge, Riley Testut stated that his app uses the GNU GPLv2 license. Supposedly, iGBA would not make reference to this license and would thus be violating its terms.

There will be more emulators. iGBA is the first emulator to be published on the App Store, but more are coming. Emulators are no longer prohibited in the Apple App Store, so there is a clear track for a race in which several developers will fight to offer the best free emulator.

In the midst of the Android debacle with emulators due to Nintendo lawsuits, getting a completely legal alternative is not an easy matter. Emulators are not illegal: downloading copyrighted content and running it without paying, yes.

Image | iGBA

In Xataka | The best Android emulators for PC