Emulators Will Change the App Store Forever

You should check out Pokémon Unbound if you haven’t.

Every few years I switch to Android. I always tell myself the reason is that I just want a change, that iOS has become too samey for me, or I’m lured in by just how weird and cool hardware has gotten outside of Apple’s purview. If I’m being honest though, folding phones, better assistants, and more customization options all pale in comparison to Google allowing emulators on the Play Store. Every time I switch to Android my first move is to download Game Boy Advance and PSP emulators, followed by the apps I actually need. After a few months — or weeks, given my recent foray into the Pixel Fold — I switch back to iOS and abandon whatever Pokémon game I was in the middle of.

Given my penchant for tinkering and my love of retro handhelds, it only makes sense that I’ve tried the many weird ways of getting emulators running on my iPhone. The easiest way for most people has always been more complicated than it should have been: AltStore. Created by Riley Tetsut, AltStore allows iOS users to sideload any app they want onto their device. The setup process is a bit strange — especially if you’re on a Windows machine — and a requirement to “refresh” your apps every few days felt arcane and was easy to forget, but that’s always been the cost of finding a gap in Apple’s garden wall. 

AltStore for me (and many) was just a way to get access to Delta, which is the best emulator on iOS by a pretty shocking margin. While there are admittedly more feature-rich apps like RetroArch out there, no other app feels made for iPhone in the way Delta does. With a slick iOS-friendly user interface, custom themes and designs to reskin your experience, and the ability to grab game files from iCloud, Delta always represented what a talented app developer could do if the App Store was even slightly more open. It’s in this possibility space where I likely never switch to Android again.

It was only about two weeks ago that Apple modified its App Store rules to allow emulators, though people justifiably had questions about what exactly those rules entailed. Various takes popped up around how the wording was vague enough to allow Apple the ability to reject any emulation app for the slightest perceived infraction — as they do with most apps anyway — and that this was essentially a swerve to avoid more hits from the regulatory bodies at the EU or DOJ. This might be true on a high level, but it didn’t stop developers from releasing multiple emulation apps over the past week or so, with almost every single one eventually getting taken down or removed within days if not hours. What we were able to determine via the apps that made it through the App Store screening process was that something like Delta could very likely find its way onto our phones before the month was out. 

Here we are today, and Delta is out on the App Store in the US and available via AltStore’s official listing in the EU. You should download it. I think when you do, you’ll see this as a bit of an inflection point that creates a new future for gaming on Apple devices, and the iPhone in particular.

Developers have always created wonderfully bespoke experiences for the iPhone, utilizing touch controls, the accelerometer, and GPS through games like Pokémon Go. However, there's a higher level desire to transform the phone into a powerful mobile gaming device. You can see that desire play out through titles like Call of Duty Mobile and Genshin Impact which are providing console-level experiences and boasting unbelievably high player counts who are adapting quite well to a buttonless interface.

Personally though: I really just want to play Pokémon on my phone. The reason I switch to Android is the prospect of playing Pokémon Silver again while I’m on the subway or in the back of a Lyft or while waiting in line. Ultimately Nintendo is unlikely to allow this in a way that lets me pay them directly for the experience. They justifiably prefer having their Nintendo Online subscription service and providing limited access to their valuable back catalog on devices they control entirely. The idea of launching a Pokémon game as an app on the App Store is a non-starter. But with emulation apps present on both Android and iOS and many people already enjoying these experiences, one wonders why not make a change? I would gladly pay Nintendo to play back-catalog Pokémon games on my iPhone and I would be over the moon if they recognized this as a valuable audience segment worth catering to. In a lot of ways, it’s about to be extremely difficult to ignore this user-behavior.

The perfect example here is Animal Crossing¹. Animal Crossing: Wild World is one of my favorite games of all time. It significantly impacted my life and served as my entry-point into the franchise. However, the official version on the App Store and Google Play Store, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, while an interesting take on the life-sim formula, is absolutely not the most compelling way to experience Animal Crossing on a phone now that Wild World is always in my pocket. Why settle for anything less than the real thing?

I would always prefer this over the microtransaction-laden Pocket Camp.

At the moment, mobile games largely fall into two different categories: The first category includes games thoughtfully designed from scratch for smartphones and for real people. They find ways to explore how we interact with our devices on a daily basis, and tailor their gameplay mechanics to engage with those interactions accordingly. Florence, a game about a relationship and its eventual breakdown, is told primarily through swiping and gesturing, allowing players to advance a story devoid of dialogue that is still emotionally resonant because of our physical input. Knotwords, a halfway point between crosswords and sudoku, is built in a way that encourages playing on a daily basis — and the game reacts accordingly in design and music to what point in the day you decide to check in.

The second category comprises games like the aforementioned Genshin Impact or Call of Duty Mobile, which are absolutely riddled with microtransactions. These games dominate the App Store, cynically designed to be predatory and extract as much money as possible from their players. This perspective might seem hardcore, but the introduction of Apple Arcade suggests even Apple recognizes the issue and is attempting to address it. Play Star Trek Legends for even a few minutes and you’ll see it very clearly featured microtransactions at one point in its development, but had these elements removed in its addition to Apple Arcade. When it comes to the two categories of games on the App Store, the more horrific one is winning out, leaving the other behind with increasingly sparse selections on a yearly basis.

The introduction of emulators offers an alternative within this ecosystem, providing games with immersive stories and gameplay systems that are designed for extended play sessions. These games, though designed for other hardware, still offer complete experiences counter to the endless treadmills of most apps found in the Games tab today which funnel users into shops loaded with in-game currencies. As the concept of emulation becomes more prevalent and ubiquitous across all mobile devices, I feel as though it can introduce a much-needed shake-up to the MTX-laden landscape we live in today.

To be clear: I’m not naive enough to think everyone is going to stop making gacha-filled apps and games now that we can play the original Advance Wars on our phones, but I do think the ability to do so changes the calculus for both consumers and publishers about how we’ll all be spending our time going forward. How does Nintendo react to the news that despite their desire to fight game preservation at all costs, people are nonetheless still enjoying the very games that built their business in the first place? How do their shareholders react when they watch a behemoth miss a boat this large, callously digging in their heels as it sails away into the sunset?

Probably not well! Lmao!

¹ You could very easily make this same argument about Fire Emblem Heroes in comparison to the many mainline Fire Emblem games present on the devices Delta supports.