GameBoy Advance emulator for your hacked iPhone

by Ted Wallingford Nov 15th 2007

gpSPhone is a GameBoy Advance emulator for the iPhone and iPod Touch. To use it, of course, you'll need an iPhone that's been hacked to use third-party apps, but that's a small price to pay for quality time with such memorable Nintendo classics as Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga and Mega Man Battle Network. The emulator was co-developed by the guy that made gpSPhone's cousin, a classic NES emulator.

Once you have gpSPhone installed, assuming you're willing to jump through the hoops required to unlock your iPhone, you'll need to get your hands on some games. Since the iPhone doesn't have a GBA cartridge receptable (those short-sighted Apple engineers!), you'll need to grab ROMs instead. ROMs are firmware images of cartridge games that can be downloaded and copied to the iPhone for use with the emulator. Only watch it, distributing copyrighted games in this fashion is mostly illegal.

That said, there are quite a few home-brew games available as ROMs, like our new favorite, Qwak. Now, if only an Amiga emulator would show up on the iPhone so we can play Lemmings.

Tags: gameboy advance, GameboyAdvance, games, gpsphone, iphone, qwak

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Rex said 7:20AM on 11-16-2007

uh, dude, you forgot pokemon emerald! i mean, how could you? sigh...

Crazed Geek said 8:22AM on 11-16-2007

Pokemon Emerald doesn't really work on emulators, purely because the whole point of the game is to battle and trade with friends, which is very hard to do on an emulator.

Rex said 8:47AM on 11-16-2007

um, tried VBA 1.7.2 LINK?(for PC, i must admit, but still, it allows you to trade) and, besides, the game is alone is quite cool on its on...
but yes, no trading might put the damper for quite a many fans...

UTRWEB said 10:13AM on 11-16-2007

Im playing lemmings on my NES emulator in iPhone!!!!

Claidheamdanns said 2:52PM on 12-11-2007

Lemmings in the NES emulator? how are you doing that? I thought it had to be a Nintendo ROM.

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

View more Time Wasters