Well, it looks like iPhone hackers are finally doing something useful with their time. “Have they unlocked the iPhone?” you ask. Goodness no; they’ve created an iPhone NES emulator. Now you can play your favorite NES classics right on your (hacked) iPhone.
The first stage of this app was floating around a few days ago. Created by stepwhite, the first gen iPhone NES emulator was way too slow to be played properly and there were some control issues. As stepwhite noted on Google Code, “using an image of an actual controller, while cute, sucks.”
Fortunately, hackers extraordinaire NerveGas and Nightwatch have created an optimized version of the original NES emulator. According to The Unofficial Apple Weblog the new version is “blazing fast” and has multi-touch support. So now the controller is cute and functional? Awesome.
Some of the games included in the emulator are Super Mario Bros 1 and 3, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Punch Out, Mega Man 2, and lots more. The good thing about NES emulators is that you get to play some of the best console games without paying for the actual cartridges (some which cost quite a lot) or dealing with the often-finicky 20 year old NES console.
Of course you can only get this super fun and time wasting app if you’ve hacked your iPhone. The current version has no sound, but at least it’s fast enough to actually play. I don’t know if there’s any save feature, but then again most original NES games didn’t either. If it doesn’t, longer games like Final Fantasy will be a little long to play all in one go.
So if you’ve already hacked your iPhone or aren’t afraid of voiding your warranty for the sake of classic gaming this hack is for you.