I know that iphone users can jail break to get the old school emulators and I think that by now, there are some emulators in the apple market. My question is on a couple levels...
- Without jailbreaking, can you get roms on the iphone for free?
- If so how?
- How well does the on screen controller work
- Is the small screen you have to use on the iphone emu an issue?
Also add any feedback you like and your opinion as well. I'm just curious that's all. Hopefully one of you has experience in this field
Former iPod Touch user here; didn't have an iPhone, but they're similar enough that the same concepts apply to both here. As for your questions:
1. No. You can't even access the iPhone filesystem without jailbreaking, and it doesn't matter since the only emulators for the platform require you to jailbreak anyway. The App Store has no emulators in the sense that you mean it; there are a few remakes of vintage games (Pac-Man and Mega Man 2, for example), but the iPhone equivalents of Nesoid and Gensoid are jailbreak-only apps.
2. Not possible. Even the jailbreak emulators cost money (in the Cydia store), although you can add your own ROMs from whatever source easily. There are also guys who've put up ROM packs for download through Cydia, although I've read that people have had serious problems with these (i.e. so bad that they had to restore their device), so I always stuck to just uploading my ROMs via FTP.
3. It differs from emulator to emulator. I think NES and SNES each have two different emulators available, not sure about other systems. But generally speaking the on-screen controls are actually one of the ONLY things I liked better on the Touch than on my Droid. No haptic feedback for virtual keys on the Touch of course; not sure if you can get it on the iPhone.
I found that the NES and Gameboy controls were easy to use and well-suited even for action games, but the SNES button layout is awkward enough that I had trouble using it for anything but RPGs. One SNES emulator (forget which one) let you fill the screen with the game and use transparent buttons that lay on top of the game screen; this sounded like an awesome idea until I actually tried to use it and realized that it meant I'd be covering the game with my hands the whole time. No Mario Kart for me!
4. Not really since most NES/SNES/Gameboy/Genesis games were written for systems that could only output low resolution graphics anyway. Whether you like playing on a screen that size is up to you, but you don't sacrifice anything in terms of graphics quality by playing those games on an iPhone.
Also, I don't know if you already have or are considering purchasing an iPhone or what, but you should know that there's no jailbreak available for the current version of the firmware (3.1.3) on the 3GS. If you have a 3G or lower, or a 3GS on an older version of the firmware, you'll be fine.
