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NES Emulator for iPhone Emerges

An anonymous reader writes "The first emulator for iPhone, iPhoneNES has been released. It run very slow, and has no sound, but hacker NerveGas has managed to modify the source to release an optimized version that is playable. " My favorite bit is that your controller is a clickable picture of the NES controller. Not exactly the ideal UI but still an amazing accomplishment.

9 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. The IPhone has: 600MHZ CPU. Why slow? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I have heard that the iPhone changes the CPU frequency depending on usage; anyway 600 MHZ (maximum) is a lot for a hanheld device.
    My Nokia N800 Internet Tablet has a CPU half the speed (320MHZ) and manages to do things at a reasonable speed.

  2. Re:How is this newsworthy? by Zekasu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not sure if you noticed, but there's both more iPhones on the market (due to popularity) and a larger market for the iPhone (can the PSP make phone calls (out of thoe box)?), and I also would take a gamble and say the iPhone wasn't created with gaming in mind. (Not as much as the PSP, therefore different hardware specs., and a different control configuration.)

    Also, you may want to check out the following:
    Playstation Emulator for PSP Released
    x86 Emulator on PSP Runs Windows & Linux
    Gameboy Emulator Released for PSP

  3. Poor programming, undoubtedly. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I remember being able to use some NES emulators back in the day on my AMD K6-2 333. Meanwhile, others would be dog ass slow on my newer Athlon 600. Hell, they'd be dog ass slow on my XP 1500+. :p

    Can't say I've ever programmed an emulator, but from what I can tell, there's either a good number of people out there who don't know what they're doing, or it's very easy to bork something and cause horrible performance.

  4. I disagree by Brigadier · · Score: 2, Insightful



    The iPhone is a rectangular 115 x 61 x 11.6 mm touch sensitive screen, WiFi, 8 GB of memory a reasonable amount of processing power on a fairly common OS. The truth is you can use it for whatever is applicable. It also supports USB so you can plug almost anything into it. Steve Jobs isn't stupid he has a platform that can be adaptable for many things.

    Video, Audio, Data Sharing, Communication, Interactivity the list goes on.

    Shoot My palm I use as a web browser, video game console, organizer, music player flashlight when i need it, data drive you name it.

  5. Re:Eh... by thedbp · · Score: 2, Insightful

    this post requires a "short sighted" mod. Its been out just a hair over a month ... And the 3rd party app scene is already bustling. Just because you dont have an ounce of imagination or innovation in you doesnt mean that someone else couldn't look at the platform and devise a way to make it work, and work well.

    It amazes me how the only people who are voiciferously negative about the iphone are the ones who haven't actually used one... As for myself, having used one extensively, I can absolutely see the potential for expansion into areas not built in to the device as shipped.

  6. Re:How is this newsworthy? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Emulation is no big deal. Why are the numerous PSP emulator releases never posted? /.'s Apple nuthuggery gets more visible by the day.

    Simple:
        - Sony = bad
        - Apple = good
        - */Linux = extra good :)

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  7. Re:Why not iPhoNES by toleraen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Try searching google for iPhoNES. It seems someone else may already have a pretty high page rank for that one.

  8. Re:Nice accomplishment but who would want to play by Koiu+Lpoi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, nice accomplishment indeed.

    It seems that, for any device that comes out these days, we first see the NES emulator, then other emulators. This is then followed by ports of Doom, Heretic, Hexen, and maybe Duke3D. This is then followed by Linux, Quake, and Descent. It's only after all that do we see actual new things being made for a platform.

    I swear, some people have nothing better to do but port old games to every platform imaginable.

  9. Re:Nice accomplishment but who would want to play by Peganthyrus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Writing your own game is hard. Writing your own game while you're figuring out how to use the platform is harder.

    Getting an emulator up and running requires a lot of things to be solved: dealing with the filesystem to load ROMs, getting things to run on a regular schedule, updating the screen, taking input and using it, talking to the audio hardware... by using a pre-existing emulator that you know works, or something like Doom, you can concentrate on these sorts of tasks with an end result that's actually a decent-sized project, instead of a tiny little toy app that bounces your coder-art logo around the screen and goes 'thrummmmmm'.

    --
    egypt urnash minimal art.