The arrival of emulators on iPhone paves the way for the return of almost all of the games that marked our childhood… with a few exceptions. Some consoles will be difficult to integrate, like the Nintendo GameCube or the Wii.
The European Digital Markets Act has opened up new applications for the iPhone: emulators, which allow you to transform your smartphone into an old video game console. For example, you can now turn your iPhone into a Game Boy, thanks to the Delta application. Some players are impatiently awaiting the return of GameCube or the Wii, two Nintendo consoles which have a good popularity rating.
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As spotted by Eurogamer on April 25, playing GameCube games on iPhone — under the right conditions — is unlikely to happen. On his blog, a hacker specializing in Nintendo consoles spoke on the subject and dashed some hopes. There is a technical limitation that prevents GameCube games from running correctly. “ We would love to release DolphiniOS (GameCube emulator) on the App Store or work with the Dolphin Emulator team to have an official version on the App Store », says OatmealDome.
What's wrong with GameCube game emulation on iPhone?
In full transparency, OatmealDome explains the reason that prevents GameCube games from running well on iPhone. It's all a question of architecture: the GameCube is a console that uses a PowerPC type CPU, while the iPhone relies on an ARM type CPU. “ It is not possible to run code from a PowerPC CPU on an ARM CPU, and vice versa “, he says.
You must therefore go through additional software which translates the code, so that an ARM type CPU can understand what it receives. OatmealDome specifies: “ Dolphin uses what's called a Just-in-Time (JIT) recompiler to do this. When the emulated console wants to run the code of a game, Dophin uses this JIT to translate the PowerPC code into ARM, and then executes the result “.
The creators of Dolphin could choose to launch Dolphin without the JIT. The problem? If the game launches, it is unplayable, as evidenced by the two clips (with and without) published by OatmealDome, recorded on an iPhone 15 Pro Max. “ We could offer DolphiniOS on the App Store, but then we would receive hundreds of complaints due to terrible performance. The app review process might also reject us because the app is almost unusable », he concludes. In the end, it's mainly Nintendo that is happy.
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Without JIT:
With JIT: