App Store NES Emulator Shown The Door As Quickly As It Entered
Posted 12/22/2009 at 7:30am
| by J.R. Bookwalter
On Monday, an app that emulates the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) hit the App Store. And just as quickly, Apple pulled it.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that Apple isn’t fond of emulators of any kind in the App Store. But, there are exceptions, such as the
Commodore 64 emulator that was recently approved. Yesterday, along came another one which at first glance appeared to have Apple’s blessing by showing up on the App Store at all, but by evening it was only a distant memory,
according to 9to5Mac.
Nescaline is the app in question, a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator that comes with five homebrew apps but also the ability to download NES.roms from the Internet by providing a URL. The $6.99 app is the work of developer Jonathan Zdziarski, author of the book
iPhone Forensics.
According to the now-pulled app description:
Kick it old school with home-brew games written for the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Nescaline allows you to play public domain NES games, five of which are included, or use Nescaline's download feature to add games to your library from any remote URL.
Features:
- Multitouch support; use the directional pad and A+B or many other combinations together.
- Works with many zapper-enabled games. Simply touch the screen where you want to shoot.
- Save-state allows you to save games in progress and later restore them to the state they were in when you left the game.
- Supports both landscape and portrait mode, in both full screen or original resolution
- Enter Game Genie codes to enable cheats for your favorite games.
- Alternate frame skip, palette, and advanced settings.
Nescaline works well with many freely available home-brew and public domain games, but is not guaranteed to work with all of them. Author does not condone the piracy of commercial games.
For optimal performance, an iPhone 3Gs is recommended, but not required.
NOTE: Nescaline is in no way affiliated with Nintendo of America or its affiliates. Nescaline does not contain any intellectual property or copyrighted material owned by Nintendo of America or its affiliates.
Of course, jailbroken iPhone users already have a perfectly useful NES emulator available to them. Whether Nescaline will ever return to the App Store remains to be seen…
