Be Excellent To Each Other

Get It Before It's Gone: 'iMAME' Hits the App Store
posted December 21st, 2011 4:12 PM EST by Eli Hodapp in Applications, Emulator, Free, Retro, Universal

Emulators have had an interesting history on the App Store, to say the least. There are a few emulator apps that have received Apple's blessing, namely Manomio's Commodore 64 [$4.99] and a choice group of similar emulators. More often than not though, they randomly appear, having slipped through the Apple approval system, then are quickly pulled. Right now we've got no clue which side of the fence iMAME [Free] is sitting on, but it's free, so there's absolutely no reason not to download it just to have it.

iMame comes preloaded with nine less than stellar ROMs to play, but the real interesting part is going to be whether or not it's possible to side load other ROM files into the app. I've been tinkering around with various tricks to load other ROMs into the app that have worked in other instances of similar emulators on to the App Store, and so far haven't had anything work. Regardless, I give it about two hours (or potentially much less) before someone figures it out, and a few hours after that for Apple to pull it from the App Store.

Go go go!!! I'll keep this post updated as new things develop.

Update: It seems that the same method used to get games into iDOS also works in iMAME. Twitter user @mattlukens mentions, "Yep, add a .zip rom to the Docs folder through PhoneView and it works perfect! Just tried Crime Fighters!" He also provided a screenshot. The clock is really ticking now on Apple pulling this down.

Update: iMAME supports the iCade.

I suspect any takedown will be due to bundled ROMs, and so I hope whoever uploaded iMAME made damn sure the included games are freely distributable.

Legal status

Owning and distributing MAME itself is legal in most countries, as it is merely an emulator. Companies such as Sony have attempted in court to prevent emulators from being sold, but they have been ultimately unsuccessful.[14] MAME itself has thus far not been the subject of any court cases.

However, most arcade games are still covered by copyright. While it is arguably legal to transfer the data contained in ROM chips from a board you own to a personal computer, both downloading from and distributing ROMs on the Internet without permission from copyright holders is a violation of copyright laws.

Some copyright holders have been indecisive regarding making licensed arcade game ROMs available to the public. For example, in 2003 Atari made MAME-compatible ROMs for 27 of its arcade games available through the internet site Star ROMs. However, by 2006 that decision had been reversed, and the ROMs are no longer being sold there. At one point, various Capcom games were sold with the HotRod arcade joystick manufactured by Hanaho, but this arrangement was discontinued as well.

Other copyright holders have released games which are no longer commercially viable free of charge to the public. Alien Arena, Gridlee, Looping, Robby Roto, Super Tank and a number of early games by Exidy (Car Polo, Circus, Crash, Fax, Fire One, Hard Hat, Rip Cord, Robot Bowl, Side Trak, Spectar, Star Fire, Targ, Teeter Torture, Top Gunner and Victory) have been released by their copyright holders under non-commercial licenses. These games may be downloaded legally from the official MAME web site.[15] The Spanish arcade game developer Gaelco has also released World Rally for non-commercial use on their website.[16]

I've checked this out with a couple of games and they work fine. I'm curious to see what happens here. Just because you can sideload content, that shouldn't be enough to breach App Store rules, given that you can do this for every app, including a bunch of emulators that have been on sale for years. An issue there might be that the process isn't remotely obfuscated for this app (unlike others), but it would still seem harsh to remove it.

It'll be removed because it's a program that runs other programs. Same reason Apple would never allow a Flash runtime, or a web browser with its own JavaScript engine.

Wouldn't that apply to the C64 emulator too though?

All the good stuff these days won't run on my 2nd gen iPod Touché.

Twat in a sack.

what's the newest game you thought had a good speed? will tiger heli run? defender?

what's the newest game you thought had a good speed? will tiger heli run? defender?

No. The C64 (and the Speccy) emu doesn't allow the user to add arbitrary games.

Twat in a sack.

imame doesn't seem to be that gratin recognizing stuff i added, like i added map and normal dodonpachi.zip, an fit only finds one, and flips the screen weirdly..so i had to reconfigure controls, and put it in tate mode to make it sort of playable..

ny ideawhy they used this version as a basis?

I have this running, it's rather fab. Playing the Punisher arcade game and it seems very smooth on my Ipad1.
Any suggestions for similar games, no ROM links obviously....Sadly it appears AVP doesn't work.

i see it might support wiiremotes that's good too;)

Yes it is based on my iMame4All Xcode project for non-jailbroken iOS devices. You can tell by the version number, the 'b' was added by me to distinguish from the jailbroken app. Apparently someone downloaded my project and built and submitted to Apple but I have no idea how they got it by the approval process.

this is weird too:

http://toucharcade.com/2011/12/21/get-i ... -391995290

iMAME on the App Store

If you downloaded iMAME from the App Store here are the main differences:

First, you can't copy your ROMs to iMAME using iTunes File Sharing. That feature had to be disabled in order to comply with App Store guidelines. Instead you should use iExplorer and copy the ROMs to the Documents folder for the iMAME application.

Second, the readme help file talks about using WiiMotes with iMAME. This is not possible. WiiMotes require low level access to the Bluetooth chipset which can only be done on a jailbroken device. However, as an alternative you can use the iControlPad which is a good handheld controller.

See the notes here about using the iControlPad controller.

Make sure you are using the correct ROM set. You need ROMs for iMame4All for GP32X which are based on the 0.37b5 version of MAME. Somewhere out there in internet land is a complete set of iMame4All ROMs so just do some research to find it.

iMAME on the App Store is based on the iMame4All for Xcode project with a few changes by Jim VanDeventer to make it App Store compliant.

Gamecenter stuff!

I am now on it as RussAwesome if you want to add me

The other catch is that full-scale emulators aren't particularly welcome on the iOS App Store; the ones that have made it through the review process are careful to lock down the ability to run arbitrary third-party programs.

It seemed too good to last, and sure enough it was. Running arbitrary emulated code is an App Store no-no

I've also asked directly what the issue was, but I won't hold my breath for a reply.

Hah! I admire your optimism. Some of the TUAWers have TextMate shortcuts for the phrase "We contacted Apple but it has not replied at the time of publication."

mm, wondering if a neutered return would make our versions turn into crap as well...

obv, but iOS forces the updates a bit on you, doesn't it.. (i know you can recopy the old .ipa from your trashcan but still)

iOS never forces you to upgrade an app. Also, even if you 'upgrade all', you can fish out the IPA from the trash and keep it elsewhere on your HDD or use it to manually 'downgrade' the version sitting in iTunes.

iOS never forces you to upgrade an app.

Well, not as such. But updating two dozen apps a week whilst avoiding the "Update All" button to keep one critical
app at an old version is quite tedious, and easy to get wrong.

Finally got through the basic 20 levels of Magnetic Billiards today (what can I say? stuck with each until I had A or S on all of them) so have bought the super-duper Skeleton Key full version.

And GTA3.

I'm currently stuck on one button stupid freebie grind fest Traffic Panic.

In which you control a set of traffic lights and let cars through. That's it really.

You get cash for points and the crash value when it all goes wrong which you can then spend on further vehicles and surrounding buildings at the junction. It hands out a pitiful amount of cash but the game length is so tiny that I just keep going back to it.

I have to go back to BugPrincess every so often as some form of pallette cleanser.