Programming a GBA Game on an iPhone

https://blog.adamledoux.net/posts/2026-06-08-programming-a-gba-game-on-an-iphone.html

by akkartik • 1 month ago

54 10 1 month ago

blog.adamledoux.net

Sounds kinda annoying to work purely on an iPhone, but very cool experiment nonetheless!

Very cool. It's not the ideal environment but it's nice to have those tools available when you need it / are bored. Termux saved me on a few homework assignments in university.

kmeisthax• 1 month ago

Back before Apple pulled their heads out of their asses regarding emulation and let Delta on the App Store[0], I wondered if it would be possible to "smuggle" an emulator onto the App Store by wrapping it inside a retro development tool.

What I mean is, ship a "learn to code"[1] app - which is explicitly allowed on the App Store - that just so happens to be for learning assembly for a particular retro platform. It'd be a Baby's First IDE, with support for full custom projects in a particular directory, just like Swift Playgrounds, so you could build a whole game in it if you wanted. And it'd have full support for assembling your code into a ROM file and running it in a bundled emulator if you so chose. This would be entirely above board, including demo projects that users could mess around with.

The only thing is, assemblers just so happen to have the ability to include arbitrary data into the ROM, usually by some INCBIN macro. You need this in order to include graphics in your game. So nothing stops an unscrupulous user from "writing" a five line "game" that just INCBINs an entire ROM file. For plausible deniability, there'd be no functionality in the app tailored for this use case. You'd have to manually drag and drop a ROM into the project folder and manually add the appropriate INCBIN statement to copy the ROM into the project. And there'd be nothing reasonable Apple could demand out of me to stop you from doing it, short of implementing a "no development tools for Nintendo hardware" clause that would be entirely arbitrary and make Apple look bad.

Of course, even with Apple being amenable to emulators now, I have to wonder if this could still be useful to iPad kids that want to play with old hardware. It certainly would be more user-friendly than putting a bunch of development tools inside iSH or UTM.

[0] Except in Europe, due to a different and even dumber Apple policy designed specifically to pile junk fees on anyone making use of their rights under the EU DMA

[1] This also used to be forbidden on the App Store - remember when the officially licensed C64 emulator for iOS had to remove access to BASIC?

socalgal2• 1 month ago

Apple didn't pull their heads out of their ass. The emulators are still gimped as they're not allowed to JIT, only interpret. Further, only game emulators are allowed, not general programming

msephton3• 1 month ago

Your further statement is no longer true, since August 2024. These days there are computer emulators on the App Store. The JIT restriction is still true.

Xeoncross• 1 month ago

I would love to have a more detailed write up on development while mobile. Seems like an ideal way to pass the time vs doom scrolling when on the go.

Just how many lunch lines does it take to program a GB game?

msephton3• 1 month ago

I made an iPhone game on my iPhone, using Lua/Love2D. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170785

The tools I used are listed at: https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2025/02/20/making-games-on-i...

akkartik2• 1 month ago

Oh I love that. I program on my phone as well using LÖVE, though games aren't really my interest. My devlog at https://akkartik.itch.io/carousel/devlog is about recreating the feeling of typing in programs from magazines in the microcomputer/PC era. Only, you know, with copy/paste instead of typing in by hand.

msephton3• 1 month ago

I already follow you! Keep it up. Did you see the recent magazine with type-in modern listings? https://vole.wtf/doctype/

Programming a GBA Game on an iPhone

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