Be Excellent To Each Other

Damn, it took some doing but i'm now playing advance wars on my iphone, which actually means i always will have advance wars on me.. yeah!
http://www.zodttd.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8

See, I hadn't gotten around to jailbreaking my phone yet. BUT NOW I MUST.

Can you do it with 2.x yet then?

yup, jailbreaked my iphone this morning after upgrading to 2.1, then installed gpSPhone using the Cydia app provided, then connecting via SFTP and putting the bios in and then gameboy advance ahoy, i just connect my mac to 192.168.0.miphones ipnumber and can copy roms over, it works far better then i though, just been plaing metal slug advance

What did you use to jailbreak it?

For transferry stuff, if you've got a mac, use netatalk. The iphone just magicially shows up in Finder any time the phone is active (and, er, on the same network via wifi, obv).


GBA eh. Never had one of those, is there anything worth bothering with?

Loads of stuff!

Pinball Challenge Deluxe (Pinball Dreams & Pinball Fantasies squished into one cart)
Muppet Pinball Mayhem (another aces pinball game)
Rebelstar: Tactical Command (simplified version of X-Com)
The Tower SP (Sim Tower GBA; the game tanked but I like it)
The two Zelda games, Minish Cap and Link to the Past
Sheep (nice little herd-em-up game)
Polarium (supposed to be better than the DS version)
Advance Wars 1 & 2 and Fire Emblem 1 & 2 (great turn-based strategy games)
Warioware (minigame mayhem)

For more, check out this list:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/gba/scores/

FAIL! (For not mentioning the GODLIKE Rhythm Tengoku, obv.)

...and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance!

(Other peoples tastes may differ wildly)

Godamn, turns out QuickPwn/Pwnagetool 1.1 are still Mac only. Grumble grumble.

Get a Mac. Or post your phone to me. Or wait for a few more days.

I note that these options vary wildly in practicality.

how do you control things on these emus?

there's no facia buttons right?

It can be a bit tricky, I'll give you that.

Answers to a fewe of this questions.

1. You control the games by a virtual keypad, both on nes and gba you can also use a full screne mode but i didn't like it.. generally it goes quite well...
2. did put rhytm tengoku on it, not sure yet if the timing is good enoguh for it, yhat is why i started with things like advance wars.
3. I used quickpwn to jailbreak, on the quickpwn page there are also options for windows users, but i think they will launch a windows version of it in a few days
4. i use netatalk to add roms for both nes.app and the gba emu (and for more things like getting quite good quality videos of Cycorder, see here for a clip i made of my son to see the quality): good res/low framerate: http://www.flickr.com/photos/romanista/2865695080/, but i could get into the root with it, so i installed openssh via cydia and then could get to the dir with my ftp programme (see the thread in the first post)

i'll make a iphone emu section on my macretro site when i have the time

You are Bernie Clifton and I claim my £5.

Hence me being gutted that this isn't real and following up Jobs's stupid claims in the most recent keynote with Why iPod touch will never be a major gaming platform.

Interestingly, I wrote this article almost word-for-word in my head months ago, except obviously mine was better in every conceivable way. It never seemed to get any hits though. I think your "putting it on a website" approach is going to be more successful long-term.

I'm sure, however, that your article was far more popular with Welsh psychics.

Oh yeah, I was certainly cheered on as I walked down St Mary's Street.

Of course, no-one heard anything, because it was only psychics cheering in each other's heads.

I heard them loud and clear. Just today, I was cheered for making a particularly nice cup of tea, and for doing all the washing up before going on the internet tonight.

Having your own cheer track is ace. Now I want a personal laugh track.

"Stop playing that cheering noise from your ghettoblaster, Gaywood!" — Heddlu De Cymru.

Ah, did want to talk about this article, and now it is in this topic, so lets discuss. Although discuss, i of course agree with you, (rather than with your co-blogger but it did trigger me to go on watch the keynote, as i can't imagine even the apple zealots believing their prophet this time (with all respect due for steven p. jobs ofcourse)... but what would b etheir real ambition be.. They are a bit behind their target of 10 million iphones in 2008 if i remember correctly, but lets say they grow to 15 in 2009, they still have about 10% of dss, en 5% of the total market, and while the distribution of games is 100* better than normal phone games, the price on average is lower than most games 1-2 euro* v 5 euro (average. cellphone) v 40 euro (ds)..

a viable market, and a strong showing within their segment is certainly possible, certainly if you add the ipod touch to the iphones, but replacing dedicated portable gaming machines (i disagree a bit with you on the psp, it might be a dedicated gaming machine, but its poorer showing is partly because it wan't a dedicated portable gaming machine)

back on the original topic: it makes wario ware quite a bit harder, which is good of couse after playing the original so much it wouldn't have been much fun to have to play the earlier stages again otherwise..

* although i realise there will be more and more premium price point games like real football** in the near future
** i think a numver control method will become established soon, and RFs is ofcourse a virtual nes keypad, which works well, on it, and on the nes/gba emus

I have a borrowed Macbook on my desk

Nice!


It's funny how many people didn't get what I meant with that piece (not you, obv.). There have been a lot of people going "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about—of course iPod touch gaming will be successful", but I wasn't debating that. Of course lots of games will be made and sold—Apple's distribution model is excellent, and even beats that of the PSP and NDS, because you can update stuff. (As I said, I'm sure every owner of The Settlers for DS would love to be able to do that.)

Where Apple's making stupid statements is in the actual range of its device. It will never become a major gaming platform like the DS or PSP, unless Apple makes some very major changes. The main one for me is the controls—although I've heard people say the RF one is OK, I think it's dreadful. Virtual controls are just nasty, and having to cover half the display with your thumbs is just insane, as is having to 'check' to see whether your thumbs are in the right place every now and again. I never have to do that with any other games system.

Unfortunately, the iPhone, like everything else from Apple, is basically down to What Jobs Wants™. He likes glossy screens, so that's what the iMac gets. The colour saturation is wonderful, but it makes them literally useless in many environments. Similarly, he likes the way the iPhone is and dislikes gaming, and so we don't get any standard controls. Frankly, Apple could clean up if it released an inexpensive clip-on controller (like that Belkin rumour), but it'll never do it.

As for sales predictions, they're done for for two reasons—uptake in Japan has been way lower than forecast, and the Western economy is going to hammer smartphone sales and contract sales, unless it's something you need rather than want. Apple might do OK with the PAYG iPhone in the UK (which was available from Monday), but I can't see the company shifting as many as it had once hoped.

I have never understood gaming on mobile telephones in general. From Snake all the way to the games that you can get on phones 'nowadays', I can't imagine wanting to play games on a phone. Larger games, the consoles will always be better, gaming on the move, I'd always favour a DS or PSP*.

I can't imagine any situation where I'd think to myself 'ooh, I fancy playing a game now' whilst in transit when I didn't have my DS. On a train I will take my DS, but on a bus the journey is too short or crowded or bumpy to bother - when do you use your phone for gaming, and, honestly, how often do you think you'll actually play the games on it?

I don't disbelieve that you will find it useful, but I can't myself ever imagine using it to any degree, or seeing it as anything more of an interesting gadget, as far as gaming is concerned.


*if the PSP didn't insist on crippling my hands...

I have enough trouble getting my iPhone to register my presses on the iPod play/next/previous buttons on the touch screen. Even though I'm blatantly touching them it doesn't seem to register it half the time.

I can't even begin to imagine how awful that would be in an action game.

That sounds like a duff screen, or that you haven't realised that when the screensaver's on the first press brightens the screen again.

The screen responds perfectly to the rest of my presses, it's just on those three buttons that it doesn't like playing ball.

The difference with iPhone is that the device is more powerful than the consoles you cited, and also has a whopping great, high-quality screen. I interviewed the guys who did Super Monkey Ball, and they said that while they initially approached the game like a typical mobile outing, they rapidly realised that was a bad idea and switched to creating a fairly normal (if truncated) console game.

I guess what Apple's realised is that with iPhone and iPod touch, it has a device that's powerful, easy to develop for and easy to get affordable stuff on to. The gaming space is the one that's really exploded, thanks to the DS, and if Apple can cunningly position itself alongside, it could benefit. After all, while I agree that most people think like you—"I can't imagine any situation where I'd think to myself 'ooh, I fancy playing a game now' whilst in transit when I didn't have my DS"—what if your iPod was capable of playing games just as good as those on your DS?

The problem currently, obviously, is the limitations forced by iPhone/iPod touch's hardware, meaning it's neither a truly portable gaming device half the time (try playing tilt games while on public transport) nor a device capable of a wide enough range of games (Ms. Pac-Man on iPhone is hateful, for example).

Yup, I'd be a prime candidate for iPhone games - I did have a DS but I so rarely could be bothered to charge it up and take it with me that it never got used. The iPhone is always in my pocket, and I often have a quick game of tetris or something if I'm bored and out of wifi range..
It's *not* the same as playing games on a phone, which I agree is fairly lame.
The lack of hardware buttons is the main drawback but I'm pretty sure someone will bring out a standardised little dpad addon very soon.

The problem with this is official support from Apple. Only jailbroken apps have access to the dock connector. Unless Apple relents on that, there won't ever be a nifty little controller from the likes of Belkin.

1. on the toilet.
2. when you don't take luggage on the train (going to a soccer match)
3. when in a boring conference, as it is aceptable then to check you msgs, so you can play a game as well, but not acceptable to take a ds
4. when your wife is watching telly, and your phone is closer by.
5. when your 1,5 year old is taking a trip through the neighborhood and your walking behind him..

Temper, the PC Engine emulator wins at the end.. the pc engine has the perfect resolution and clear graphics for the iphones screen, furthermore, the shmups really fit short iphone play.. (2 mins mode in soldier blade e.g.)

Installed psx4iphone now, with raidenDX, a prestation tha tit works, but too slow to have any fun