Apple approves officially-licensed Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone
By Donald Melanson 
posted Sep 7th 2009 12:11PM
posted Sep 7th 2009 12:11PM
Well, it's almost certainly not a signal that Apple is opening the door to emulators of all sorts on the iPhone, but the newly (and finally) approved Commodore 64 emulator is still a fairly notable first for the platform -- representing not only the first officially-available emulator, but perhaps the first app that actually runs code (even if it is a couple of decades old). In this case, that first bit apparently wasn't too big a point of contention for Apple, considering that the app had all the necessary licensing rights lined up, but the second issue was, and ran right up against a clause in the iPhone 2.0 SDK that prevented apps from containing their own executable runtimes. As it happens, the key to bridging that divide around that was none other than iPhone 3.0, which contains a new feature for in-app purchases that the C64 emulator will take advantage of to let folks purchase additional games, rather than load arbitrary game code downloads. Interestingly, while this newly-approved version of the emulator also no longer exposes a BASIC interpreter, Manomio has added a note to the app that it "should be resolved in a future update," although it's not quite clear if that's just wishful thinking or not. In the meantime, you can grab the app right now with five bundled games for $4.99.
Top of the world for the first time.
I can see Russia from here.
I hope your computer catches on fire and takes you to hell.
I second that
In Soviet Russia, the top of the world sees YOU!
bout time...
Anyone hear there's a Pig Flu app now?
27 years later ...
Apple approving an emulator? ...praying does work..
this sure brings back some memories!
You think your Commodore 64's really neato'. What kind'a chip you got in there, a dorito ?
wouldn't you like to know... Don't hate.....
it was obsolete before you even opened the box
You're face is obsolete :T
@Phil
the c64 wasn't obsolete before u opened the box unless u lived in eastern Europe and purchased one in the 90's
it was a dog to program but no one better be hating on the ol' grandpa
@Cy: Whateva, It's all about the Pentiums!
This is obviously direct competition to the Palm Pre's emulator.
How is this possible/
Well you see Apple see a way to make money and they act on it. Unlike emulator and rom on the computer they will actually charge you for this, despite the fact that normal people would not charge you for this.
what is that damn thing called?
an iPhone
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah Commodore 64!!!! my guts missed you till i found you on Appulous!!!! me LOVEZ you again and again and again!!! LMAO
Grow Up.
neat
Cool stuff, now just need to get a iphone.
or a winmo phone, for which you can get a C64 emulator, among many others (i'm almost positive there is a GBA emulator for winmo), and any number of games for free. either way. (not saying buy winmo, just, if emulators are important to you, you should really consider winmo).
there is a nes em for winmo too. PLUS c64, for quite some time.
Nothing new here other than Apple decided to loosen it's asshole a little and let something in.
Really? Can you get it wirelessly with just a push of a button on an App Store, or do I have to find it on the web, download it, open Active Synch, pray that it connects or reboot if it can't find my WinMo via the designated COM port or bluetooth? I suppose wirelessly wouldn't require a pairing of BT, to a virtual COM port server, to ActiveSync, and I could just use the WinMo's built in browser over 3G, with a stylus and.... aw hell. Forget it.
"not saying buy winmo, just, if emulators are important to you, you should really consider winmo"
Given the news it is likely that this is going to be less of a selling point for Windows Mobile since it seems clear that Apple will allow emulation applications on the iPhone (i.e. expect more of them soon). Personally, my only issue with this is that the iPhone is not a good platform for such games because its interface was no designed for it. Virtual joysticks are all well and good but it's a fudge solution and the iPhone will be better served by games that play (pun possibly intended - you decide) to the strengths of the platform and its interface. The same is true for the Nintendo Wii.
And one day, an iPhone emulator running a C64 emulator. (And so on into the distant future.)
Seriously though, how does this effect royalty payments to the authors of the original C64 titles?
It all depends on who owns the relevant rights...
If you go to the company's website then you can see that they are trying to buy the license to sell games via this application. This also presumably can hold things up since I doubt that they are going to sell titles that they are not allowed to so the selection will probably be low. However, for the content owners this sort of thing is going to be great since I doubt they make much income from their old games anymore.
Finally, some good games on the iphone....
/sarcasm
On a personal note, I am thinking about PSP Go for games and music but can't find anything about how the music player will work (supposedly it will be MUCH improved thanks to new firmware). Any links or info would be much loved.
The music playback on PSP is excellent as is, so it can only get better.
Actually, if the current PSP music player is "excellent," it's more likely to be worse than to be better. If it were terrible now, then "it can only get better."
I'm not saying it will be, but there's more room for excellent software to decline than to improve.
What's wrong with the music player? It's simple and easy enough to work with. It's no iPod.. but it does the job.
What's wrong with the PSP music player, you ask, Liquid Fusion? Well, the PSP is large and the headphone jack sticks out of the side at 90 degrees.
But back on topic, I think this app has been pulled... It's no longer on the iTunes store as of 1am...
Talk about theft, it's built from a GPL project, named Frodo... where are the sources ?
Links and proof please?
there's several references to "Frodo" in the binary, and all variable and method names are the same.
Now if only Rogers would ship me that iPhone I bought over a month ago...
You are well aware that it's not Roger's making IPhone right? B/C last time I checked it is an Apple product.
First?
The HP 42 ematorhas been out a long time and runs code...
First to fail? Why yes, yes you are.
I think he was questioning the fact that this is the first emulator. I hope so anyways.
(01), your username fails, you hypocrite.
To get to the emulator in the current version, start a game with the keyboard on, then press reset. The Basic prompt will pop up.
The Chip-8 Emulator has been in the app store since July. Sure, it's not exactly on the same level as a C64 emulator, but it is an emulator none the less...
I hate to burst Engadget's bubble but emulators DO NOT run executables. The emulator basically parses the components of the game and runs them as if it were a Word file.
No executables here.
This is close to perfection but is FAIL on one major point: one cannot run one's own apps on this. I have hundreds of legal C64 disk images, from developers that may not even be alive anymore--plus a few I have written myself--but will never be able to play them on this as you can only play games made available from them within the app itself.
"developers that may not even be alive anymore"
LOL! Most C64 titles were produced a quarter of a century ago - the dodgy days of Wham!, Duran Duran, and Culture Club...
This is one of the reasons that I stand by Android. I know it doesn't provide the same quality experience that iPhone does, but Android lets you do whatever you want on your device, which is nice.
Android has a C64 emu, a SNES emu, a Genesis emu, a NES emu, and maybe more, those are just the ones I know about.
@ J?
You can add your own c64 games if you're iphone is jailbroken and have an IQ higher than 80 to read and comprehend the .plist files so that you know what to edit to make the games appear.
5 minutes after I got this emulator I added Giana Sisters, Ghostbusters, Lazy Jones and Karateka with full box art and everything.
its really simple actually
Anyone notice the screenshot in the AppStore show "Don't despear" on the topic of the BASIC interpreter? Amusing.
By not having the BASIC interpreter it isn't a full emulator, as the Basic Interpreter was part of the C64... and not being able to load your own images means it's a useless application...
Seriously, how dangerous is running BASIC commands? OMG, he cleared the screen!
What is this app called?
10 PRINT "Awesome"
20 GOTO 10
You forgot the semi-colon! Must...fill...screen!
Maybe a MAME emulator can slip through the cracks and give the iPhone some old school arcade games.
Yawn
Thank you Appulous..
An emulator yay! I haven't really played a c64 before though :/
Check this awesome search engine for the iPhone AppStore: http://uquery.com
Actually, the clause in the license agreement says that you can't *download* and run external code. You can include your own interpreter/emulator all you want, and as long as it runs only stuff contained within the app bundle, you're fine.
Once you download external code (add-ons, new games, etc) you breach the license.
so it is time for the Amiga emulator.
Amiga package has been in the works for more than a year now, but the folks at Cloanto have had about the same difficulties with Apple as Manomio did:
http://www.amigaforever.com/iphone/
So apple is trying to sell ancient games for 5 bucks call me unimpressed
I'm unimpressed at your reading comprehension skills. Apple is not selling anything, it is Manomio, the game developer that is selling this game package via the Apple Store.
Does this mean I should renew my subscription to Compute!?
Comment win.
Compute's Gazzette and The Big Book of BASIC Games would also have qualified.
The entire App Store thing is a huge disappointment to me. Apart from few MSN clients (of which none of them I could use without any problems) I just couldn't find an application there that I consider a "must have".
If it wasn't for the excellent Safari, I'd be up next for a Blackberry.
Tell me about the emulators.
Interesting. Commodore 64 got me through the 80s as a gamer, before NES, Master System, and TG-16, but after Atari 2600, Intellivision, and Colecovision (OK, and Odyssey2). There are some great old games on there, but I don't know how useful it will be if they have to be purchased through the app. Some of those games are too old to be worth more than a buck each.
Plus, that way I doubt we'll get some of the underground classics.
It's funny that the article mentions the C64's "hard to pirate" cartridge slot, because NOBODY used it. Everybody used floppy disks for gaming, and those were EASY to copy. Piracy was rampant on the C64.
hopefully Atari will come out with one of these emulators as well. I'd love to go back and play so many of those games I grew up with.
You used floppy discs? Man we used tape, the load time was so long that it was where the first hacker demos came out and then the decompression "noise" and pre game games
oh they were the days
Yeah, the 1541 and 1541-II floppy drives were pretty handy. I ran a BBS from my Commodore 64 for a while in the 80s, and let me tell you, that was a sloooooow user experience, but it wouldn't have been possible had I relied on those audio cassettes.
I still keep hoping Electronic Arts will wise up and make a new version of Mail Order Monsters with online capability. Dammit.
If it doesn't play MULE it's useless.
my copy plays MULE...
but that's because I manually added it to the app.
virtual joystick is pants, tho
at least at&t cant stop apps like this from being approved
Just testing things out.
Kudos to Manomio and to the open source projects (why aren't they mentioned here?) their product is based on. As far as I know, however, the only "official" thing (besides Apple's approval) that this emulator package has is a license for certain countries and for certain types of applications to use the "Commodore" trademark. That's it. But it's not related to the now defunct Commodore. There have been dozens of free and commercial C-64 emulators (since 1988 or so), and nobody ever got sued or anything by anyone, even without "official" licenses. Or does the Dutch "Commodore" company have a piece of paper stating that all rights to the former Commodore ROM code have been transferred to it? A German court already concluded that this could not be proven for the Amiga code, also from the same defunct Commodore company, so I doubt that this could be stated for any other hardware that ended up in the same liquidation. So the only thing they have is the trademark. Not bad, but also not that "official", as the Engadget article seems to suggest. They are just one of about 26 other C-64 emulators around, let's not forget about the other 25 too.
And the parody continues...
AMiga inc should buy a lot of old Amiga games like the Bullfrog stuff and release an Amiga emulator. David Braben should release a version of Elite or Frontier.
Big Deal! This is boring. What would be cool is if they had a 6502 / Apple ][+ emulator on an iPhone.
*nerdgasm*
This is not available for download any more. App store says the item you tried to buy is is no longer available
I cant believe they pulled this already.........lame.
Choose me!
Come on and release Paradroid. You know you want to...
Already released! Find the app called Droidz (or Androidz) in the App Store. Enjoy!
Excellent news! Now all I need is an iPhone (a long, drawn-out and ultimately very boring saga)...