Apple approves officially-licensed Commodore 64 emulator for iPhone
By Donald Melanson 
posted September 7th 2009 12:11PM
posted September 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.
"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
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)...