SNES Mario Kart power slides onto (non-jailbroken) iPad? (Update)

You're looking at Super Mario Kart, running on the Apple iPad, courtesy of emulation guru ZodTTD. When do you get to play it, faithful reader? Hard to tell. If, say, the iPad had already been jailbroken, all you'd need to do is wait for a suitably safe jailbreak method, download RockApp or Cydia, grab the snes4iphone emulator you see running above, and fire up the ROM. However, the intriguing thing about the above video is not that it's running an SNES game -- but that ZodTTD claims he compiled a special version of his snes4iphone emulator "specifically for non-jailbroken iDevices." Since Zod is almost certainly an official developer, it's possible he output the emulator as an .ipa file and is testing it on a fresh iPad using Apple developer tools, but if we're lucky, it could instead mean that someone has finally found a way to sideload apps onto a stock Apple device. Either way, peep multitouch karts sliding and shells flying on video, right after the break.

Update: ZodTTD tells us that while he does have access to the jailbreak, he did have to flex developer muscle (and official dev tools) to make snes4iphone work on a non-jailbroken iPad. He says:

The build of snes4iphone running on my iPad as seen in the video was actually based on an AppStore app I submitted called "snesty". Apple quickly rejected it right after pulling the NES emulator. I combined snesty with some snes4iphone features such as using the private API called CoreSurface. I used Apple developer tools and self signed it.

Zod says that after Apple officially releases iPhone OS 4.0 and the existing jailbreak is distributed freely, he plans to create new versions of his emulators that run at the iPad's 1024 x 768 native resolution and support touchscreen controls, hardware keyboards and even external controllers should they come.

[blitzfire911 Posted Apr 7th 2010 5:10AM]

I have had that on my Droid forever, big deal

[logicbombde Posted Apr 7th 2010 11:31AM]

@blitzfire911

I had a SNES emulator on my Dreamcast in 2001.


what's your point?

[Shadegate Posted Apr 7th 2010 5:13AM]

all it needs now is a BLUETOOTH GAMEPAD :P

haha does the ipad even have bt ? idk

[TonyCubed Posted Apr 7th 2010 5:46AM]

Why is this news? He did the same thing last year with the 3GS where he managed to run some Gameboy advanced games on a 3GS a few days after it was released and there was no jailbreak when it happened.

[mps Posted Apr 7th 2010 8:29AM]

The bezel is huge. Did he use all the pixels?

[gentlefury Posted Apr 7th 2010 2:02PM]

@mps If you look closely you can see the 2x icon in the upper right corner. That means he is running an iPhone app scaled. So no it doesn't use the entire screen.

[syph007 Posted Apr 7th 2010 8:29AM]

and this is the kind of crap you have to put up with when you support the apple ecosystem. they have full control of what you can put on YOUR device. I still cant believe people buy their garbage.

[hollis Posted Apr 7th 2010 9:49AM]

Want!

[DoctarPeppar Posted Apr 7th 2010 9:51AM]

ok. fuck it im getting an ipad.
this would be SICK if it could use the accelerometer and also if you could play against someone else via bluetooth.

[FiveGallonBucket Posted Apr 7th 2010 10:13AM]

This just in: You need buttons to play games.

[ebgolfin Posted Apr 7th 2010 10:16AM]

Novel idea, but terrible device for playing SNES. Then again, I think that anything that's not a Nintendo console is a terrible device for playing SNES. I guess I am old school.

[Elranzer Posted Apr 7th 2010 10:24AM]

The PSP is tolerable because of the SNES-style placement of the buttons. However, I hate playing old 4:3 games on a 16:9 screen. You either have to stretch it or put up with black columns.

[Ken J Posted Apr 7th 2010 10:57AM]

How did this Apple news make it past the Apple filter?

[giantjaz Posted Apr 7th 2010 11:03AM]

too bad any nintendo emulators are illegal at this point. nintendo took care of that a few years ago. there's no way that they would allow another company to make money off of their products like that. even the roms themselves are legally limited to one backup copy and that is only if you actually own the game.

but it's not like any of us haven't already or still have some sort of emulator and roms on our computers lol

[Standingfast Posted Apr 7th 2010 12:18PM]

Sweet! I only bought iPad as a novelty item anyways, would be awesome to have it jail broken.

[gentlefury Posted Apr 7th 2010 1:59PM]

Wow that is awesome! If there were a way to sideload emulators I would have NO reason to jailbreak! I would LOVE THAT!

BTW, I would really love to see using an iPhone as a controller for emulators!