Earlier on this month, Riley Testut – lead developer of the popular, jailbreak-free GBA4iOS emulator – announced via Twitter that he had taken the emulator after a DMCA complaint from Nintendo. At the time, Testut removed download links as well as the GitHub page, but also, hinted that it perhaps wasn’t the end of the road. Clearly, he was already making moves to reinstate GBA4iOS, and having apparently modified the emulator in compliance with Nintendo’s quibbles, those interested in playing old Game Boy Advance titles can dive right in once more.
Emulators for older consoles have been knocking around in the Cydia Store for a number of years, but these, of course, depend upon a jailbreak in order to be downloaded and used. The beauty of GBA4iOS is that one does not require the freedom of a jailbreak in order to indulge in some nostalgic GBA entertainment, but once Nintendo caught wind of the product, it wasn’t too happy with some of its infringing aspects.
Notably, the Japanese gaming giant’s DMCA notice outlined the fact that the CoolROM site was directly linked to. Even though one would struggle to purchase physical versions of so many ROMs nowadays anyway, they’re still Nintendo’s intellectual property, and as such, the company demanded that Testut remove all direct connection with the site supplying them.
Subsequently, version 2.0.4 only links to a Google Search, so while this does add an extra step into the process of getting those all-important ROMs, the app itself should function as normal.
Testut has also done away with number of less-important infringing elements of the emulator, including various Nintendo / Game Boy logos and controller overlays, but with some bug fixes also thrown into the bargain, GBA4iOS will once again take you back to the earlier days of mobile gaming.
Aside from getting things back up and running, Testut and co-developer Paul Thorsen are also currently working on a more significant update in version 2.1, which will offer a bunch of new features as well as further design tweaks.
We’ll be sure to let you guys know just as soon as the new edition of GBA4iOS hits the scene, and in the meanwhile, you can grab GBA4iOS 2.0.4 by pointing your Web browser to: gba4iosapp.com
(Source: Riley Testut [Twitter])
You can follow us on Twitter, add us to your circle on Google+ or like our Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google, Apple and the Web.