It’s unlikely we’ll see widespread emulation of GameCube or Wii games via emulators on the iPhone App Store, a new report suggests, despite Apple giving the green light to emulation for games from earlier Nintendo consoles.
This isn’t because these games are free from copyright, or because of Apple’s vague stance that “retro” game emulation is allowed. Instead, this is because of technical limitations, as detailed in a new blog post from veteran Nintendo hacker and dataminer OatmealDome, who works on GameCube and Wii emulator DolphiniOS for jailbroken phones.
In a nutshell, GameCube and Wii emulation on PC uses a technology that Apple typically does not allow on iPhones – something called just-in-time (JIT) compilation. Typically, Apple blocks apps that make use of JIT, with the suggestion this is due to security concerns that external code could be implemented. And without JIT, Wii and GameCube emulation is very difficult.
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