The developer Hikari no Yume created a tool called touchHLE last year to bring old iPhone apps to Mac and Windows computers. Someone then used this tool to get these classic apps working on Android phones too! Now another developer named “ciciplusplus” figured out how to run touchHLE on actual iPhones.
Ciciplusplus has been sharing progress on the social site X. He got complex games working that weren’t possible before. Best of all, he found a way to use touchHLE himself on new iPhones with the latest iOS 15 software!
But why emulate old iPhone games on iPhones? Good question. As iPhones got newer operating systems over time, really old apps stopped working. Apple even stopped 32-bit apps from launching on newer devices. TouchHLE hopes to keep those classic memories alive by playing the games again without needing an old iPhone.
So far ciciplusplus has seen games like Monkey Ball, Resident Evil, and Crash Bandicoot running. It’s still very experimental so not perfect yet. But it’s awesome to see developers try to bring nostalgic iPhone games to today’s phones! You can find touchHLE’s code on GitHub if you want to try too. Got any old iOS games you want to play again? Let me know in the comments!
