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How long has it been since you played Frogger or jumped into battle in the original Final Fantasy VII? Apple users now have the chance to relive that glory with the release of the RetroArch on the Apple App Store. RetroArch has the ability to emulate dozens of game consoles. As of March 15it’s available on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, giving Apple fans a huge cache of retro consoles to choose from.
You can download it for free directly through the App Store. Although RetroArch is already available for MacOS as a third-party download, the developers say they are also working on an App Store version for MacOS, but an ETA is not available at this time.
Apple released emulators back to the App Store earlier this year. The very first one was thrown away because it was a scam. Delta, the second emulator released on the platform, also came with Apple’s first authorized third-party app store. There have been some scattered emulator releases since then, but RetroArch is the biggest name in console emulation to hit the App Store so far.
The big advantage is the ability to play many old games, including many classics that helped shape the gaming industry, such as the Atari 2600 games. Whether it’s Frogger, the original Mario games, Spyro the Dragon, Sonic the Hedgehog or even more old classics like Pac-Man on the Commodore 64, there’s no shortage of options if you want to step back in time, gaming-style.
You’ll need to be on iOS, iPadOS, or tvOS to run the app version 14.2 or higher. Also available on Apple Vision Pro with VisionOS 1.0 or later. This should support most iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs on the market, along with all Apple Vision Pros.
How to get started
To be precise, RetroArch is technically not an emulator. This is a front end where users can download emulators to use through the RetroArch app. The front end uses Libretro kernels, which is a fancy way of saying emulators.
On first installation, RetroArch will not be able to play any games right away. But say you want to play a Super Nintendo game. Open RetroArch, download a SNES Libretro kernel, and then use that kernel to play your SNES game. A good example of this is Sony PSP. You can download PPSSPP in the Apple App Store to play Sony PSP games. However, the PPSSPP emulator is also available as a Libretro core in RetroArch.
Because of the underlying Libretro system, the learning curve for RetroArch can be intimidating at first. But once you learn how to download and access cores – which is done through the RetroArch app – the rest of the app is easy to use, even if the user interface is a bit dated. And the app contains kernels for dozens of systems, including Atari, Commodore, Nintendo, Sega, Sony, and more.
Other features of RetroArch
In addition to console emulation, RetroArch has additional features to make the game better. Supports Bluetooth controllers, a boon for Apple TV owners who want to play old games on their modern TVs. You also get emulation essentials like save states, where users can save a “snapshot” of where they are in the game for instant reloading. Users can fast-forward or rewind the game in real-time to make certain segments faster, or rewind to fix a bug.
RetroArch also supports multiplayer play with the use of Netplay. It emulates having two controllers plugged into the same console, but allows you to use two different devices to play. So if you want to play Mario Kart 64 with a friend you can play on your separate iPhones and use Netplay to play together as if you had two controllers plugged into the same Nintendo 64.
RetroArch also has graphical tweaks to improve the way games look, cheat support, and its own built-in achievement system.
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