O for Opinion: iPhone emulators

Now, we love the Super Nintendo: we think it has the best library of games of any console to date. We aren't, however, especially excited for this program.

"But WirelessInfo.com! Your love of the SNES, though only made public two sentences ago, is legendary in its depth and sincerity! This . . . this doesn't make sense!"

Be that as it may, audience, it is our very love of the console and its games that steadies our excitement. The main reason the current iPhone emulators aren't very good is because none of them have adequate controls. Now, there are several issues plaguing iPhone controls: the general inadequacy of not having physical buttons, poor touch location placement, a lack of responsiveness, etc. From what we've seen, however, there is a much bigger obstacle iPhone emulators have yet to address: interpreting more than two screen touches at the same time. Now, we're not sure if this is a hardware limitation, a software issue, that hackers have yet to take advantage of this feature, or that the internet has hidden this innovation from our prying eyes. Regardless, unless three or more simultaneous touches are implemented, a great deal of SNES games simply won't be playable. Just imagine trying to play the Mega Man X games without being able to quickly shift between A and B while simultaneously holding Y, or playing Super Metroid . . . at all. How about any game that requires you to perform a running jump?

In any case, it was with a good amount of skepticism that we watched the YouTube demo featured on ZodTTD's home page. Since we currently have no iPhones at our office, this video was our first glimpse at what the emulator would be like. Sure, this video uses an early version of the software, but if the site itself is embedding the clip, we can only assume they believe it's a good indicator of the current state of development.

The video spotlight could easily have been replaced by text saying, "This SNES emulator exists to some degree." Now, assuming you're a gamer since you're still reading this, what game would you pick to showcase an emulator's capabilities? Super Mario World? Donkey Kong Country? Street Fighter II? Star Fox?

. . . Chrono Trigger?

Yes. And you'd also be sure to limit 90% of the clip to the opening, which consists of slowly panning across the world map for over a minute. Also, you'd play a rap song over it, because nothing says, "totally effing GANGSTA" like a Squaresoft RPG.

After the host showcases such button-mashing mayhem of "sticking with the default name," "moseying around with huge pauses before changing directions," and "leisurely browsing the menu," he boots up a game that actually requires reflexes: F-Zero. The F-Zero clip, however, only strengthened our sense of dread. First of all, he begins the race by forgetting what button moves him forward for exactly five seconds. He then proceeds to drive straight for 17 seconds, at which point he crashes into a wall and the video ends.

Thankfully, there are a few additional videos on YouTube that showcase some actual gameplay -- we recommend ZodTTD change their front page YouTube clip to one of these. None of the clips, however, show  that our controller fears are unfounded. Mario walks through Super Mario World, kicking the shell in the Yoshi's Island 2 stage instead of throwing it at the line of Koopas for the easy 1-up. In Donkey Kong Country 2, Diddy walks through Pirate Panic not running, rolling, or picking up barrels.

Despite our sourpuss attitude, we think ZodTTD is doing a great thing here. Our intent with this article isn't to dissuade people from making iPhone emulators, but rather to call attention to a crippling limitation with the hope that someone will devise a way around it. Our secondary intent was to outline exactly why we thought the front page video was funny.