Fan developer Hikari has successfully ported the 2008 iOS version of Super Monkey Ball to PC via a new emulator entitled touchHLE.
On February 3rd, Hikari started telling the story of the first time she saw demos for the iOS port of Super Monkey Ball and how excited she was for the game and how it became a special game for her with a strong nostalgic feeling to it. However, all things come to an end and in 2017 Apple made the decision to end support for 32-bit applications on the iPhone and iPad, A decision that brought an end to thousands of apps and games including Super Monkey Ball.
Last year, in 2022, Hikari decided she would bring the game back and within less than a year managed to do so with a new iOS emulator that she created from scratch, the TouchHLE iOS Emulator
Hikari detailed the process behind the emulator in a thread on Twitter that you can read below
Let me tell you a little story about technology, games, me, and… ridiculous passion projects.
Early in 2008, Apple were about to release the long-awaited iPhone SDK. For the first time, 3rd-party developers would be able to write native apps for the iPhone.
— hikari ? (?? arc) (@hikari_no_yume) February 2, 2023
touchHLE is a program for Windows PC and MacOS, that is intended to emulate the obsolete 32-bit games, that are incompatible with the current iOS. There are other iOS emulators out there, but none have been able to run the full iOS environment needed to play Super Monkey Ball.
All this being said, the touchHLE emulator is not just a passion project for a developer as TouchHLE opens up the possibility for any obsolete game from the 32-bit era of iOS, or in other words, opening the door for preserving countless lost pre-2017 mobile games that iOS no longer supports currently, and which have been without the means to play for years. While fans have ported some games like Doom RPG, this represents a whole new means of game preservation.
See the video of the game in the emulator below
well. i've recently had a lot more free time than usual, and…
… I should have taken more breaks and paced myself, but …https://t.co/x60Vnz0slx
yeah. enjoy!
also, a huge thanks to my friends cassie, erin, puck and mary for help at various points. pic.twitter.com/tmwuycvYKo
— hikari ? (?? arc) (@hikari_no_yume) February 2, 2023