Hello, MacRumors community!
I'm Raffaele, developer of Arcadia, and I'm excited to introduce ArcEmu: a Game Boy (Color) and Game Boy Advance emulator for Apple Watch, iPhone and iPad.
The emulation cores used are:
- SameBoy (Game Boy and Game Boy Color)
- mGBA (Game Boy Advance)
I worked hard to make games playable on such a small screen.
The arrows are arranged in an inverted T shape to take up as little space as possible.
There is also a hold/sustain feature for the A and B buttons (it works a bit like voice messages on Telegram).
The resolution for Game Boy (Color) games is 2x the original on all Apple Watches.
For Game Boy Advance games, the resolution depends on the screen width. Since the resolution isn't precise and images appeared blurry, I created an anti-aliasing shader.
Save states are shareable between iPhone and Apple Watch so you can continue your game from any device. Saves are automatically shared via Bluetooth.
On iPhone, there is support for Rumble, Gyroscope, and Accelerometer.
On Apple Watch, the gyroscope is "emulated" via the Digital Crown (which works surprisingly well), while the accelerometer is supported.
In terms of performance, most games should run smoothly at 60 fps on all compatible Apple Watches. However, you can set the fps cap to 30 to save battery.
Additionally, the emulator skips identical frames.
Loading ROMs is very simple. From the iPhone app, press the (+) button at the top right and select the ROM from the Files app.
The transfer to the Apple Watch will also start automatically via Bluetooth.
You can also do this manually by pressing the three dots (...) next to the ROM name in the list.
ArcEmu also supports ROMs in .zip format.
In this case, it will automatically decompress and import the ROMs present in the archive.
You can download ArcEmu from the App Store.
I'm eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
Your feedback is invaluable and will help shape the future updates of ArcEmu.
