Rob Beschizza
Gear

MAME Hits iPhone. Slowly.

MAME, the arcade game rerunner that anchors any platform’s emulation selection, has made it to Apple’s iPhone. The port, of the SDL version, is too slow to run anything more complicated than Pac-Man or Q*Bert well, but it’s a start—and evidence that a native edition tailored to the handset’s hardware will likely be reasonably zippy. […]

Pacman
MAME, the arcade game rerunner that anchors any platform's emulation selection, has made it to Apple's iPhone. The port, of the SDL version, is too slow to run anything more complicated than Pac-Man or Q*Bert well, but it's a start—and evidence that a native edition tailored to the handset's hardware will likely be reasonably zippy.

"As expected, performance is an issue. ... Galaga and Gyruss are marginal even with frame skipping and lowered sound quality. The SDL port was the quickest way to get everything up and running without having to delve into the guts of MAME. I'll take a stab at slapping together something based on a really old, simpler version of MAME to see if it runs any better."

The real problem, of course, is creating a control system that makes play possible using a touchscreen. Is an on-screen D-Pad and buttons flanking the game the only option?

iphone-sdl-mame [Google Code]