A new NES emulator was briefly available on the Apple App Store

A new NES emulator was briefly available on the Apple App Store

Just two days after Apple removed the iGBA emulator from the iOS App Store, an NES emulator called Bimmy briefly appeared before being taken down. MacRumors reported that the app was described as being for homebrew games but also supported ROMs provided by players. Unfortunately, when we attempted to download Bimmy, we received an error message saying it’s no longer available.

Now, clicking on a link to Bimmy shows “This app is currently not available in your country or region.” This time, it wasn’t Apple that removed it but the developer. Over on MacRumors’ forums, the developer said it pulled the app “out of fear.”

“No one pressured me to, but I got more nervous about it as the day went on,” it wrote.

Welp.

That’s a shame because this one was much more promising than iGBA, which had plenty to be concerned about where data collection is concerned and was rife with ads. Bimmy’s developer posted the GitHub link to its open-source code on the MacRumors forum and said Bimmy has “no ads or tracking of any kind.”

But their fear is also understandable, given the cooling effect of Nintendo’s recent crackdown on emulators. The developers behind the Yuzu app, for example, folded after Nintendo sued them, and the Dolphin Emulator team gave up on getting its emulator back on Steam after Valve received a vague legal threat from the company. Then GitLab took down the Suyu fork of Yuzu after an email from Nintendo. Can’t blame an emulator dev for getting cold feet.