Emulators on Apple’s App Store have had a strange first couple of weeks. Apple announced that emulator apps would be allowed at the start of April, and a glut of apps dove in to fill the space. Last week, Apple already had to take one app down for copyright infringement, and a few others were taken down by developers out of fear of copyright violation accusations from Apple or companies like Nintendo.
But one has survived the initial rush and is shooting up the App Store rankings. As seen on The Verge, Delta shoved its way onto the App Store this week and has skyrocketed to a #1 ranking on the App Store’s Top Charts beating out Temu, Threads, and TikTok. It’s pretty impressive for an app that’s only been live for a few days.
There’s no guarantee that Delta will survive, especially with Nintendo looming in the background. Nintendo hasn’t officially commented on Apple’s emulator play, so it remains to be seen if they’ll do anything about the apps that run retro Nintendo games.
Delta’s App Store information does hint that more is coming, so perhaps the developers will bring other non-Nintendo console support to the App, including Sega Genesis and other beloved retro platforms.
We took the Delta emulator for a spin and broke down how to use the app. Apple has announced that users can use ROMs they’ve downloaded in the emulators. We can’t provide a guide to installing or using ROMs because of the copyright gray area they reside in, but the Delta app does have a guide if you’re so inclined.
Check out our hands-on guide to see how the Delta emulator works and what controllers we were able to use with it.
If Delta is successful, we may see more apps ported over from PC or Android like the very popular PPSSPP emulator. In fact, Provenance is already on the way, according to a report from iMore, and it'll support Sega and PlayStation when it launches.
