After Delta, Provenance is the next iOS emulator to jump from an app you had to sideload to the App Store.
In an email, Joseph Mattiello, project lead of Provenance, told us his team “are working on a release,” but stated “I need to investigate these new rules before an App Store submission, and to improve some quality-of-life issues. Also, I need to change some things to adhere to the App Store’s rules, such as mentioning “beta”.”
Provenance is the next emulator to move from an app you had to sideload to the App Store sometime later this year. Similar in nature to RetroArch, it supports multiple platforms, such as PlayStation, Nintendo 64, PSP, Genesis / Mega Drive, and more. The team also confirmed to iMore that they are working on Game Cube and PlayStation 2 support.
So far, if you wanted to run Provenance on your Apple devices, you had to download the source code from GitHub and compile the app yourself. Thanks to recent changes introduced by the DMA, Apple now allows emulators to be available through the App Store. Delta was the first high-quality emulator to do so and has been living on the top of the App Store charts ever since.
Of course, this still means you need to dump your own ROMs from your own physical media, as these emulators don't come with any of the necessary files preloaded – neither the games nor the BIOS files.
I, for my part, have dumped all my Game Boy Advance cartridges in the past and have been enjoying Pokémon Emerald on the iPhone played through Delta.
I'm using the Backbone One to play these games, but have been intrigued by the new Razer Kishi Ultra introduced yesterday.