Important Note: Apple has reinforced its security around enterprise distribution certificates, which means that revoked or expired certificates will render applications useless. In other words, this method does no longer work.

Disclaimer: As a firm believer that piracy is wrong, I will not provide links to where you can download ROMs or the emulator. You should only download a ROM if you own the physical copy of that specific game. Download at your own risk. This blog is for an informational purpose only.

Hello, all!

Today we will review GBA4iOS 2.0, which is one of the few emulators (and the best one) available for iOS, which allows you to play GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games on your iOS device free of charge and without a jailbreak.

Unfortunately, Apple controls everything on iOS and has decided not to allow emulators on the App Store. However, people have been looking for ways to still provide them to iOS users, and they have been very successful. I will show you how to download the emulator from Safari on your iOS device, so you can begin to enjoy GameBoy games on the go today.

DESIGN

As you may see, this emulator emphasizes the simple design of iOS 7. Some of you may like it a lot, or completely despise it.

The purple color scheme matches the icon, and also the color of the original GameBoy Advance and the GameBoy Color.

GAMEPLAY FEATURES

GBA4iOS 2.0 has a bunch of great features to enhance gameplay on a mobile device, such as:

•Sustain Button
•Fast Forward
•Save State
•Load State
•Cheat Codes

Sustain Button allows you to select a button to be continously pressed. This helps especially on Mario games which that require you to run and jump at the same time by pressing the A and B buttons. As you may know, doing this isn't so easy on touch screens.

Fast Forward allows you to run a game at 2x it's speed, this helps especially on Pokemon games. Save State and Load State allows you to save where you are at, so you can go directly back to that spot. This is completely separate from actually saving in the game.

Cheat Codes allows you to modify the game for that session, similar to how an Action Replay works. From walking on water like Jesus to making yourself immortal, you can do it all. You type in the codes in that you can find online for that specific game. The emulator supports the GameShark standard as well as others.

OTHER FEATURES/SETTINGS

GBA4iOS also has other fantastic features and settings, such as:

•Frame Skip (yields better performance)
•Prefer External Audio (when you want to listen to your own music)
•Auto Save
•Push Notifications
•Controller Skins (my favorite)
•Controller Opacity
•Vibrate on Button Press
•AirPlay
•External Controller Support
•Dropbox Sync (backup your games and sync throughout your devices)
•Software Update

The developer has managed to provide a built-in Software Update feature, which allows the developer to provide updates with new features and improvements and to easily install it right from the app.

This is exciting, because this will allow the developer to add features in the coming future, such as iOS 8 support, and multiplayer functionality, which is confirmed!

By far my favorite feature of the emulator is the ability to set skins. Skins can easily be downloaded within the application, and for free of course. There is a wide variety of skins, varying from Mario to Zelda, or Pokemon to Kirby, or different color GameBoy skins.

PERFORMANCE

The games run pretty good on the older dual-core iDevices, which include the A5 and A6 chips located to the iPhone 4S or newer, iPad 2 and newer, the iPod touch 5th generation, or the iPad Mini and newer. It works the best on devices that boast the A7, such as the iPhone 5s, iPad Mini w/Retina, and the iPad Air. This emulator also works on the iPhone 4, but very poorly. The games struggle quite a bit.

This emulator only works with all devices running iOS 7.

Also, I've noticed that emulating uses a significant amount of power, so expect your battery life to decrease dramatically while emulating. Your device should also warm up a bit when emulating, since it also needs lots of CPU and GPU resources.

HOW TO INSTALL

Installing GBA4iOS 2.0 is quite easy and should not be confusing (as most say it is). Simply follow the steps accordingly.

1. Go to Settings > General > Date & Time. Change your date back at least one day.

2. Go to Safari, and Google "GBA4iOS 2.0 download". Click the very first result, which should be a website that begins with "angelxwind".

3. Click on Downloads, and click download GBA4iOS 2.0. (You can also download GBA4iOS 1.6.2 for those of you who are still on iOS 6 or earlier, the procedure is the same).

4. A pop-up window will appear asking to install, select "Install".

5. Your app will download, after it is done, open it and you're ready to go.

6. Set the date back for that session. This is important because having the incorrect date may invalidate secure connections on your iDevice (such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

For those that are paranoid about safety, this app is completely safe and malware free, since the developer has released the source code to the public.

TROUBLESHOOTING

Q: wait. omg. it won't open again. ;-;

A: If your app fails to open after you reboot (turn your iOS device on and off), simply repeat step 1 and step 5 only and you should be good. You can change the date back immediately afterwards. You will have to repeat these steps every time you reboot.

Q: omg. i tried that. it still won't open. D:

A: That's unfortunate. You will have to reinstall it. Simply repeat the entire procedure again. It shouldn't take long.

But there's still some hope. You'll be able to transfer your ROMs and precious save data through iTunes under File Sharing. You can drag it all back in once you reinstall the app.

If you have other issues, ask in the comments and I will highlight them here.

Get to know the developer here.

📱Compatibility: iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c, iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus; iPad 2, iPad 3rd generation, iPad 4th generation, iPad Air, iPad Air 2; iPad Mini, iPad Mini with the Retina Display, iPad Mini with Touch ID; iPod touch 5th generation. Optimized for iPad. Runs on all devices running iOS 7.0 to iOS 8.0.2.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy the emulator! Feel free to upvote, ask questions, or post comments. Those are appreciated.

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