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Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

As a retro gaming fan I can almost guarantee you that there will (if not already) be a way to play those things.

I too miss iOS games that I can't play anymore, like (most memorably) the Texas Hold 'Em game Apple itself made!

I bet a lot of ios games are gonna slip through the cracks. Take the general lack of giving a damn with regards to archiving their source that game companies have, and multiply that by having the games distributed entirely digitally - and limited space on phones/tablets/etc that means people tend to delete old games that don't get updated.

Also largely the reason we have such complete archives of old console games is because of piracy. Back when they were new games no one cared about copying them and building emulators for archives, they wanted to distribute them and as a result ended up with an archive. Most iOS games are so cheap that piracy is not a concern and there are so many games that your favourite one probably doesn't have a huge fanbase behind it.

As a rebellious young nerd, at some point I realized that my piracy was more akin to/aligned with collecting/preserving content as I consumed just a fraction of it but still derived joy from the acquisition and storage.

Of course, once I got a job as a developer I paid for everything (too much, really... my unplayed Steam collection keeps growing!)

I still love emulation tech, though

I do not share your optimism. The main post says that you can do this for code up until ~2005, but not since then, and I would tend to agree. Also, many of the games require access to servers, which are no longer running, and even if you could get access to the server code, you wouldn't legally be allowed to run one yourself!

Here you go: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/texas-holdem/id284602850

HOLY CRAP, WHAT?!?!

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