Enlarge / That is in no way what the Z button looks like or where it goes...

Apple's decision earlier this month to open the iOS App Store to generic retro game emulators is already bearing fruit. Delta launched Wednesday as one of the first officially approved iOS apps to emulate Nintendo consoles from the NES through the N64 and the Game Boy through the Nintendo DS (though unofficial options have snuck through in the past ).

Delta is an outgrowth of developer Riley Testut's earlier sideloadable GBA4iOS project , which recently had its own unauthorized clone removed from the App Store . Before Wednesday, iOS users could load Delta onto their devices only through AltStore , an iOS marketplace that used a Developer Mode workaround to sideload apps from a self-hosted server. European users can now get that AltStore directly on their iOS devices (for a small 1.50 euro/year fee), while North American users can simply download Delta for free from the iOS App Store , with no ads or user tracking to boot.

All that history means Delta is far from a slapdash app quickly thrown together to take advantage of Apple's new openness to emulation. The app is obviously built with iOS in mind and already integrates some useful features designed for the mobile ecosystem. While there are some updates we'd like to see in the future, this represents a good starting point for where Apple-approved game emulation can go on iOS.

Enlarge / Remember, this is the N64 platform running a game released at least five years after the console's general life cycle ended. (credit: Valve/James Lambert)

James Lambert has spent years making something with no practical reason to exist: a version of Portal that runs on the Nintendo 64. And not some 2D version, either, but the real, blue-and-orange-oval, see-yourself-sideways Portal experience . And now he has a "First Slice" of Portal 64 ready for anyone who wants to try it. It's out of beta, and it's free.

A "First Slice" means that 13 of the original game's test chambers are finished. Lamber intends to get to all of the original's 19 chambers. PC Gamer, where we first saw this project , suggests that Lambert might also try to get the additional 14 levels in the Xbox Live-only Portal: Still Alive .

So why is Lambert doing this—and for free? Lambert enlists an AI-trained version of Cave Johnson's voice to answer that question at the start of his announcement video. "This is Aperture Science," it says, "where we don't ask why. We ask: why the heck not?"

For decades now, PC players who wanted to check out Rare's seminal 2000 shooter masterpiece Perfect Dark were stuck with the compromises inherent in emulating an aging title designed for very different hardware. Now, over 23 years after its release, Perfect Dark has gotten the full PC port it so richly deserves, complete with graphics and control updates that make the experience much more enjoyable for a modern audience.

The "work-in-progress" port from GitHub user fgsfdsfgs is described as "mostly functional," with "minor graphics- and gameplay-related issues, and possibly occasional crashes." But those are a small price to pay for a version of the game that comes complete with full mouse-and-keyboard controls for the first time, alongside a 60 fps frame rate, support for modern widescreen monitor resolutions, and even the ability to load custom levels.

After some quick testing, we can say this is easily the best way to play Perfect Dark today. The mouse-and-keyboard controls in particular make this version of the game stand out from the quality 2010 Xbox 360 port . And while the character models and level designs can feel a bit repetitive and blocky from a modern viewpoint, the added resolution and upscaling represent a big improvement over the muddiness of the N64 original (despite the improvements enabled by the then-massive 4MB RAM expansion pack ).

Enlarge / Screenshots you can hear.

Update (5:35 ET pm): As user Cuesport77 points out on Reddit , Nintendo offers a system-level button remapping function that can get around most of the issues highlighted in this piece. Going into the Switch's system settings and swapping the left and right analog stick inputs (as well as the inputs for any other buttons you want) can help provide more standardized "dual stick" controls for the game.

This isn't the most convenient option, as players will have to undo the customizations when switching from GoldenEye to any other Switch game (and then back when going back to GoldenEye ). These customizations also don't seem to be available on any controller connected to the system when in portable mode.

Nonetheless, Ars regrets not recognizing this option existed before publishing the below story, which is included in its original form (with a few noted updates) below.

Enlarge / It's back, "soon." (credit: Danjaq / MGM)

One of retro gaming's worst-kept secrets has finally been confirmed by a tangled web of game publishers and license holders. GoldenEye 007 , the legendary 1997 first-person shooter that changed the genre on home consoles, is coming back.

This Nintendo 64 game's revival is a case of "mostly good news, some bad news," as we're left reading between the lines of two vague announcements from the two biggest companies involved. The best news, at least, is that we now have two announced re-releases for the game, each covered in copyright notices from the Bond license holders at MGM (now wholly owned by Amazon) and longtime Bond series handler Danjaq.

Switch: “Coming soon with online play”

The first confirmation came from Nintendo itself as part of its latest Nintendo Direct announcement frenzy (which, among other things, finally confirmed the next mainline Legend of Zelda game's name ). One portion of the showcase focused squarely on the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack subscription service, which costs $50 per year and includes a number of downloadable N64 games.

In this excerpt from her upcoming book , writer and historian Alyse Knorr talks about some of the design decisions that made Goldeneye 007 stand out from other '90s first-person shooters, and why that design endures to this day. The book is currently looking for backers on Kickstarter .

When [game designer David] Doak first joined the team at the end of 1995, GoldenEye ’s levels were just barebones architecture—no objectives, enemies, or plot. After designing the watch menu, he and [game designer Duncan] Botwood started creating a single-player campaign that followed and expanded upon GoldenEye the movie’s narrative—a difficult task, considering the fact that the film’s dialogue about Lienz Cossack traitors and Kyrgyz missile tests went over the heads of quite a few 12-year-olds. Doak and Botwood’s job was to tell this complicated story using rudimentary pre- and post-mission cutscenes, pre-mission briefing paperwork, in-game conversations with NPCs, and mission objectives, which proved the most powerful way to allow players to experience the story themselves.

The biggest inspiration for GoldenEye ’s objective design was not another first-person shooter but rather Super Mario 64 . “I studiously tried to learn what Nintendo was,” [game designer Martin] Hollis said in 2015 of his years at Rare. “I played Link to the Past from beginning to end—I got all the hearts and all but two of the quarter hearts. I could write a thousand pages about that game. Then [an early version of] Mario 64 came out during the development of GoldenEye, and we were clearly influenced by that game. Ours was much more open as a result.” Hollis took from Super Mario 64 the idea of including multiple mission objectives within one level. For instance, in the Control level, the player must protect Natalya, disable the GoldenEye satellite, and destroy some armored mainframes.