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.

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  The keyboard comes with detachable "Super Buttons." [credit: 8BitDo ]

Iconic, impactful, and unforgettable, the original Nintendo Entertainment System ( NES ) changed the video game industry for good when it came out in the '80s. Originally released as the Family Computer, aka Famicom, in Japan, the landmark console still holds a place in people's hearts, whether it's through cherished maintained consoles, DIY designs , or old-school titles. Now that nostalgia can trickle down to your fingertips, too.

Today, 8BitDo, a gaming peripherals maker with a flair for retro designs, announced via Twitter a mechanical keyboard that will give '80s Nintendo fans the warm fuzzies. 8BitDo, likely aware of Nintendo's stringent legal team, doesn't outright state the keyboard's similarity to the original Nintendo console. And the product's name, Retro Mechanical Keyboard , is vague and unrevealing. But the colors, extra buttons, and color scheme names—N Edition (with NES colors) and Fami Edition (with Famicom colors)—are enough to bring you back to your '80s gaming den.

Both the N and Fami Edition have console-controller-looking "B" and "A" buttons where FN and Menu keys are expected. The keys, as like the rest of the keyboard's keys, are programmable without software or using 8BitDo's Ultimate Software V2.

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  The "TinyTendo" project, which fits a real NES into a Game Boy-sized enclosure, isn't for the faint of heart. [credit: Redherring32/Twitter ]

If you want a portable console that can play old Nintendo Entertainment System games, the easiest option is software emulation, whether you're using Nintendo's official Switch app, a portable PC, or some cheap knockoff emulator handheld. For those who want better accuracy than software emulation can provide, there's always the Analogue Pocket , which can ( with current firmware ) re-create the NES in hardware using its FPGA chip .

But some purists are unsatisfied with anything other than original hardware—that's the only possible explanation for projects like the TinyTendo , which goes to extraordinary lengths to squeeze an entire NES into a portable package roughly the size and weight of the old gray monochrome Game Boy. The project is the creation of hardware modder Redherring32, who eventually plans to open-source the project.

For miniaturization projects like this, you often see chopped-up or fully custom-printed circuit boards used with the original chips to contort the hardware into a new shape. This landscape orientation mod for the original Game Boy or the original Analogue NT are both good examples. But more drastic measures were needed to squeeze an entire NES into a handheld console, most notably the removal of bulky pins and ceramic that the original chips all use.

Enlarge / The Super Tilt Bro. cartridge contains Wi-Fi hardware for online gaming using Nintendo's 1985 NES console. (credit: Sylvain Gadrat)

In the heyday of the NES , if you didn't have a human nearby to play games with, you were out of luck for multiplayer gaming. But thanks to a new NES cartridge inspired by Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo's 8-bit console, you'll be able to play a new homebrew game with anyone on the Internet.

On Wednesday, Super Tilt Bro. reached its Kickstarter funding goal within 48 hours of its launch. Its NES cartridge, developed by Paris-based independent developer Sylvain Gadrat and published by Broke Studio, will include a Wi-Fi chipset and antenna that lets it connect to the Internet for one-on-one online play.

As Gadrat tells the story on the Super Tilt Bro. website, the game's history began in 2016 when Gadrat rediscovered his old NES console in a storeroom and became fascinated with the 8-bit processor that powered it. His interest led to an ambitious project: porting Super Smash Bros. to the NES. Over time, the project evolved, and by 2018, Gadrat released the first version of Super Tilt Bro. as a homebrew game developed entirely in assembly language.

Enlarge / You're limited to eight files and a word processor, but you can put them anywhere you want in NESOS' rich (for 1985) desktop environment. (credit: Inkbox )

When you played the Nintendo Entertainment System, you were close to the hardware. It's why you can pull off remarkable glitch hacks, like playing Tennis to hot-boot into broken Super Mario Bros. worlds . The chips, the memory, the board—everything was designed to service the little board inside your cartridge (that and prevent unauthorized games ). There wasn't much room for anything else in the early- to mid-1980s.

Room enough, however, for a custom-built operating system built in 2022, if just barely. NESOS 1.0 from Inkbox Software , a 48K OS, features "two core applications, the word processor, and the settings," according to Inkbox. The settings app gives you seven cursors, 53 background colors, and the ability to delete the eight files that can fit inside a maximum 2K of NVRAM (i.e. on-board memory that doesn't lose data when the system loses power). That's 832 bytes each, or about one full screen's worth of memory. You can drag those eight files anywhere you want on the desktop, however.

NESOS (pronounced "nee-sohs," according to its creator) is entirely graphical. Inbox notes that there's already a command-line system, Family Basic , for the NES and its Japanese progenitor, the Family Computer/Famicom. "I want NESOS to feel like an actual operating system that Nintendo might have made back in the day for the NES. What would it have looked and felt like?" the creator says in his video overview .