It would seem that the folks on Apple’s crack team of app approvers have been slipping a bit lately. Just the other day the company approved iTether, an unlimited tethering application for the iPhone. And now this.
Word has been spreading like wildfire this afternoon that Apple has admitted iMAME into the App Store. So, what’s the big deal? Well, we’re pretty sure the ROM-playing emulator doesn’t quite meet Apple’s strict app guidelines…
MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, and it allows you to play thousands of classic arcade [ROM] games by Sega, Nintendo, and many others. And since you can download these games for free, it’s not looked upon favorably.
How’d it make it in the App Store then? Well the app’s description is fairly vague:
“iMAME is an application designed to recreate the hardware of arcade game systems in software on modern personal computers and other platforms. The intention is to preserve gaming history by preventing vintage games from being lost or forgotten.”
iMAME comes with 10 classic arcade titles, including Star Fire and Robot Bowl. But word on the street is that you can load other ROMs onto the iPhone without jailbreaking using a utility like iExplorer. Yeah, we’re counting down the minutes until this thing gets pulled.
However, at the time of this writing, it is still available. Grab iMAME while you can for free from the App Store.
[Cult of Mac via Touch Arcade]