Apple rejects Commodore 64 emulator app for iPhone

Another mobile application has run afoul of Apple's mysterious App Store approval policies. This time, the iPhone developer in the crosshairs is Manomio, which created an application emulating classic videogames originally available via the Commodore 64 home computer system, complete with a virtual joystick and keyboard, portrait and landscape gaming, and a fully-licensed C64 emulator code. Even though Manomio developed the application in conjunction with publisher Kiloo, which owns the Commodore 64 license, Apple nevertheless rejected the submission, citing an SDK clause prohibiting interpreted or executable code.

According to Touch Arcade, Manomio received an App Store rejection letter reading in part "Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We've reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; ‘3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).'"

As Manomio CEO Brian Lyscarz points out to Touch Arcade, the App Store features a a number of applications that do roughly the same thing as the Commodore 64 app, among them CHIP-8 emulators, programmable calculators and Z-machine interpreter Frotz. In addition, Sega's Golden Axe and Sonic iPhone games are essentially emulators packaged with the original game ROMs.

For more on the Manomio rejection:
- read this Touch Arcade article
- see a video of the c64 app

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