This Imaginative and prescient Professional Digital Boy emulator isn’t fancy, but it surely will get the job accomplished

The Imaginative and prescient Professional acquired its first Digital Boy emulator in an app known as VirtualFriend, lastly giving me, an individual with an irrational love for Nintendo’s most short-lived console, an opportunity to play it in immersive 3D as soon as extra. The app can be accessible for iOS and iPadOS, the place it’s a nearly equivalent expertise, minus the 3D impact.

The primary video games I performed after downloading VirtualFriend had been these I owned as a child: Pink Alarm, Wario Land, and Mario’s Tennis. I’m happy to say that aside from some minor audio glitches in Pink Alarm, the video games run nicely — it’s all simply as I bear in mind it.

VirtualFriend helps Bluetooth controllers and keyboard management on the Imaginative and prescient Professional, in addition to touchscreen buttons when you’re taking part in on an iPhone or iPad. Visually, the video games look pretty much as good as a Digital Boy recreation can and have slightly assist from the app, which helps you to customise the console’s two-tone colour palette. VirtualFriend additionally has a watch adjustment slider that helps regulate the picture when you discover a explicit recreation isn’t working for you.

The large lacking options are controller mapping and the power to avoid wasting your recreation at any level utilizing save states. (Developer Adam Gastineau acknowledged the latter in an open problem on the challenge’s GitHub web page.)

Nonetheless, VirtualFriend is simple to suggest when you’re in any respect interested in taking part in Digital Boy video games or, like me, you as soon as owned and liked the console. It’s free with the choice to tip the developer, doesn’t present advertisements, and based on its App Retailer itemizing, received’t accumulate your knowledge. It’s simply good, clear, mid-90s VR enjoyable.