In a cosmic coincidence, just days after I stayed up too late playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, a video of that very game being played on an apparent Apple Watch Ultra came across my screen. I’m now fully convinced that emulators on an Apple Watch would be a great way to game.
Sadly, there are no Apple Watch emulators on the App Store that I’m aware of — yet, at least. R3V3RB_7, the Redditor who posted the video, says it actually shows a $35 Apple Watch knock-off running Android, which has long been the de facto home for smartphone (and, now, smartwatch) emulation.
But you may not need a knock-off watch to do this soon since Apple made the surprising decision last week to allow emulators on the App Store worldwide. The app review guidelines don’t specify the change for any one operating system, so, in theory, developers could submit emulators for the platform.
Maybe this seems impractical, but who doesn’t love tiny gaming hardware? I’m delighted by the prospect of strapping a tiny screen to a controller and playing my favorite sidescrolling adventures on it. And there are reasons to think this could be better than playing on, say, an iPhone. It’s lightweight, for one thing, and you wouldn’t have to spend money on purpose-built controllers or deal with awkward clip-on phone holders.
Sure, the screen is minuscule. Even if it matches the dimensions of a real Ultra, it’s still two millimeters shy of the 51mm screen of Nintendo’s 2005 miniature handheld, the Game Boy Micro. But Game Boy games just look better on small screens. I might not go out of my way to buy a knock-off Apple Watch to do this, but would I download a Game Boy emulator on my Series 9? Yeah, you bet.
It makes more sense than playing Genshin Impact on a smartwatch, which R3V3RB_7 also seems to have done, to very thumby results:
