ArcEmu - Watch Emulator 4+

Truly exceptional but needs tweaks

This is an insanely cool concept to be able to play game boy and game boy advance games on your watch. But to be usable, it needs a few improvements. I'd love it if you could swipe to hit two buttons, like pressing right for Mario and swiping up onto A to jump. Right now, a new tap is required for any distinct action. In addition, volume controls would be great.

Edit: thanks for the reply! My suggestion with swiping is more so just to allow rollover between the right and A buttons, like how it is between the up and down dpad buttons now.

Edit 2: Yes, overall I think it's intuitive to allow swiping button presses on any button. More freedom that way. The buttons are quite large so accidental swipes should be a minimum. That allows games like Mario to be played (the new crown button remap option works well there too).

Developer Response ,

Yes, unfortunately, multitouch is a limitation of the Apple Watch, and there's not much we can do about it. Your idea of using swipe gestures is interesting; I'll have to investigate how to implement that.
The volume is already adjustable from the Settings menu on the Home screen, where the ROM list is located

Edit: Actually, it is a design choice to make only the arrows activate with a swipe. So, in your opinion, would it make more sense if they were all clickable?

Instantly turns your Apple Watch into a gaming powerhouse

I’m incredibly impressed with how well I’m able to emulate gameboy and gameboy advanced games on my Apple Watch. It’s amazingly simple with this app to add roms from your phone and they play impressively well on such a small screen. You would be surprised how well you can view these games on such a small screen and fit in the controls as well. Some games that require a lot of quick button pressing and reaction time might not be best on the watch app but I highly suggest giving games which allow for more reaction time such as turn based strategy, and rpgs a try on this. For instance any of the Pokémon games would be great on this. The price is unbeatable for the ability to add vastly better games on your Apple Watch than any that exist on the App Store.

Awesome!!!

I’ve always wanted to see an emulator run on a smart watch, so I want to thank the team of ArcEmu for making this a reality. Playing games on a smart watch is inherently not the most convenient way to play games (i.e. playing one handed, small screen), but I think the ArcEmu Team have done their very best to make it as convenient as possible given the limitations. I also love the added settings (i.e save/load states, volume controls, etc). ArcEmu is the only smart watch emulator, I know of, that exists right now, so that alone, makes me grateful.

Developer Response ,

Thank you so much! ❤️