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Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

56 points diasks2 | 2 comments | 25 Aug 25 06:41 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

I developed a game called "Putter King Adventure Golf" for iOS and Android back in the 2010s. It's long since disappeared from the app stores, but my son recently asked if he could play it, which got me thinking about whether it might be recoverable.

I'm wondering if there's any way to find a copy of it somewhere on the web (I assume it was probably pirated at some point during its lifetime). And if I could find it, what would be the best approach to get it running again?

Has anyone here successfully recovered and revived their old mobile apps? I'd appreciate any suggestions on:

* Where to look for archived APKs or IPAs * How to sideload/run old mobile apps on modern devices * Whether emulators might be a viable option

1. pikuseru ◴[26 Aug 25 15:06 UTC] No.45027616[source]▶
How about making a new game with help from your son (even if it’s ideas) and making some new memories? ;-)

The problem I found is that a lot of the stuff I made is tied to the hardware, OS and SDKs I used to make and run it (especially PalmOS and J2ME stuff - although Apple is just as bad.)

Luckily I’ve been able to find an emulator called Cloudpilot Emu to run some of my old PalmOS games in the browser.

I think if I was doing a game now and wanted to be able to look back on it in 10 to 20 years time I’d be doing it in C with SDL or JavaScript - although you’re betting on those being around. Or at least some virtual machine / runtime that could be ported to some new OS / platform.

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2. diasks2 ◴[26 Aug 25 16:47 UTC] No.45029080[source]▶
Yeah! We did that yesterday. It was a lot of fun: https://go-monkey.vercel.app/

It was what prompted him to ask about this game.