An engineer proved a Game Boy Advance title could be crafted entirely on an iPhone. The demo, called TO THE TOWER, ran on a real GBA after compiling with gba bootstrap + gcc‑arm‑none‑eabi inside the iOS shell iSH.

The workflow relied on iSH’s Alpine Linux environment, where the ARM GCC toolchain was installed via the app’s package manager. Code edits took place in Textastic, a feature‑rich iOS editor that supports syntax highlighting for C and assembly.

Testing leveraged the Delta emulator, allowing instant feedback on the phone without external hardware. The project demonstrates that a full mobile toolchain can replace traditional desktop setups for classic console development.

Developers seeking portable toolchains now have a concrete example of a complete GBA build pipeline operating from a single device, highlighting the growing power of mobile development ecosystems.