Is it possible to play games that were released as apps on Dolphin?

[tueidj]

It's still possible it won't work even with the data directory copied to the SD card. When libfat is initialized it changes the current working directory based on argv[0] passed to the program, so if an app is started from HBC it doesn't need to manually CD to /apps/program_name/. Dolphin doesn't pass any arguments to the program (and doesn't allow booting from the SD card anyway), so the app has to be able to locate the directory on its own.