“Earlier this month, developer James Addyman got his emulator, Provenance, working on the Apple TV Developer Kit provided to developers via lottery, and now developer Kevin Smith has gotten the popular MAME game emulator running on the device,” Juli Clover reports for MacRumors. “In the video below, a tvOS version of the MAME emulator is demonstrated on the fourth-generation Apple TV.”
“For those unfamiliar with MAME, it stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator,” Clover reports “Over the years, several apps with the MAME code have snuck into the iOS App Store, letting people illicitly run old arcade games.”
“In the video, Smith shows several old arcade games running on the Apple TV, including Donkey Kong, Galaga, Street Fighter II, Raiden, and Metal Slug – Super Vehicle,” Clover reports. “All of the games are said to run well, though there are some lingering sound issues with a few of the titles.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, yeah! We just need some Super Xevious and we’ll be all set!
Ooo baby! Break out the retro games.
Don’t get your hopes up too much… just like the iPhone, you’ll have to have a dev account to do this. I’m sure some version of it will slip through, but Apple usually shuts emulator apps down in a day or 2. Having said that, I will definitely compile a version for Apple TV when I get mine 🙂 Time to finally beat Metroid…
Sweet. Here come the 80’s again.
Just seeing that emulator run convinces me I should buy the latest AppleTV without reserve. However it is unfortunate to hear that Apple wouldn’t legally allow an emulator to run on tvOS. That’s a real pity. I hope there will be some way to sideload an app like that to AppleTV. I’ve got hundreds of game ROMs I could use like I use with the Kega Fusion emulator on my OSX Macs. Apple should get some licenses so users can legally run them on an emulator. If Apple has tens of billions of dollars to simply throw away on buybacks, they could certainly purchase rights to some old games. This emulator certainly does make the new AppleTV interesting to me.
Apple’s policy on emulators will have to change before they allow the MAME app to enter the Apple Store. If they do, look forward to other emulators getting a chance. 🙂
Whether or not the MAME app is allowed on the store, I’m sure that anyone with a developer program membership will be able to do this.
-jcr
Games? Damn- could not care less about games. Ditching cable, however…
Now we just need a 15khz. video out and we can put the aTV in a real Arcade cab. 😉
(joking)
As big as the casual gaming market is, why hasn’t someone bought up or licensed the IP for the old arcade standby titles and ported them to OS X. The few on iOS suck because a phone does not control like a joystick and proper buttons.
Developers, developers, developers, developers…
What we need is the complete Halo franchise on OS X.
That would be the cherry on the pie, for many of us with a super iMac!