With Apple softening its stance on emulation to the point of opening the App Store floodgates, the Apple TV can now be used with emulators to play retro games directly.
I had to check this out for myself, so I dusted off my old Apple TV HD to see what the fuss was about. I can’t say I’ve been thrilled by the results, but your mileage may vary.
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The Apple TV is an Emulator Now
Just in case you missed it, Apple finally allows emulators on the App Store. The Apple TV runs the tvOS operating system, which is essentially just a TV-friendly fork of the iPhone’s iOS. This is what makes it so easy for developers to port their apps between the two platforms, and why you’ll often see the Apple TV listed as a compatible device in the App Store listings.
Emulators have been unofficially available for Apple’s locked-down platforms for years. Prior to Apple’s change of heart, you’d need to build and sideload the app yourself or enroll your device using a feature designed to allow non-App Store enterprise apps to be installed directly from the web.
Apple still has guidelines in place that hamstring certain emulator projects, and stillwon’t allow apps that depend on JIT compilationwhich is a shame. This is why we’ve yet to see the Dolphin Wii and GameCube emulator on the App Store.
Which Emulators Work on the Apple TV?
While Delta was the first emulator app to make a strong impression on the iPhone (and later iPad), the emulator still isn’t available for the Apple TV. Right now, if you want to play retro games on tvOS, you have one main solution:RetroArch.
RetroArch isn’t an emulator, but an emulator front-end. It’s the glue that holds other emulators together, making use of “cores” to play games from a huge range of retro platforms. This includes everything from the Magnavox Odyssey and BBC Micro to modern arcade machines, the PlayStation, and more.
RetroArch is available for just about every system and platform. you’re able to download and set it up on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can grab a version for the Xbox Series X|S (whichhas to be set up in Developer Mode). It’s available on dedicated retro handhelds, and other portables like the Steam Deck.
RetroArch is a popular choice because it streamlines a lot of the nitty gritty. The front-end recognizes many common control methods, provides a simple interface with which to interact with and launch ROMs, handles save states and emulator hacks, and even lets youadd achievements to retro games with the aid of RetroAchievements integration.
It also includes an easy way to download freebies, like public domain fan-made projects.
Managing Your ROMs on an Apple TV
Perhaps the aspect I was most curious about before I started was how ROMs would work on the Apple TV. It should go without saying thatdownloading ROMs you don’t own is illegal, and Apple of course takes an anti-piracy stance. As a result, there’s no easy way to grab ROMs from the internet using RetroArch on the Apple TV.
Once you’ve installed RetroArch and first launched the app, the first thing you will see is a notification telling you to go to a web address in a desktop browser. As long as you’re connected to the same local network as your Apple TV, this web interface allows you to transfer ROMs (and BIOS files) to the Apple TV directly over a local connection.
This worked without a hitch. Most of the files I transferred were under a megabyte in size, but even the larger ones uploaded relatively quickly. You essentially get access to the “root” directly of your RetroArch installation, though it’s not necessarily obvious at first where your files are supposed to go.
Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter. I chose to navigate to the “downloads” folder and drop my files in there. You could create individual folders to keep everything tidy, but I threw everything in at once so my Game Boy and PlayStation titles were hanging out together.
From here, it’s a case of returning to the Apple TV, launching RetroArch, and navigating to Main Menu > Import Content > Scan Folder then selecting the default location. From here, navigate to the same folder in which your files were placed (that’s “downloads”) and then hit the “” option at the top of the screen.
RetroArch will parse the files one by one. Once the import is complete, everything appears under Main Menu > Playlists within the relevant console category. To run a game it’s a case of highlighting a system, picking a game, and then selecting “Run.” The first time you run a game, you’ll be invited to pick a specific core. Do that and hit “Run” again to start playing.
Unfortunately, there’s one big problem here. Since the Apple TV is a streaming box, it’s not really designed to store a lot of data. Sure, you can download apps, but these apps can’t hold onto data outside of the core app files required for the app to run. Essentially, your Apple TV can choose to recover space at any time from your app’s storage.
This means that tvOS may at any time decide to delete not only your ROMs and BIOS files, but also your save files, save states, configurations, and any media (screenshots or videos) that you happen to capture. The same is true of tvOS media consumption apps like VLC. This is a bit of a deal-breaker.
Controller Support Is a Big Plus
One thing that won’t let you down is the Apple TV’s support for Bluetooth controllers. The platform supports two generations of PlayStation controller, two generations of Xbox wireless controller, Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons and the Pro Controller, and a host of other Bluetooth gamepads from the likes of GameSir and 8BitDo.
I paired a DualSense controller via the Settings > Remotes and Devices > Bluetooth menu after putting it into pairing mode (by holding the PS and Create buttons at the same time). RetroArch recognized the controller immediately, the only thing I changed was the “Toggle Menu” option so that I could access the RetroArch menu by pressing L3 and R3 together.
You can navigate all Apple TV menus and apps using a Bluetooth controller, and it’s honestly far more pleasant than using the touchpad in my experience.
How the Apple TV Performs
I decided to run this test on my old Apple TV HD. This fourth-generation Apple TV is a decade old by now, but still supported by Apple and runs the latest tvOS 18. It’s only powered by a crusty old A8 processor, which is the same chip that Apple used to power the iPhone 6. For comparison, the Apple TV 4K has an A15 processor in it (from the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 15).
The point I’m making here is thatmyApple TV is ancient, so I didn’t expect very much from it. You could probably find one of these for a couple of dollars at a yard sale or thrift store. For adding AirPlay to any TV or streaming 1080p content from Netflix or similar, it works great.
I started out by testing the Game Boy classicPokémon Red Version, a game from 1996. While the game seemingly ran fine, the sound was glitchy and the music playback was choppy. I had expected a chip from 2014 to be able to handle this no problem, but that wasn’t to be the case.
From here, I moved on toSonic the Hedgehogon the SEGA Genesis and encountered the same problem. The game felt playable, but the sound was garbled and glitchy. I tried switching cores for both of these emulators, but nothing seemed to help. I fiddled with a few core settings, but couldn’t resolve the sound issues.
I then moved on toSuper Mario Worldon the SNES, receiving the result I expected: playable platforming, and terrible sound. Unfortunately, something else was wrong with the SNES emulation. The game felt like it was running noticeably slower than it should have been, though it was at least consistent.
Feeling defeated, I decided to see how much I could break the Apple TV HD by running Nintendo 64 launch extravaganzaSuper Mario 64. This is where things get really weird because the game seemed to work flawlessly. There wasn’t any glitching in the sound, the frame rate honestly felt just as bad as it did on the N64, and playing through Bob-Omb Battlefield was… fine?
Buoyed by my success, I turned to the PlayStation for a quick blast ofRidge Racerand all my sound woes returned. The game was playable, but the sound was the worst I’d experienced yet. It seems that this is a real sticking point for the Apple TV.
At this point, I thought I should try some earlier titles. I gaveMissile Commandon the Atari 5200 a shot, and the sound was bad. I did the same forPac-Manand things were still glitchy. I moved on to the Atari 7800 version ofAsteroidsand though it was just as playable as the others, audio issues persisted.
I rounded off my testing with a quick blast of TurboGrafx16 platforming royaltyBonk’s Adventure, and though the game was playable to the point where I wasted 15 minutes of my day head-butting the ground, the soundtrack was being butchered the whole time.
Should You Pick Up an Apple TV for Emulation?
It’s safe to say that the old Apple TV HD isn’t worth bothering with for emulation purposes. Newer models that include A10X, A12, and A15 chips are likely to have far better performance, though I wasn’t able to test them then. If you have one floating around, it’s only going to take you around 20 minutes to test it all out.
Unfortunately, all models of Apple TV suffer from the fact that tvOS might decide to eat your game collection and save files. This makes the platform hard to recommend, especially when an old Mac mini or even a single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi 5 isn’t subject to the same problems.
In fact,an old laptop plugged into a TVis almost always going to be a better choice.
If you can spring for an old Mac mini, you canuse it to run Home Assistant server,pick up media center and streaming duties,andrun RetroArch better than any Apple TV model. For now, I’ll continue touse the Steam Deck as my main emulation machine.
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