With that disclaimer out of the way, here’s a quick list of things you’ll need for the Apple TV specifically: But if you want Apple’s TV platform for other reasons, hey, at least emulation on Apple’s box is possible, and emulator developers typically take an “if it can run it, it should run it” approach to new hardware. There are more emulators available for a larger number of systems, and they’re available directly from the Google Play Store without the need for the compiling and sideloading we’re going to outline here. If you want a simple set-top box exclusively for emulation, an Android TV box like the Nvidia Shield is a better bet. Provenance is already heavily based on open source code from OpenEmu and other projects, so anyone with a little patience could port other emulators without much extra work. That's basically it for now, but more consoles could show up in the future. It’s a multi-system emulator that supports most major 8- and 16-bit consoles, including the NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, Sega CD, Game Boy, and Game Boy Advance.

Another, Provenance, is the one we’ll be spending the most time with. One is a distant relative of the MAME arcade emulator, though it doesn’t seem as though it’s being maintained.

Right now there are two notable emulation projects targeting tvOS.

There aren’t many of them yet, and installation takes a little work (Apple doesn’t allow add-your-own-ROM emulators in the App Store), but new capabilities introduced in iOS 9 and the iOS-based tvOS make it possible to install them. One of my projects was to experiment with classic console emulators on the new Apple TV. That makes it a great time to tinker with little tech projects, things that are inessential and maybe a bit time-consuming but fun enough and useful enough to be worth doing. For those of us fortunate enough to have the privilege, late December and early January bring two things: new toys and a bit of vacation time.

Pokemon emulator for mac 10.10.5