The new Apple TV was a huge upgrade for the set-top box, even including a new operating system that the company dubbed tvOS.
Apple included a lot more functionality with the new system, too, including not only support for Siri and search, but also an App Store and even more applications. Now, thanks to developer kits of the new Apple TV being available in the wild, we have another look at what an emulator looks like on the new set-top box.
This time around, it’s the MAME game emulator, which stands for multiple arcade machine emulator, and it does exactly as the name suggests: Brings a variety of old-school arcade games right to your device. It just so happens to be that this device is a brand new Apple TV 4. Thanks to developer Kevin Smith, we can see that MAME is working well enough on the new Apple TV with tvOS, even if there are some hangups, including audio.
It certainly wasn’t the easiest thing to do to get MAME working on tvOS, but Smith put a nice rundown of the obstacles he had to overcome to get the software running in the description of the video:
“I created a target for tvOS and set about getting the code to compile for arm64 (Mandatory for AppleTV), fixed a variety of compiler and linker errors. Removed code which was incompatible with tvOS frameworks and simplified code to work on tvOS. Added a basic icon compatible with tvOS. I added some tweaks to the source to allow the pause button to exit the game and supporting the resolution for the 1080p display.”
As is par for the course for Apple’s software, emulators won’t be officially available via the tvOS App Store, so don’t expect to see MAME available through the digital storefront later this year when the Apple TV 4 goes on sale. However, it’s good to see that it works, at least, so those that are brave enough can probably get the software on their device at some point in the future, even without Apple’s acceptance.
You can check out the MAME emulator working on an Apple TV 4 in the video below.
[via MacRumors]
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