In 2015, Apple TV became a much more interesting device, having – finally – its own applications with which get the most out of your equipment. A powerhouse that, both in the fourth-generation Apple TV – now renamed in Apple TV HD – As in the Apple TV 4K, it allows games as spectacular as those seen in Apple Arcade, or those that can be downloaded from the App Store.
The arrival of iOS 13 at WWDC19 was also a very significant change in the gaming aspect of a device that was crying out for something basic in the living room: a suitable game controller. Apple explained to us in last year’s keynote that with this operating system we could already find the best controls available – and that many of us may already have at home: the Sony PlayStation 4 Dualshock 4 and Microsoft Xbox One Controller. These controllers can be connected from iOS 13, iPadOS 13, tvOS 13 or macOS Catalina like any other Bluetooth device, only – and this is the interesting thing – the operating system takes care of menu its buttons and vibrating motor ready to use. Without installing any software like gateway or complicated drivers.
We have already seen what these devices are capable of doing with the games that we can access from the App Store. But what about emulators? There is one in particular that would be very appropriate to be able to play precisely in the living room where we usually have the Apple TV: MAME, emulator of multi-arcade machines – the well-known arcade machine emulator. Apple does not allow “open” emulators in the App Store, so there is no official version in the App Store. However, we can compile and install it ourselves. Here and now. Even if you are not a developer, don’t know what Xcode is or have never done anything like it, I will explain it to you step by step. Let’s go for that.
Do not be afraid. this walkthrough it’s a lot easier than it looks, even if you see that there are many steps to go through: I wanted to tell you in the best visual way each step so that no one gets lost. To do this, you don’t need any experience, not even a paid developer account (we will create one for free).
You will only need an Apple TV HD or 4K and a Mac with macOS Catalina. Installation is much easier than it looks.
You will only need one Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K updated to the latest version of tvOS 13, and a Mac with macOS Catalina, at least. In this guide, I won’t go into detail about why each step is done, in order to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. If you need more information, ask me in the comments.
1.- The first thing we will have to do is bajarnos Xcode. As easy as going to the Mac App Store and searching for Xcode. You download it – depending on your internet speed, this may take several gigabytes – and let it install:
2.- If you already have one apple developer account (both paid and free), you can skip this step. If not, let’s create one now. It’s very easy, just go to https://developer.apple.com/account/ and follow the steps. Once the creation is complete, you can close the browser:
3.- Let’s go download source code of the MAME app. There are several versions of MAME for tvOS, but this tutorial is based on the one from Yoshisuga – which has a spectacular January update with lots of news and improvements for our Apple TV (in the form of a graphic menu whose illustrations and screens are automatically updated from the Internet). To get the source code, go to https://github.com/yoshisuga/MAME4iOS and press the green button where it says “Clone or Download” to display a URL. Copy it.
4.- Now open X-Code. It will show you a welcome window. Click “Clone an existing project”:
5.- You will have to paste the URL that you copied before, and a list will appear where you can choose what to clone. Choose – in case it does not appear by default – the “master” branch. And you click the button Clone.
6.- With this you will get all the source code of the application downloaded from the developer URL to a folder on your Mac:
7.- If you have not changed the download folder, you will have a folder in Documents with the name MAME4iOS (search for it by that name with Spotlight if you can’t find it). Right-click on it, and from the drop-down menu, choose “New terminal in folder”. This will open a window Command linedirectly in this folder. If this option does not appear in the drop-down menu, you can enable it from “System Preferences/Keyboard/Quick Functions/Services/New Terminal in Folder” (this is very useful if you are used to playing with the terminal):
8.- A command line window will open in the MAME4iOS directory where the software was downloaded. Now let’s go compile the app. This means that all source code will be converted into executable code on the Apple TV. First, type “xcode-select –install” (without the quotes) on this screen to install the tools needed for the build. It will ask for your Mac user password. When you are done, type “./make-tvos.sh” (without quotes) and press Enter. the script compilation will do its magic, you will see on screen what it is doing at all times. It can take a long time, let’s not be nervous, let’s not stop it. Have a quiet coffee and wait for it to finish.
9.- When it’s over, will automatically open Xcode with the MAME4iOS splash screen. We’re now going to wirelessly link your Apple TV to your Mac, in case you haven’t already. Both devices must be on the same network. In Xcode, navigate to Window/Devices and Simulators and leave this window open.
10.- On Apple TV, go to Settings/Controllers and devices/App Remote and devices. If your Mac isn’t paired, you can pair it from here by clicking on it when it’s detected, and it will then go into the device list, like mine:
11.- When both windows are open and both devices are on the same network, something like this should appear in the Devices and simulators window from before: press “Pair with Apple TV…” and follow the instructions steps to bind (it is very simple):
12.- Now we will add our developer account that we created initially. Go to Xcode/Preferences/Accounts and click on the “+” sign. Choose Apple ID and enter the account name and password you created it with:
13.- We are almost there. We are now going to select as the origin the version we want to compile, and as destination our Apple TV. First, click on the left column where it says MAME4iOS. Next, where you see a (2) in the image, select the “MAME tvOS Release” version on the right side and your “Apple TV” on the right (the one we linked before in Devices & Simulators). Then in step (3), select as a team your developer account which we added before, and as “Bundle Identifier” you can change it to whatever name you want. I added an “Applesphere” in the middle of the id.
14.- The moment of truth is coming! Click the “Play” button at the top left (to the right of the square (“stop”)… and it will start compiling and building the application. If it asks you for a password, it will be your Mac’s password (it does this to access the secure key of the development account which was stored in the keychain).Put in the password and you are done.With a free developer account, the compiled version may expire in a week, but to reinstall it , you just need to press that button again to have it on your Apple TV.
If all goes well… you will have your freshly baked Mame on the Apple TV menuReady for action!
15.- If we enter it, since we have no games, it will show us this image. This is the way to add ROMs wirelessly, type in a browser one of these custom URLs which will show you:
16.- We can download Free and legal ROMs From the MAMEdev.org page itself, I tried with Grid. The ROM will be downloaded in zip format. You don’t need to unzip it, we can download it like this.
17.- We enter one of the URLs that Apple TV shows us, in a browser on our Mac and we will see the web interface to download game ROMs. We go to the “Roms” folder and here we can just drag the .zip of the gameGridlee that we downloaded before. If you have multiple games, you can drag them all at once:
18.- Well I would be. When you click “Reload ROMs” using the Apple TV remote, it will show up already the MAME GUI on Apple TV. We just have to select the game we want to launch… and enjoy! We also have the classic Mame menu, which as you can see is presented here as another ROM called “MAME4iOS”:
His thing is that if you have a Mando from PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, connect it to Apple TV to enjoy with these games. There’s nothing to configure anywhere, just add it as another Bluetooth device on Apple TV.
I’ll give you some homework: the same code we downloaded to install the Apple TV version has the iPhone and iPad versions… Who dares to install them too, taking advantage of the fact that we already have almost everything configured? What enjoy your Apple TV with this powerful and complete emulator!
