Apps ATV4: how to play classic Nintendo and Sega games!

[turbineseaplane]

I used to be really into jailbreaking... I'm sorry to say it, but I think Apple won. I think I'm done with jailbreaking. It's too big of a pain. Apple has really stepped up updates... And I don't like having to wait or miss out on what these updates have to offer. Not to mention that the process of updating with A jailbreak is a pain in the ass.

I can accomplish most of what I want without a jailbreak now... I think the ability to sideload apps pretty much puts a nail in the coffin for jailbreaking... At least for me... It's just not worth the hassle anymore.

Even if I was still into jailbreaking.... There is no way that I would jailbreak my Apple TV at this early stage. I expect that there will be a lot of updates over the coming months. I think those will be more important than anything that can be game through jailbreaking.

Just my 2¢

Which is all good of course! Many of us really really use some of the more obscure parts of jailbreaking and thus particularly enjoy it. Things like AirPlaying apps that restrict it are just the tip of the iceberg.

I guess I've never understood the people that say it's a hassle. Once its done, it's done. I personally hate being on the bleeding edge of Apple updates these days anyhow.

Anyways, to each our own of course!

 

[ajiuo]

Which is all good of course! Many of us really really use some of the more obscure parts of jailbreaking and thus particularly enjoy it. Things like AirPlaying apps that restrict it are just the tip of the iceberg.

I guess I've never understood the people that say it's a hassle. Once its done, it's done. I personally hate being on the bleeding edge of Apple updates these days anyhow.

Anyways, to each our own of course!

There are a lot of little tweaks and obscure things that I enjoy about jailbreaking to... Just not worth it to me personally.

Updating without a jailbreak:
-Click install

Updating with a jailbreak:
- back up
- DFU restore iOS to latest version
- restore from backup
- jailbreak
- reinstall everything from Cydia
- configure everything.

That's just so you can understand why people think it's a pain. If you compare updating with and without a jailbreak it's pretty easy to see. If you're the type of person that doesn't care about having up to date software... Then it's a pain that you won't have to deal with frequently... But when you do. It's still a pain.

As far as the Apple TVs concerned. You probably will want updates... At least for a while. Because it has issues that need to be fixed.

 

[turbineseaplane]

That's just so you can understand why people think it's a pain.

Just updating for the sake of updating all the time isn't something that everyone cares about, especially when you get things all dialed in how you like them on a device.

Why are we even talking about this?

If you don't like Jailbreaking, don't worry about it and don't do it, right?

We got on this because of the wonderful 8BITDO controllers that will only ever be usable with a jailbreak in all likelihood.

Let's move on and not clutter this thread up.

 

[OceanMindedBoy]

I used to be really into jailbreaking... I'm sorry to say it, but I think Apple won. I think I'm done with jailbreaking. It's too big of a pain. Apple has really stepped up updates... And I don't like having to wait or miss out on what these updates have to offer. Not to mention that the process of updating with A jailbreak is a pain in the ass.

I can accomplish most of what I want without a jailbreak now... I think the ability to sideload apps pretty much puts a nail in the coffin for jailbreaking... At least for me... It's just not worth the hassle anymore.

Even if I was still into jailbreaking.... There is no way that I would jailbreak my Apple TV at this early stage. I expect that there will be a lot of updates over the coming months. I think those will be more important than anything that can be game through jailbreaking.

Just my 2¢

Jailbreaking is backed up by the FCC. Devs and teams are consistently releasing jailbreaks. Apple will never win, neither will the jailbreak community. It's a never ending battle. Jailbreaking will end the day Apple iOS becomes open source and that's never going to happen. Jailbreaking is not for everyone though. It will be a pain for some but easy for others. I'm currently jailbroken and wouldn't trade it for an update. The tweaks and options I have are GOLD and make my iPhone user experience 1000% better. However, I do respect that you are commenting your opinion.

Thank you thank you thank you, you are awesome!!! Now my next stupid questions is, how do I then delete the games from Provenance if I don't want them anymore? Can't see a delete button anywhere.

Thanks!!

Just the way you uploaded roms there should be a red trash icon all the way to the right of the rom you uploaded. Make sure you're in the roms folder. It might be a browser compatibility issue if you don't see the trash button.

 

[ajiuo]

Jailbreaking is backed up by the FCC. Devs and teams are consistently releasing jailbreaks. Apple will never win, neither will the jailbreak community. It's a never ending battle. Jailbreaking will end the day Apple iOS becomes open source and that's never going to happen. Jailbreaking is not for everyone though. It will be a pain for some but easy for others. I'm currently jailbroken and wouldn't trade it for an update. The tweaks and options I have are GOLD and make my iPhone user experience 1000% better. However, I do respect that you are commenting your opinion.

I just meant they won as far as I'm concerned.

As far as the FCC goes... That has nothing to do with Apple winning. Apple wins when people choose not to jailbreak anymore. That could either mean iOS becoming good enough that people don't feel a need to, continually adding new features to entice people, adding security aspects that make jailbreaking a living hell for people... Apple wins a few people at a time...

I actually like the jailbreak community and think it encourages Apple... But there could come a point in time where just not enough people care about it to make it as successful as it is it is today...

The Apple TV 3 had a great jailbreak community didn't it? Apple totally won on that device because not enough people cared to make it happen... Maybe something has changed with the Apple TV 4 that will cause more people to care... Who knows.

 

[surfnode]

Do you need one of the Bluetooth game controllers to play the emulator games or is there a way of mapping the controls to the apple remote?

 

[ajiuo]

Do you need one of the Bluetooth game controllers to play the emulator games or is there a way of mapping the controls to the apple remote?

It does not work well with the apple remote at all. The way that direction pad works is not very good, and besides that there's only two usable buttons. A direction pad click and the play button. Not very intuitive.

So for the Sega Master system and NES. Technically you could use the Apple remote although it's not a very nice experience. Anything that uses more than two buttons... Nope. Play and pause can be accessed via the menu button.

 

[Che Castro]

So which mfi controller is best for emulation ?

 

[youslippin]

Just the way you uploaded roms there should be a red trash icon all the way to the right of the rom you uploaded. Make sure you're in the roms folder. It might be a browser compatibility issue if you don't see the trash button.

No thats not how you delete roms. The only files that are in the roms folder are ones that Provenance couldn't import. I forgot the actual names of the folders, but each emulator has its own folder. You would delete the roms from there or from the provenance app itself.

 

[T-Will]

I don't think thats a real issue. Even though the A/B buttons are labeled differently (A is B, and B is A), the physical location of the buttons act the same as on the NES controller (e.g. now you have to hold A to run and B to jump in mario, whereas before it was hold B to run and A to jump.)

Ok cool, the controls felt wrong last night when I was playing Mario Bros., but I hadn't played the original in a while.

 

[jmantn]

I did a search and maybe I didn't key in the right parameters in here but is it odd for some Roms to be less than 7MB? I thought it was so cool and dope that I'd try and find some classic games pertaining to plumbers (boring right?) and a vulcan with a sword and shield but some of the downloads are less than 10MB for second gen consoles.

Just wondering and how safe are these? For what it's also worth I had download a few two years ago when an emulator for the Mac came out but never tried them so instead of relying on what was downloaded then I'm trying to see what's out there now.

lastly some Roms have weird titles next to the name like U or M4 (or something similar) can anyone help with the lingo either in a response or private message?

EDIT: one is "Vulcan: A URL to the past" game and it's 1MB?!?!?! How is that even possible.

and yes I'm obscuring the names.

Edit2: So unless I'm missing something I even if it's 1mb it could still be legit. Played one on my mac but unsure if it's a full game... if it is it must be using some major compression or something.

 

[Che Castro]

You guys that are into retro gaming did you get the 32gb or 64gb

I have it too. I don't think its lag, you just have to press the buttons extra hard to register each time. Im returning my controller asap

What controller are you using now

 

[T-Will]

It's normal for the 1st and 2nd gen console ROMs to be pretty small.

 

[StuMcBill]

I did a search and maybe I didn't key in the right parameters in here but is it odd for some Roms to be less than 7MB? I thought it was so cool and dope that I'd try and find some classic games pertaining to plumbers (boring right?) and a vulcan with a sword and shield but some of the downloads are less than 10MB for second gen consoles.

Just wondering and how safe are these? For what it's also worth I had download a few two years ago when an emulator for the Mac came out but never tried them so instead of relying on what was downloaded then I'm trying to see what's out there now.

lastly some Roms have weird titles next to the name like U or M4 (or something similar) can anyone help with the lingo either in a response or private message?

EDIT: one is "Vulcan: A URL to the past" game and it's 1MB?!?!?! How is that even possible.

and yes I'm obscuring the names.

Edit2: So unless I'm missing something I even if it's 1mb it could still be legit. Played one on my mac but unsure if it's a full game... if it is it must be using some major compression or something.

Yeah some of the Mega Drive (Genesis) & Snes games are only a few Mb in size, nothing to worry about.

Generally ROMs with (!) in the file name are the definitive versions.

 

[Che Castro]

I think this is guy who made the app
https://mobile.twitter.com/jasarien

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

I expect it's too much to ask that a decent N64 emulator might be released for this platform...? Or any platform at all, thinking about it.

I can only imagine that it must be the bespoke, esoteric hardware that makes the N64 such a bugger to emulate. I have a powerful PC that can't do it properly... though I'm told that the hardware patents expire next year, so we might see a Retron 64 or something similar before long. I do hope so.

 

[TrueBlou]

I expect it's too much to ask that a decent N64 emulator might be released for this platform...? Or any platform at all, thinking about it.

I can only imagine that it must be the bespoke, esoteric hardware that makes the N64 such a bugger to emulate. I have a powerful PC that can't do it properly... though I'm told that the hardware patents expire next year, so we might see a Retron 64 or something similar before long. I do hope so.

There's already Mupen for Jailbroken iOS devices that runs really well so I suppose it's technically possible.

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

Really? Because I have never seen it done well...

... I gave up trying and bought one from eBay.

 

[TrueBlou]

Really? Because I have never seen it done well...

... I gave up trying and bought one from eBay.

Well, I was just basing it on videos on youtube to be fair, not interested in jailbreaking myself.

I don't use emulators much either, still got my 30-odd consoles from the 70's up to the current 3 and I still use them all. Just like an emulator now and then for when it's more convenient than disconnecting them and moving them between tellys.

 

[youslippin]

Really? Because I have never seen it done well...

... I gave up trying and bought one from eBay.

Ive had an N64 emulator on my mac for a while now working great. I fire up Mario 64 from time to time to mess around

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

I don't use emulators much either, still got my 30-odd consoles from the 70's up to the current 3 and I still use them all. Just like an emulator now and then for when it's more convenient than disconnecting them and moving them between tellys.

Yeah, they're definitely the poor relation - though I don't know whether you've ever become familiar with Dolphin, which isn't far away from emulating the entire GameCube instruction set perfectly. When those games are up-res'd to 2160p with maxed-out antialiasing, they look pretty remarkable...

... now that's a reason to buy a 4K TV!!!

 

[TrueBlou]

Yeah, they're definitely the poor relation - though I don't know whether you've ever become familiar with Dolphin, which isn't far away from emulating the entire GameCube instruction set perfectly. When those games are up-res'd to 2160p with maxed-out antialiasing, they look pretty remarkable...

... now that's a reason to buy a 4K TV!!!

Aye, I've given a few games a go with Dolphin, followed it from the beginning. It is really amazing these days, can't believe how far it's come since it started.

There are definitely good things with quite a few emulators, I wouldn't like to see them go. But I still like playing the games on the originals, dunno, it's weird it just feels different. Nostalgia I suppose.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Aye, I've given a few games a go with Dolphin, followed it from the beginning. It is really amazing these days, can't believe how far it's come since it started.

There are definitely good things with quite a few emulators, I wouldn't like to see them go. But I still like playing the games on the originals, dunno, it's weird it just feels different. Nostalgia I suppose.

I totally get it - I have a friend who actually still has a nice 19-20" CRT that's specifically set up for playing the old consoles as they were intended and it's pretty awesome.

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

There are definitely good things with quite a few emulators, I wouldn't like to see them go. But I still like playing the games on the originals, dunno, it's weird it just feels different. Nostalgia I suppose.

That's a factor, for sure. Though I think there's something in the fact that that's how they were 'meant to be played', and therefore they work better for that reason too. It was in the design, from the outset.

I totally get it - I have a friend who actually still has a nice 19-20" CRT that's specifically set up for playing the old consoles as they were intended and it's pretty awesome.

Yep. If the screen's too big, it's just 'wrong'.

Yep. If the screen's too big, it's just 'wrong'.

Couldn't agree more - I actually prefer, of all devices, playing NES/SNES/GENS emulation on my iPad as I think the screen size fits it very well (as does the aspect ratio)

Couldn't agree more - I actually prefer, of all devices, playing NES/SNES/GENS emulation on my iPad as I think the screen size fits it very well (as does the aspect ratio)

I had those emulators, plus MAME, set-up with an iCade a couple of years ago. The stick wasn't ideal for every game, but for some it was a premiere retro-gaming experience. I was surprised by how excellent it was.



EDIT: Apologies to the mods for consecutive posting, but I think something's gone a bit wrong here...

 

[TrueBlou]

I totally get it - I have a friend who actually still has a nice 19-20" CRT that's specifically set up for playing the old consoles as they were intended and it's pretty awesome.

That's so true, I've been on the lookout for a decent crt for a while just for my old consoles. As it is at the moment I limit them to a small lcd which isn't too bad.

That's a factor, for sure. Though I think there's something in the fact that that's how they were 'meant to be played', and therefore they work better for that reason too. It was in the design, from the outset.

True, you just can't beat the way it's supposed to be. After all, we wouldn't enjoy chocolate so much if we rammed it up our, let's say nose (yeah, crap analogy but my morphine has kicked in so its the best I can do)