Can AI Turn Your Apple TV into a Nintendo Switch?
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There may be a lot of things I don’t like about artificial intelligence, but making it possible to play classic arcade and home video games on my Apple TV isn’t one of them. Lately, the use of AI to port classic video games from their original platform to later platforms has really taken off.
Over the last few months, there has been a rash of cases where developers have used AI tools — in particular, Claude Code — to recompile or clone software. While some have spent time reverse-engineering subscription-based apps like those found in Adobe’s Creative Cloud suite, others are doing the Lord’s work by decompiling and recompiling older video games to allow them to run on other platforms (like the Apple TV 4K), and in browsers, all with varying degrees of success.
(I was being sarcastic about the reverse engineering of subscription apps. It’s all quite cool. But, if you are currently mouthing the words “AI slop” while reading this article, you may want to go on to the next posts, because this article will likely upset you.)
One of the latest reports of an AI game porting effort involves a Redditor getting Nintendo Switch games to run natively on an Apple TV 4K. Reddit user FloatingFalafel was able to get Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Super Mario Odyssey to run natively on the Apple TV 4K, with the use of AI, reports Engadget.
The Redditor was able to pull off the port of the two classic Nintendo titles by using TVPort, Reddit user FloatingFalafel’s open-source project, which is a fork of the nxnative toolkit used to recompile Switch and Switch 2 games for the Apple TV using a Mac. Here’s where the AI part comes in, as it was built using Claude Opus 5.5.
FloatingFalafel claims that Super Mario Odyssey runs at 60 fps, while Animal Crossing runs at 30 fps. The creator says other games haven’t been tested, but those interested are welcome to grab the open-source software and use it to get other games to run. It should be noted that game files are not included, so users will need to supply files from their own game cartridges, which sadly requires a modified Nintendo Switch.
If you’re considering porting later-generation and processor-intensive games like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, just keep in mind that they may not be able to run on the third-generation Apple TV 4K due to thermal throttling.
Luckily, though, the fourth-generation Apple TV 4K that launches November 13 has an A19 chip that should be more capable of powering titles the third-generation model doesn’t have the horsepower to run.
Be warned, though: Nintendo takes a dim view of projects that provide unofficial ways to play its games, so TVPort may not be around for the long haul. In 2024, Nintendo’s massive team of lawyers sued the Yuzu emulator team, leading to a $2.4 million settlement and the development of the emulator being shut down.
Another Classic Video Game Port of Note
Another report of note — and one that Nintendo likely won’t care about — is the GitHub project by Jnaina that ports the classic Atari Jaguar game, Tempest 2000 to both the Apple TV and macOS.
It’s a fork of Jeff Minter’s Tempest 2000 source code, with additional code and an Xcode project that allows anyone to build it for tvOS or macOS.
For those of you who weren’t around during the ’80s and ’90s, Tempest was a popular Atari arcade game that involves using a spinner to move your character around the top of tubes, tunnels, and other environments, shooting to prevent your enemy from coming up the tube. Developer Jeff Minter created a version of the game called Tempest 2000 for the short-lived Atari Jaguar home video console.
If you decide to take a stab at building the game, you’ll need the following:
- A Mac with Xcode (tested with Xcode 26; the app targets tvOS 15 or later) and the command line tools (
xcode-select --install) - The tvOS platform component for Xcode — download it once with
xcodebuild -downloadPlatform tvOS(or Xcode > Settings > Components > tvOS) - An Apple TV 4K and an Apple Account (a free one is fine: the app then has to be reinstalled every seven days)
git, an internet connection (the first build downloads the assembler tools and the emulator core)
All of the required tools are free, and step-by-step instructions are available on the GitHub page.
This is the part where we include the part about iDrop News not being responsible if anything goes wrong, up to and including visits from video game industry lawyers. We’re certainly not affiliated with Nintendo, Atari, or the developers behind TVPort, and emulating, decompiling, or sideloading console software carries inherent risks, so proceed at your own discretion.
