Sebastian Santabarbara Updated on Sep 3, 2026 2 min read

You Can Now Play Mario Kart Wii On Apple TV Via KartPad

Credit: Nintendo/Kahris

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When Apple TV first came out, I never would have guessed that I'd be able to play Mario Kart Wii on there. Back then, emulation on any kind of Apple product was a bit of a no-go, so it's not that surprising. But over the past couple of years, we've had emulators popping up on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, as well as unofficial native ports arriving on Mac.

KartPad is a program created by Kahris, aka Chris Sotraidis, a 'native, static recomp of Mario Kart Wii and retro Rewind,' compiled for ARM64 and presented through Metal. It's been made for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, and now Kahris has made a tvOS version after users have been requesting it for the platform.

Credit: Nintendo

The first Apple TV preview build is ready, with profiles for both the original Mario Kart Wii and Retro Rewind. That means online multiplayer once the servers are back online.

Kahris is looking for Apple TV owners to get on board to help get the project from 'experimental preview' into the real finished deal. You'll need:

tvOS 17 or later
A legally obtained ROM version of the PAL version of Mario Kart WII (PAL RMCP01)
An extended game controller

Here's the Apple TV hardware bring-up from the official GitHub page:

Native arm64 tvOS 17 application using the existing ahead-of-time translated
Original Mario Kart Wii and Retro Rewind profiles.
Focus-driven setup screens and explicit Extended Gamepad requirement; the
Siri Remote does not become a racing controller.
Private RMCP01 data staging from a paired Mac, with disc ID, revision, Wii
header, required-file, and exact main.dol validation.
On-device download, size/hash verification, and safe installation of the
pinned official Retro Rewind 6.12.4 pack.
Rebuildable game/mod content in Caches, while configuration, NAND, saves, and
runtime logs remain in Application Support.
Original three-layer KartPad Apple TV icon and Top Shelf artwork. No Wii
banner or user-supplied game artwork is included.
Backup and path-redacted diagnostic collection scripts for paired devices.

Head to GitHub to get started!

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