How do you design Atari 2600 clones? Do you have to replicate the TIA?
Apparently my terse sister comment is beyond the edit timeout threshold, I had meant to follow up with more details.
If there's interest around general "chip emulation" techniques I've employed, I could try and do a blog write-up. The first attempt was using a PIC32 with a bunch of lookup tables a couple decades ago. Then I played with fpgas (the cheap lattice ones.) My latest attempts relied on a combination of SoC and inline rom dumps using all the known bank switching schemes, which tbh was a pita to validate until I finally bought a harmony cart (I was eproming up until a decade ago.) The SoC design allowed me to use a ARM that could output HDMI (via daughter board) with various filters to mimic CRTs artifacts and the like which I found fun.
Yes, although there are a number of ways to "cheat" aside from just pulling chips...