What would presently be the best way (if any) to emulate older versions, like Android 2.0 Éclair, on a PC or mac? I'm not experienced in android development, so I was hoping for a straightforward way of just testing apks designed for 2.3 for example. I'm not sure if Genymotion offers virtual devices for versions below 4.4. I did find one called YouWave that looked interesting, but I am still curious as to what would be the best option. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Warning: performance on older pre-HAXM emulators was slow
My experience at the time: Android AVD not showing anything. only “ANDROID” in the middle of the screen
Do realize that any Google Services like Google Maps or even cloud based notifications for those older APIs probably don't work anymore.
If you need performance, sadly old hardware is your best bet as emulators had to do ARM to x86 translation in addition to mainly software based rendering.
If you are still serious about finding an old emulator see: Where can I download an older version of the Android SDK?
You will have to download the entire package and install the full legacy SDK.
Should you go down the legacy SDK path, please use a small screen size (640x480 or 800x480) as rendering fewer pixels helped performance.