Ever wish you could play Wii and GameCube games on your PC? Just like your favorite retro systems, there’s an emulator that can do the job, and it’s called Dolphin.
Dolphin is an open source Wii and GameCube emulator that supports the majority of games for both consoles.
Dolphin can run your collection of Wii and GameCube games very well at 1080p on most new PC’s, and even older systems still can crank out playable speeds in standard definition 480p (which is the GameCube’s native resolution). Installing Dolphin is easy, and you can even rip your own games from a Wii if you’re willing to homebrew it.Why Dolphin Is Better than a Wii
Why do this if you already have a Wii? Let me count the ways:
- If you have good hardware, you can crank up the graphics settings on older games. In fact, even games for the GameCube, which had a maximum of 480p and were stuck at a 3:4 aspect ratio, upscale very well to full widescreen HD or even 4K. There are hacks that let games run at 60 frames per second. There are also many community made texture and shader packs which improve the look of the game substantially.
- All your games will be in one place and load extremely fast. This can also be done by installing USB Loader GX on the Wii, which is actually required anyway to legally get your game disks to play on Dolphin, but it is still an advantage over a regular Wii.
- You can use Wii Remotes with Dolphin, along with any other gamepad, including Xbox 360 and One Controllers. You could also use a GameCube Controller, but you will have to buy a USB adapter.
- It’s compatible with Windows and macOS, with an older release available on Linux.
Dolphin is not without its problems; there are still games that do not emulate properly and have bugs or glitches, but there is excellent community support in their forums, and new releases come out every few weeks which include bug fixes.
Dolphin is open source and is available at their download page. The latest official version is 5.0, and it’s quite stable on most PCs with discrete graphics cards (some integrated graphics can run it, but you’ll have to try it out to see). All versions support the vast majority of Wii and GameCube games, though newer versions fix a lot of bugs in older versions and run better on current hardware.
How to Get GameCube and Wii Games Legally
Emulators are commonly used to pirate games, but they can be used without downloading ROMs, too—and in the case of Dolphin, you can rip your own games to your PC using a Wii. The process is a little complicated, and involves installing the Homebrew channel on your Wii. This is worth doing anyway, as it lets you turn your old console into a DVD player, run emulators, and install games to a hard drive. In the case of emulation,…
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