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Most that have been following Nintendo over the last decade will have heard of the Dolphin emulator at some point. Over the course of many years it's offered a means to run the GameCube library, and has even been used by enthusiasts to test out Wii games in HD. It's actively used by various communities; earlier this year there was even a bit of an argument over the usage of the emulator to reduce input lag in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

In any case, the emulator has hit a landmark - the latest version runs Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which means it can now boot the entire official GameCube library. There's a fascinating blog post that explains why this one game, in particular, caused so many problems.

It's interesting that, over many years and with so much coverage, Dolphin seems to have been left alone by Nintendo; perhaps the absence of GameCube titles on the eShop helps with that, or on a fundamental level it's possible Nintendo doesn't object to what it delivers.

In fact, some feel that Nintendo could utilise and improve on some of the work seen in Dolphin; following its reports earlier in the year backing the NX to use an Nvidia GPU, Digital Foundry even tried out Wii and GameCube games through a version of the emulator on a Shield TV (which uses Tegra 1). A simple experiment with plenty of limitations, of course, but interesting nonetheless.

In any case, it's an impressive landmark for the Dolphin emulator to now boot the entire GameCube library. Whether it'll evade Nintendo's takedown ninjas for many more years will also be interesting to see.

[source en.dolphin-emu.org, via eurogamer.net]