The Dolphin Emulator Can Now Play the Entire GameCube Library

That sucks.

"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."

This is how Nintendo decide who will live and who will die with a game of Lifey Deathy.

oh how i love the dolphin!

Amazing! So glad of dolphin. Keeping gamecube alive, cause no one else will.

Better get it just in case Nintendo tries to shut it down.

I'm guessing fan games infringe more on Nintendo's rights than emulators do.

@readyletsgo You must have never heard of Nintendont. If you have a Wii or Wii U there's no need to wait for Nintendo to finally get their act together and give us GameCube VC titles.

Future News:

'Dolphin Issued Cease and Decist- somehow fans still manage to react with shock.'

If I were Nintendo, I wait for those hack to finished them emulator then buy it off their hands and use that for the NX so we can get some great GameCube compatibility going for that system.

There's a level of legality in many if not most emulators, unless they happen to use proprietary code of the original. Can't recall which system it was, maybe ps1, but there's a famous one that using its original bios is the problem, emulating the rest of it it's not. Even the mega man collection uses emulation but they had to work around parts of the architecture to avoid legal issues. There's even a GDC talk about it

It's not illegal to reverse engineer hardware in the US at least. Ask IBM all about it.

I can't get bothered by playing games you own in an emulator. Then again, I buy them for consoles again anyway just for convenience sake.

Getting emulators to play a game the way you want it can suck so much time, though. It was fun to play a little bit of Wind Waker and Skyward Sword in stereoscopic 3D on a huge screen and high resolution, but it was glitchy and keeping it all working was just never worth it for me.

Congratulations! Do you know what else does the exact same thing? The Nintendo Wii, one of the best-selling systems Nintendo has ever made.

I've played Wave Race: Blue Storm on 🐬 which was great. F-Zero on the other hand is a mess. Maybe my laptop is getting on a bit tho.
Now I've got my Wii back I'll be playing all my Game Cube games on that.
Now if only I could play all those great games on a handheld. 🤔

@BulbasaurusRex Nah. The Wii doesn't upscale games to 1080p or include anti-aliasing options that significantly clean up the image of a game.

Compare a game like Mario Galaxy on Wii versus Dolphin with AA and upscaling: it's honestly night and day.

People do know Nintendo cannot do anything to the dolphin emulator right?

@ikki5 Okays.
Anyway, kudos to the Dolphin developers. Bugs and issues aside, the emulator's easily the best among its class.

@ikki5 No they can't which is why I say Nintendo should buy it off their hands so they can used that for the NX. That will benefit Nintendo a lot if they do that. In the end all party wins, Nintendo got a cool emulator, the emulator people got rich and we got some GameCube games (which we had to buy again) running at full speed in 1080p HD on next gen Nintendo system.

Love Dolphin, you don't know what life is until you play 1080p 60fps Mario Sunshine. Melee netplay is dope too, so many hours spent on that

lol @ thinking Nintendo can stop an emulator from being shared online

@Ralizah @BulbasaurusRex And the Wii does not emulate, it addresses a native GameCube core, which is present in all Wii's and Wii U's. And that is why even Wii's without the GameCube ports can play GameCube games. A program called Nintendont opens up that path in newer model Wii's and in the Wii U...

@Ralizah Sure, if you want to settle for a relatively tiny computer screen. I'd rather play them on my TV (and with proper controllers) even if it's only in SD.

@ThanosReXXX So what? It still accomplishes the same thing, and this way you never have to deal with any performance issues that may pop up for some games via emulation.

I can still play my Original Gamecube games anytime with my old White Wii + Gamecube memory cards.
I don't need that emulator.
I'm done with all emulator on PC + illegal ROMS.

@BulbasaurusRex I prefer to play on consoles and not emulators but you do know you can plug a computer up to an hd tv right?

@BulbasaurusRex So what, you say? Well, because Dolphin is an emulator and the Wii just plays the games natively without emulation, so you can't compare the two.

And it doesn't just accomplish "the same thing" since Dolphin offers a LOT of improvements such as HD visuals and texture packs, and it also offers options to use Wiimotes via Bluetooth (since it also emulates the Wii) and other original controllers, via a USB converter and so the point you tried to make against @Ralizah is invalid.

And like @faint has already said, you could quite easily connect any PC to an HD TV.

If emulators are not your thing, fair enough, and no offense, but you can't just list all kinds of baseless objections if you don't even know what you're talking about, since nothing that you mentioned is an issue with Dolphin, and if you have an above average, modern PC, then performance issues will also be no problem at all.

Woo...

Can now boot the entire GC library.

Big difference. Headline is way too optimistic.

Screw playing GameCube on Wii in SD.

Play on Wii U in Widescreen HD format natively with zero hiccups, cheat codes and almost any controller you want (GameCube with Smash adapter, Wii U Pro, PS3, PS4, New X1).

I'm not knocking Dolphin- it's awesome, but you're gonna need a pretty decent PC and you're gonna have to deal with individual settings for each and every game to run right and even then, it's never 100% without issue regardless of how good your PC is. I'm all for it don't get me wrong, but nothing will ever replace the Wii U as the ground zero of GameCube.

*** If you own a Wii U, and you're not jammin serious GameCube on it... you're doing it wrong. 30 minutes, that's it. That's all you need. A stoned monkey could set it up, and probably in less time.

@ThanosReXXX By accomplishing the same thing, I just meant that both methods play the entire GameCube library. Those are just extra features on top of that base ability.

I didn't know you could connect a PC to a TV like that. I also wasn't aware that there were any USB adaptors out there for GameCube Controllers (since GameCube games can't actually use Wiimotes, you know). Are you sure about that latter part?

Well, that solves at least one problem, but then it creates another one by causing significant input lag. There's always going to be at least a little with modern HDTVs, and those anti-aliasing filters will just make it worse. Furthermore, there is indeed always the possibility of software (not hardware) related performance issues for some games when emulating them. Only the original BIOS such as in the Wii will run everything perfectly. I'll stick with my Wii on my good ol' CRT with perfect performance for playing my GameCube games.

@BulbasaurusRex

Oh my god dude, either you're trolling, or you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

@BulbasaurusRex Yup, there are PC converter cables and boxes that will allow you to connect both GameCube and even N64 controllers to your PC, and a host of other controllers.
Here's the GameCube version:
http://www.mayflash.com/Products/PCUSB/PC051.html

All these converters have a USB connector on one end, and the relevant connector on the other.

And you can even use the Wii U GameCube controller adapter that was made for Smash Bros Wii U:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dolphin-emulator-now-has-native-gamecube-controller-support-thanks-to-nintendos-wii-u-adapter/

@BulbasaurusRex and you can adapt settings in Dolphin to account for almost anything, so lag as well. And if I understood correctly, that issue has already been handled, so whether your playing on a PC monitor or on an HD TV shouldn't really matter in any significant way. Unless it's the TV itself that causes the lag...

@BulbasaurusRex P.S.
If you use Nintendont on a modded Wii/Wii U, you actually can use Wii controllers. Not Wiimotes, but Classic controllers and everything else that you can connect to the Wiimote. And USB controllers like an Xbox or Playstation controller...

@ThanosReXXX Um, duh! Of course it's the TV that causes the lag, just as any HDTV (or even SDTVs that aren't CRTs) does for any video game system! Sometimes I even switch my Wii U over to my CRT to avoid the input lag. Sure, some TVs are better than others and you can minimize its effects, but there's always going to be some of it, plus you'd then have to sacrifice all those extra visual features (aside from HD itself) you've been touting.

As for Nintendont, I'd rather not mess with homebrew (which is not simple at all to setup), and I'd still have to deal with the input lag. Why would I want to play GameCube games with anything other than a GameCube Controller (in my opinion, the best traditional video game controller ever made), anyway?

Surprisingly Nintendont seems to have the most issues with Melee, audio bleeps in character select screen, wrong L/R stick deadzones, bgm may cutoff unless disc read speed is limited.

All of these issues are gone when using Devolution.

@BulbasaurusRex Nintendont isn't homebrew, it is simply a way to open up the native GameCube functionality that is still present in all Wii's and Wii U's. And since it's native, there's also no lag. The console goes into full on GameCube mode, so it's not running a software layer.

When you want to switch games, you also have to reset it or switch it off, just like you would do with an actual GameCube.

And I do play GameCube games with the actual controller, on my modded Wii, so no argument there...

@AlienX Don't know what you're doing wrong then, because Devolution is inferior to Nintendont, since Devolution is an emulator and does not play GameCube games natively.

I use them both on a modded Wii, and Nintendont is compatible with ALL games, whereas Devolution is only good for some games. I had it installed before Nintendont, so I just left it on there, but my default GameCube launcher is Nintendont.

And Devolution requires original disc installs, whereas Nintendont can also play downloaded iso's, and region free as well.

@AlienX And also: Nintendont is the only one of the three programs (DIOS MIOS, Devolution, Nintendont) that plays the Triforce Arcade games. And they are a must-have for every Nintendo fan...

I hope and assume that GameCube games will be on VC on NX. Mario Kart Double Dash has an exclusive character I really like...

@ThanosReXXX Nintendont IS homebrew, devolution is NOT an emulator. If you haven't been involved with all the drama congrats but Nintendont is immensely based from devolution.

The audio streaming, the corrupted texture fixes, at some point the DSP patches were stolen from devolution and are now largely based on them, they also use the same Bluetooth code.
Devolution works slightly different from Nintendont that's all.
The method is different, all the very specific sdk patches and timer fixes still need to exist for both programs.

And if you had followed their progress, you would know that there's little if any code that actually interacts with GC hardware, it's all happening on Wii.

About triforce, I don't know how that has any relevance, I'm just saying devolution plays Melee(and every game that uses hps audio) much better. I still prefer Nintendont for everything else.

Also how can you think Devo is an emulator and work so well? Makes no sense.

Once I get my GPD Win I'll be able to play the entire GCN library on the go

@Petey4Smash
I really don't know about that :/
Wii U can run Gamecube games perfectly fine ON HARDWARE (no emulation), yet Nintendo never bothered to sell GCN games on VC so it'll be difficult to imagine them making the effort to make an emulator for those games to run on NX.

Wait a second, companies can take down emulators?

@AVahne What I don't get is they have DS games on Wii u and Wii games. Why ds on Wii u? It's like Nintendo has every console but the GameCube. They must not like it anymore.

@ALinkttPresent Don't be such a Debby downer.

@Captain_Toad
Well, under US copyright law, emulators themselves don't violate laws, but the dumped games associated with them most certainly will, given how shady they are.

And to all who say Nintendont/Devolution is an emulator,. it isn't, it's using the Wii mode on Wii U and Gamecube mode on Wii, both are virtual machines.

"It's interesting that, over many years and with so much coverage, Dolphin seems to have been left alone by Nintendo"

Well expect for things to happen now, You've covered it. Or are you aware of this and your coverage is of deliberate means to engage the attention of Nintendo? I mean it doesn't bother me either way I would love to be recognized by Nintendo myself, just never under the guise of enthusiasm for things that tread lightly over Nintendo's realm for what they approve of and what they do not. If you are trying to be a legitimate Nintendo news source that calls for you to assume the role of Nintendo's white knight embrace it fully and stop writing between the lines.

@Petey4Smash
Nintendo is just......weird. None can pretend to understand the way they make their decisions, and honestly there's no point. Nintendo does whatever the hell they want, even if it damages consumer and fan relations. They don't care, nor do they need to care considering how wide their coffers be.
Anyway, they probably only did DS on Wii U because someone at Nintendo thought people would be overjoyed to play handheld games on the big screen with the gamepad working as the second screen....without realizing that the ONLY reason why DS's dualscreen setup was usable was because they were right next to each other.

Dolphin runs like poo on my computer. About 20% of my games are playable. I'm happy that GameCube is relatively cheap to collect for right now though; I've been having a lot of fun doing that.

@Xaessya : Nah. They would have shutted it down already since it could run most GC game years ago.

Nintendo, hire these guys. That's all the Wii U Virtual Console needs.

@SanderEvers
How do you underline text? I know I can use asterisks (*) to create bold text, [del] for strikethroughs, and underscores (_) for italics, but that?

Cool! Not like Nintendo is going to introduce Gamecube emulation, even though they easily could.

@BulbasaurusRex I play GameCube games on my wii u with a GameCube controller. Plays perfect

@SLIGEACH_EIRE Seriously man, I enjoy your comments on like every article you comment on, on this site.

@AlexSora89 This may also help if you ever needed more http://www.bbcode.org/reference.php

@ThanosReXXX oh yes I have Nintendont on my WiiU, it's great, but I much prefer dolphin on my PC.

So when the story on the emulator for xbox comes out its full of hate with people saying they should buy the console. Now this comes out and everyone suddenly loves emulators... wut?

While Dolphin is fun to play around with, I found it annoying how every game seems to have bugs and glitches. Most games need special config tweaks and even then they still don't always run perfectly without needing to quit out and change settings partway through.

It's been a year or so since I last tried it, so maybe things have improved. I'll have to play around with it again to see how things are looking.

FWIW I experimented with Dolphin recently. Tried running TTYD on it and it crashed more than once, though I got it going eventually I think.

Too much hassle for me. Since I got Nintendont running on my Wii U I've had zero problems with it. Dolphin can kma.

@RedeadLink dolphin has been around for 10 years. And which Xbox emulator are you on about?

Nintendo left Dolphin alone because it's open source: they learn from the source code on how to make better emulator for their NX.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
More like Dolphin isn't making anyone any money, and as a project in itself isn't infringing on any of Nintendo's brands.

If we can now apparently talk about modding a Wii-U to play pirated games, is discussion on the 3DS now fair game?

@retro_player_22 nintendo could probably do better than dolphin as the people who would make it would get paid and that would be there job as wheras the people who made doplhin are doing it for free and also dont have all the material

@Pod Neither was AM2R but that got shot down and threatened with legal action.

@WilliamCalley 30 seconds scanning the Community Rules would answer your question. Please acquaint yourself with them. Who's talking about playing pirated games on the Wii U?

Quoting from them:
"It is permitted to constructively discuss the use of flash carts, emulators and homebrew software when in the context of previous generation(s) hardware. We ask that you do not link to any resources for illegal copyrighted content such as where to download ROMs and we reserve the right to lock, edit or delete any threads or comments we feel stray too far into an illegal or legal grey area."

So no, it's not OK to discuss them - 3DS is very much current gen. Thanks for asking though

@SLIGEACH_EIRE @Pod AM2R is a game almost entirely ripping off Nintendo IP. Dolphin is an application ripping off no Nintendo IP. There's your difference.

@readyletsgo Talking about the NES emulator being submitted to the Xbox marketplace. NL had an article on it yesterday.

@AlienX Never said that Nintendont isn't homebrew, of course it is, just like all the other not officially licensed programs on Wii/Wii U. And my bad on Devolution, same story: homebrew, not emu.

Anyway, true or not, this is what it says on their page:
"Nintendont is obviously not a modification of the MIOS, like DIOS MIOS (lite), because the vWii does not have a MIOS.

It is neither an emulator, because the Wii or vWii are not powerful enough to emulate GameCube games.

Nintendont is more like a bridge between an emulator and a virtual machine which runs Gamecube games natively."

And since it works almost perfectly, that was good enough for me to trust in what it says there.

But good to hear that I missed any drama involving pirates calling other pirates thieves... Funny, that...

Back then, I was just looking for the most compatible GameCube program, and where the Triforce games come in is in the fact that Nintendont is the only one that runs them, so that is why I mentioned that. And like I said it's also region free and doesn't need original discs. With devolution, I had to install nearly all my original GameCube games (70 in total) by hand, and that took forever.

When I updated some other stuff a couple of months later, a lot of these games didn't work anymore and I had to do it all again.

With Nintendont, I could just grab an iso and that's that.

Anyways, still interesting to know what you told me, but I am glad that I already had the program way before that began, so I never witnessed any of it when I was on the GBAtemp forums back then.

@readyletsgo Yeah, Dolphin is great. Needs a decent PC, though, and a lot of purists prefer the original visuals. Can't really blame 'em either, since not all games upscale that well, and sometimes tricks were used in programming/graphics specifically that exploited that, much like back in the 16bit days.

Displaying everything in 1080p kind of negates that effect.
But both are nice and have their uses.

@Ventilator Never hurts to be cautious~

@ThanosReXXX do you put the tri force games the same as GameCube games. Same folder format.

Mario kart arcade gp 2

What's the best games for tri force

@Ikramali Yes. same format, so game.iso and the best games are all of them (there's only 5) look for Triforce roms on the iso zone. They have a complete set.

@Ikramali if you go to the game database (www.gametdb.com) you can find all the correct DVD cover images and names and codes to use for the folders so it works perfectly with any USB loader.

@Phin68 I don't think Nintendo can take down the Emulator itself. It's more the games that they go after because obviously that contains the content itself.
And besides, it's actually legal to emulate games so long as you delete the game after 24 hours, this apparently counts as a demo.

Emulators are 100% original programming and contain no trademarks or copyrighted material. The operating system and game files are attached to it from a separate file which the emulator author doesn't provide. This makes them incredibly difficult to take down.

I am not the hugest fan of Dolphin myself for being slow on most games, but once I played Brawl on it, I was astonished. I have a high-end rig (yes, this proves that the emulator is the one with the problems), so I can run at maximum settings. And the results were breathtaking. It made Sm4sh look inferior, which is laughable as it reminds me how cartoony that game's artstyle really was. Oh, and Mario for sure looks much better in HD Brawl than he ever did in Sm4sh. Anti-aliasing is miles better as well.

As such, I only play Project M on Dolphin now. I could not go back to the Wii, let alone the Wii U due to no homebrew allowing the GameCube Adapter to function the same as the motherboard version on the Wii.

However, I am still stuck in a rough patch between playing The Twin Snakes on Dolphin or Nintendont. Dolphin had hiccups with the game, though it looked amazing. I was also sad because it had an HD texture pack left unfinished.

If this new version of Dolphin finally fixes that game for me, I will have two games to play on there.

Nintendo can't shut down any emulators because they are pure creation of their designers only games belong to nintendo.
So is ABSOLUTLY legal to use emulator WHEN you do it with your own games or backup of games you own.

My GameCube can play the entire GC library.

@ThanosReXXX thanks

@Uncensored that's great

@BulbasaurusRex Um... no? There are ways to hook a PC up to an HDTV. Also, Wiimotes work with Dolphin.

My god, the number of people in this chat who know less than they should -.-

Dolphin is perfectly LEGAL software, and it's the intellectual property of the developers (it's untouchable by Nintendo, at least in the US). You can use it with ACTUAL, PHYSICAL GameCube and Wii discs that you OWN. And it works natively with Wii remotes. It's an amazing piece of software that basically lets you play Nintendo's best games ever made in HD and with custom textures.

@SanderEvers This!

Nintendo can't stop emulators.

Wasn't bleem! (one of the earliest PS1 emulators, which was sold in stores, even a big name one such as Best Buy) ruled legal, but still ceased development because Sony simply financially drained them with lawsuits.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
AM2R might not have earned money but it did infringe on their property, what with some level layouts straight out of Metroid 2, and the design of Samus being identical to that from Zero Mission, aside from her likeness itself of course being Nintendo's property.

@BulbasaurusRex Wow! The Wii can play Gamecube games in 4k and with an HD Texture pack? AND with full controllers support! I didn't know that.

Does anyone know if the Dolphin can play Gamecube discs from putting them in your CD-ROM drive?

@WilliamCalley But the Wii does, which the app works for and was primarily developed for initially.

@wazlon

No, the only way is if you rip the games yourself using homebrew.

@SanderEvers @KTT
So there's an official name for that markup text. Thank you!

@Anti-Matter It's not illegal if you take the information off the disk and don't share it, which is essentially what those roms are.

@AlienX Devolution plain sucks because the author decided to place invasive DRM on it and often corrupted hard drives. Nintendont has no such restriction; what kind of moron places DRM on out-of-print and over-inflated priced games?

The original GC is great but Dolphin is great too. You think graphics don't matter until you've played Sunshine in 1080p, 60fps widescreen with HD textures. Plus the ability to use anything you want to control the game with full remapping, including GC, Wii, PS4, XBO controllers and keyboard... and instant save states, action replay/gecko codes, etcetera are nice... also netplay for some titles like SSBM.

On the other hand you need a good computer and specific settings for somes games to run well and some titles have some glitches. It's not perfect. But the "so does my GameCube/Wii" comments miss the point of Dolphin entirely. Plus, the memory cards can die on GC, you have to switch disks and it's more difficult to record footage.

Also:

"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."

It wasn't targeted because emulators themselves are generally legal, at least in the US. The "fundamental level" is called "the law." Why should it seem interesting it hasn't been targeted? I have OpenEmu and it uses cores from dozens of emulators. It can emulate NES, SNES, N64, GB, GBA and DS... and you can get those emulators separately too. Forget GC/Wii, there's a 3DS emulator called Citra and Wii U one called Cemu in development. They're not illegal, at least in the US. The Cemu team even has a Patreon, receiving $2,600 a month.

Also, anyone interested in a big company going after an emulator can read up on Bleem.

"Ultimately Bleem! won in court and a protective order was issued to "protect David from Goliath". Sony lost on all counts, including Bleem!'s use of screenshots of PlayStation games on its packaging. The court noted that Bleem!'s use of copyrighted screenshots was considered fair use and should be allowed to continue."

Bleem did succumb to bankruptcy due to the legal expenses, but ultimately won. And this was even though Bleem was sold commercially for a profit, unlike most emulators today.

Virtual Game Station was a similar case at the time, also a PS1 emulator.

"Sony perceived VGS as a threat, and filed a lawsuit against Connectix for copyright infringement. The case was eventually closed in favour of Connectix, but Connectix was unable to sell the software in the meantime because Sony had been awarded a temporary injunction.] Soon thereafter, Sony purchased VGS from Connectix and discontinued it."

It was released before the PS2 had even come out, so would be like Cemu today... but VGS was a commercial product and much more complete than Cemu is today.

@Setery10
Hm, i see... but i choose to buy all my games in original retail. No more emulator in PC or illegal ROMS from internet. I want to support Nintendo by purchase their product in LEGIT retail. I've promised to myself. Please understand...

@Anti-Matter: Why not have both? I had bought Skyward Sword back then and played it on my Wii, still I also played it partly on Dolphin because the real beauty of this game only shines through in HD and with AA. You can support Nintendo and still use emulators. If it weren't such a guilty pleasure, I surely would've played even more on Dolphin. But I'm a Nintendo fan, so I didn't.
But as someone before pointed out, it would be awesome if Dolphin would become official Nintendo software. It's just an amazing piece of software, the best emulator by far. Nintendo would be smart to just buy Dolphin and incorporate it in their own products.
@ThanosReXXX: Which games don't upscale that well? Every single game that I have seen (Youtube) or played on Dolphin looked way 10x better than the original. N64 emulators had a lot of audio and video issues, but GC and Wii games emulate quite nicely (there might be rare exceptions, but that doesn't really count). Sure, you might have to change settings for a few specific games, but once you've done that a few times, it's really no issue at all.
@JaxonH: But what's the point in using Nintendont? It's as illegal as emulating GC games on PC. But at least with Dolphin you can play those games in 1080p or higher and with a lot of AA. Plus you can use any controller you want. Homebrew had some perks on Wii and it wasn't even illegal, but as far as I know Nintendont is.
@BulbasaurusRex Lol are you serious? How can you not know these things? A TV is nothing but a monitor. There are USB adaptors for all kinds of things. Not all modern TV's have input lag, only some. If someone buys the wrong TV, it's their fault for not reading up on stuff before buying it. Besides, that input lag will also occur with consoles, not only PCs. AA has nothing to do with it. For the amount of claiming stuff, you seem to know nothing about the topic... and lol, you're still using a CRT? I know in the past, some gamers (even one of my friends who played a lot of CS) stuck to them for quite some time because of refresh rates, but those times are long over. There are TV's and monitors with better refresh rates than any CRT out there... and as a huge plus, they display the content a lot better than any CRT could. At this point, the only reason to cling to a CRT is nostalgia. Or maybe heavy weight-lifting.
And this 'argument' is pretty lame: "Furthermore, there is indeed always the possibility of software (not hardware) related performance issues for some games when emulating them." If you go by this logic, there is indeed always the possibility of a comet landing on your head whenever you leave your home, so leaving your home would be risking your life...

@shani
It was never about being "legal" or not. I don't give a rats *** about legality (no animosity intended, just sayin). If I own those games and they are on my shelf then gosh dang it, if I want to run them into my SD card and play them in hi def then I'm going to do it and I don't care what anybody thinks. Same for Dolphin.

The point, is that 1 almost every Nintendo gamer already owns a Wii U and it's 30 minutes to set up- a much smaller percentage game on PC and even less have one capable of proper Dolphin emulation 2 The games are running as good as they will natively- no matter how good Dolphin is it will never run better than native. I've tried Dolphin- I actually have it on my laptop. And trying to mess with those settings to get certain games to run properly... Not my thing. And I imagine quite a few will feel the same. 3 it turns the Wii U console into an "all-in-one" so to speak. GC, Wii and Wii U all native, with native controller support and with the VC available now it becomes quite the retro juggernaut.

Given that this is a Nintendo fan site, it's a fair assumption that most Nintendo fans own the newest Nintendo console already. So it's just a great answer that will work for the vast majority of console gamers who play Nintendo.

I love it.

@shani
Like i said before, I DON'T WANT to play illegal ROMS and emulator from PC whatsoever reason. I want to play Nintendo games JUST THE WAY IT IS. No illegal ROMS, No emulator from PC, just LEGIT Retail, with Just The Way It Is Quality. I Don't care if Emulator can make it more crisp or HD. I Just want play my games normally and legal.

@JaxonH Ok that I can understand. Especially #3 makes a lot of sense and would be desireable, but I guess Nintendo will never support more than the last gen in their consoles. @ #2: There might actually be exceptions, but you're right, in almost every case they won't run faster than native. But the games will look so much more beautiful! And I don't mind setting up things, it's matter of seconds or minutes once you've done it before and know what settings to use. But I guess a lot of people rather have everything ready without having to go into settings and that's a trend - not just in this specific case, but more generally - I actually dislike. Because it makes people lazy, unflexible and leads to people knowing less about the tools they are using every day. In the past I was actually hoping people would know more technical stuff about those things, also that more people would know how to code or a deeper understanding of software and hardware. But instead, things went the opposite way and things got more convenient instead. And that's where I blame companies like Apple, not the people themselves who got used to all that convenience. It's a shame, really.

But about your last point, judging from all those comments I have read on this site in the past, many actually don't seem to have a Wii U. Instead, many seem to have a (N)3DS. And that's the sad thing because I - despite starting my gaming career with a Gameboy at the age of 4 - always was of the opinion that the 'true' Nintendo experience can only be found on the stationary consoles. I always regarded the handhelds as an additional product, not as the main product, despite some of those handheld concepts being ingenious. But what's sad about it is the fact that Nintendo is supporting the 3DS family with tons of games while leaving the Wii U out to dry.

@Anti-Matter: Yeah me too (otherwise I would only play on emulators, but that's why I don't). But the thing is, it's not always illegal and it doesn't have to. Nintendo could just turn Dolphin into one of their own products. In most cases it works better and has a lot more perks than VC. I mean, tons of people complain about Nintendo's consoles not having enough power and featuring lesser graphics than the other consoles. A well-coded emulator like Dolphin means having everything that the original has + a lot more. As I said, if Nintendo would make it their own, there would be no reason for me to not use Dolphin regularly. And I'd still buy Nintendo consoles (unless everything goes to shit with the current leadership) and games, that's not the point.

@shani
If I had a PC that could run them full speed, I'd do it. And I debated buying one to emulate GC. But then I set up my Wii U and I'm so thrilled with its native performance and ease of use that I thought "well, do I really wanna buy a PC now just for Dreamcast and PS2?" All but Shenmue was ported to GC anyways and as much as I want Shadow of the Colossus, I don't wanna spend that much for it.

And you're right, I've noticed that too. Shame cause while Wii U was lacking 3rd party it got some great exclusives. And with a hacjed vWii it's really, really a nice piece of kit to own.

I enjoy the A9LH 3DS too though. Because it's all running from micro SD, no need for cartridge slot so I also keep an R4 in at all times (color matches each 3DS also, white R4 for white faceplates and grey R4 for the grey interior of the Hyrule Gold lol). Nothing like playing Sega CD, Zelda BS Satellaview, countless SNES and GBA VC games, TG16, and I'm talking installed as VC not an emulator... Plus emulators for Neo Geo and Capcom arcade systems, 12 of the 14 Fire Emblem games all on one little handheld.

It's great. I just love me a good hacked console. I do buy all my games still but love having all digitally.

@JaxonH Yeah that's what I'm talking about, one can buy and support the official stuff and still love using emulators or homebrew stuff. I'd just wish Nintendo would declare it legal.

Actually, about the PC horsepower: I upgrade from time to time, but I never have a high-end PC (just on principle, because of the bad price-performance ratio), more like upper mid-range or just the best that I can get for a set budget, I also buy used parts from a PC forum to save money. But that's always enough to play every recent game on (more or less) the highest settings, at least with 4xAA (unless I run them on three monitors, back then when I still had three lol - I actually miss doing that, it's really something else with open world games, racing games, shooters and even PES).
And the thing is: When I was playing on Dolphin, it was probably 2012 or 2013, so the PC I had back then would be pretty low-end by now. But it was still - although sometimes barely - enough to play Wii games in HD and with a little bit of AA. I haven't tried it again since then - also because the Wii U's VC/vWii is rather excellent - but I guess with my current PC I could easily play those games in 1080p, maybe even with a higher than native internal resolution, with lots of AA and a high framerate. And my current PC is still not high-end, not even close, I just don't have the budget for that, so I buy AMD instead of Intel and nVidia.

So I guess my point is: You don't have to have such a strong PC to use Dolphin, you don't have to spend that much (maybe 300-400€, depending on the parts you might already have) if you're okay with used hardware - which was never a problem for me.
But of course, it only really makes sense if you could use a PC anyway, not just for emulation (that would be too expensive in my opinion). I'll always need a PC as a universal machine (for gaming, work, writing, music production, maybe producing videos and other stuff) so emulation would only be one of many aspects. But then again, I haven't even once used Dolphin on my current PC. ^^ Funny that you'd mention Shenmue, I've only recently discovered that game (like last week) and actually saw a video about emulating it on PC.

@shani
PSVR and NX are gonna put a thousand dollar hole in my budget in the next 6 months, but I do plan to get a nice PC in the not too distant future.

If I get one though, I'd like to use emulation station or something and make it as console like as possible. With my job, and gaming, and life... just don't have the time to deal with the intricacies. Keep it quick and painless.

But we need a kernal exploit for Wii U so we can figure out how to use the gamepad buttons, and thus use the gamepad itself for GameCube and Wii. I'm beginning to doubt it's gonna happen though.

@JaxonH That's definitely doable, it might need a little setting up, but not much really. Or even no setting up at all: one easy and setting-free way to make it more console-like would be using Steam's Big Picture Mode, which can be used with any controller (preferably an Xbox360 controller or the Wii U Pro Controller). You could even integrate all the emulators and games into Steam and launch them in Big Picture Mode. I think you can even set Steam to launch with Windows and to launch in Big Picture Mode.

Without sounding too much like a Valve ad, getting a Steam Controller - I just got myself one a few months ago - could also be convenient, not because of Steam, but because it's really nice to control the computer from the couch, without using mouse and keyboard (it has a touchpad with different modes and also a kind of wheel for inputting letters - and lots of templates that you can just load online). It even has gyro controls, which is usually not advertised - I'm still planning on playing Overwatch one day by using the muscle memory I built up with Splatoon. I tried it already with Team Fortress and it works quite nicely after finding the right setting.
Alternatively, you could use on of the many Rii mini keyboards with built in mouse and IR remote etc. I got those myself.

I guess the PSVR will be the more expensive part. Personally I'd love to get me a HTC Vive for Steam, but I think it will be just too expensive for me. At least for now.
I suppose I will get the NX at some point, like I have with all the previous Big N consoles, but I'd still like to see what it does exactly first. ^^

@AVahne
Yeah, Nintendo is weird. I love my 3DS because of how close the 2 screens are (not the only reason) and it doesn't work without it. To me it actually seems like lately Nintendo has been paying more attention to everything around them, instead of going at their own pace. I still think it could happen. I also think they didn't put GameCube games on as most were barely 10 years old, and were seeming pretty new (they took their time with N64 games I've heard.) A good example is the just revealed super Mario run app. They need this app now more than ever as they have almost no major games coming up, other than ports. This will hold them over until the NX.
In my opinion GameCube games could be on the nx as they are over 15 years old now. Sure they had Wii games, but look at the price and storage size. The Wii u is backwards compatible with the Wii, so I think it's sorta like being able to download the Wii u games on the Wii u. My main concern is the storage and price of GameCube games. This is off of a more modern console, with better capabilities. The price could be $20.
Just my opinion.

Wish I had the specs to download Dolphin and run Brawl in HD. The only computer I have is a netbook/laptop, and I don't have any space to put a desk and fit a desktop PC next to it.

@Petey4Smash
Well thing is, the Wii U is technically backwards compatible with Gamecube as well, so getting Gamecube games to run on Wii U would likely be similar to how they got downloaded Wii games to run.
And about your 10 year theory, thing is, Nintendo put DS games, which are newer than Gamecube games, on Wii U. Unlike Wii and Gamecube games, that can run directly on the hardware, their DS games require an emulator. Which costs them money to develop, so honestly there really isn't any good reason for them NOT to put Gamecube games on Wii U eShop.

Promoting another emulator...of course!

@AVahne
Exactly what I mean. Plus, like you said, the ds was potable and Wii u was backward compatible with GameCube so I think the nx will be compatible with GameCube as it will likely use cartridges, not discs. I could see it backward compatible with 3ds over Wii u, not saying it will happen.

I still prefer to use a modded Wii U, but it's great anyway. A lot of good games will be still enjoyables in the future and will be preserved. Good.