The Dolphin Emulator for Nintendo’s oft neglected GameCube console (and the Wii) is regarded by many as one of the finer videogame emulators out there.
After overcoming a number of impressive hurdles over the years – including avoiding the usually intense Nintendo takedown ninjas, and working out how to get peripherals like the Wii Balance Board working – the program has reached yet another milestone.
With the latest version of Dolphin comes the ability to run Star Wars: Clone Wars – meaning the entire GameCube library can now be played (and what a library it is).
Nintendo’s uncharacteristic apathy towards the emulator might have something to do with GameCube titles not being offered on the eShop – they might just not care enough to fight it, but that would be unusual for the big N.
Whatever the case, there’s a great blog post here that explains why Clone Wars caused so much trouble for Dolphin.
I would try and explain it for you myself, but apparently ‘you need to have some knowledge on how the PowerPC’s processor handles memory management and how Dolphin emulates it.’ – I have neither of these.
At any rate, Dolphin continues to do good (or morally gray) work by providing awesome GameCube titles like Pikmin, Super Smash Bros, and Metroid Prime to the masses.
A lot of gamers have fond memories of the console of course, but it actually nearly killed Nintendo before the Wii came along – kind of like the Wii U is doing now.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.