So, currently Dolphin supports emulation for Gamecube and Wii. Based on some of what I've been reading about the breakthroughs in Wii-U Emulation, it sounds like that may be coming sometime this year.
I'd like to see if there's been enough interest to eventually incorporate NES, SNES and N64 emulation into Dolphin to build out a unified emulation platform.
This question / sentiment seems to have been met with hostility in the past on this forum, so I want to take a few moments to build out a good case for why this is a good feature to add overtime:
#1.) First and foremost Dolphin is the most current emulator and truthfully the only one really under continued development today with perhaps CEMU being another emerging one down the road. Many of the old emulators are great but not perfect and active community and active dev work is required to get things completely right down the road.
#2.) Convenience: simply put, its more convenient to have all the emulation in one place.
#3.) Uniform Library Management: While there still remain a few oddities of differences between how you can update / modify GC vs Wii vs Wiiware titles, Dolphin offers a unified feel for all the various titles. This is something I'd like to have access to for my full library and not just the most current emulatable systems.
#4.) Uniform controls: Being able to use a uniform control across all platforms makes the general experience a lot better. Not needing to fiddle with getting all the various emulators to figure out my control schemes helps overall engagement.
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Those are some of the main points why I'd love to see Dolphin eventually add more backwards support.
That being said, the source codes are generally all available for the major emulators currently out:
NES:
http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/
SNES:
https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x
N64:
https://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/
While Nestopia is easily dated (and I know others are out there), SNES and N64 are pretty Windows 64bit friendly and would probably port nicely into Dolph (with some and love).
I'd like to see if there's been enough interest to eventually incorporate NES, SNES and N64 emulation into Dolphin to build out a unified emulation platform.
This question / sentiment seems to have been met with hostility in the past on this forum, so I want to take a few moments to build out a good case for why this is a good feature to add overtime:
#1.) First and foremost Dolphin is the most current emulator and truthfully the only one really under continued development today with perhaps CEMU being another emerging one down the road. Many of the old emulators are great but not perfect and active community and active dev work is required to get things completely right down the road.
#2.) Convenience: simply put, its more convenient to have all the emulation in one place.
#3.) Uniform Library Management: While there still remain a few oddities of differences between how you can update / modify GC vs Wii vs Wiiware titles, Dolphin offers a unified feel for all the various titles. This is something I'd like to have access to for my full library and not just the most current emulatable systems.
#4.) Uniform controls: Being able to use a uniform control across all platforms makes the general experience a lot better. Not needing to fiddle with getting all the various emulators to figure out my control schemes helps overall engagement.
---
Those are some of the main points why I'd love to see Dolphin eventually add more backwards support.
That being said, the source codes are generally all available for the major emulators currently out:
NES:
http://nestopia.sourceforge.net/
SNES:
https://github.com/snes9xgit/snes9x
N64:
https://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/
While Nestopia is easily dated (and I know others are out there), SNES and N64 are pretty Windows 64bit friendly and would probably port nicely into Dolph (with some and love).