Why both GC and Wii?

[dmko]

Didn't see this addressed in the FAQ - can someone explain why/how Dolphin handles both Wii and GC?

I am super thankful and happy that y'all do this - I'm just curious why this is the case.. esp. I've seen a few posts where dev's say that there's downsides to RetroArch's model of supporting multiple cores...

Is there some inherent common codebase for both machines? E.g. if focus were *only* on one of the two, would there be significantly faster turnaround time of features and bugfixes?

Just curious

[Kurausukun]

Because the GC and the Wii are almost the same system. They share the exact same GPU, and the CPU uses the same architecture, though the Wii is clocked higher than the GC (I think). They weren't chosen randomly; the systems are incredibly similar, and it made sense to emulate both of them.

[dmko]

Interesting, thanks

[degasus]

The Wii also has some additional interfaces (wiimote, sd-card, ...), but the way how to talk with all kind of interfaces is still the same as on the GC. So in the end, the Wii is just a higher clocked GC with more attachments.

We're often asked why we don't include WiiU support, and indeed, the hardware has some similarities. The main differences is that on Wii/GC, the game runs on the plain hardware, WiiU has an OS. It's a fundamental difference to emulate the OS API or the hardware, but the clockrate of the Wii/GC isn't.