Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums - [Unofficial] NVIDIA Shield TV

Statistics:

Tested: 87 games | Playable : 58 games

Last update : 2019/07/28

This is a non exhaustive list of the games you can play on NVIDIA Shield TV, using the latest official builds.
This list is not official, but community made. You can submit the games you enjoyed on the Shield and I’ll update it every now and then.
Please concider that the games listed here won’t be 100% playable and accurate, it’s emulation, on a not so powerful device.

• Why do you mostly use PAL version of games rather than NTSC?

Click to reveal: (Show Spoiler)

• What is your go-to settings on the SHIELD (.ini template)?

Click to reveal: (Show Spoiler)

• Why do you use per game settings and how?

Click to reveal: (Show Spoiler)

• Why do you play at 3 times Internal Resolution (1080p)?

Click to reveal: (Show Spoiler)

• How can you play my games in 16:9 (widescreen)?

Click to reveal: (Show Spoiler)

• How can I use AR codes on Android (for widescreen for exemple)?
This section remains to be written at the moment.

More guidelines to come!

Games stated as not working well/not working at all are not necessary not working well! They need extensive testing/tweaking as I didn't bother tweaking them too much... In my experience they don't work well, but if you're willing to try harder yourself and report back to me how you managed to get them playable, your contribution will be more than welcome!

The most playable games are rated 4/5 stars.
Specific settings will be provided for each games (if they need any), in their description.

Also, for each game, will be provided the number of players and wether or not it support 16:9 (natively or through AR code)

Contributions are welcome!

GameCube

Show list: (Show Spoiler)

Wii

Show list (list is empty for now!): (Show Spoiler)

Not running well/Not working at all

Show list: (Show Spoiler)

You can´t have different performance between different IRs when your GPU isn´t the bottleneck.

Would you please tell me what version of the apk you are currently running? I see in your settings template that you have Vulkan enabled, but when I do that with more recent builds, I get an issue where Vulkan won't initialize. I can get it running under 5.0-6302, but newer releases don't seem to fire.

(02-27-2019, 01:39 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]You can´t have different performance between different IRs when your GPU isn´t the bottleneck.

That's not strictly true - one of the issues with dolphin performance is that due to emulating specifics of the gamecube/wii hardware, there are more CPU->GPU synchronization points than a "well written" PC game. That can mean that it's more likely to get into situations where the CPU is waiting for the GPU (or visa-versa), and so affect performance even if the CPU or GPU has spare capacity.

Imagine a situation where a frame takes 10 ms on the CPU, then hands off to the GPU for 3ms of work. To reach 60fps, you need to be done in about 16ms. Most people would consider the CPU to be the "bottleneck" here, as it is what is taking the vast majority of the 16ms frame time - but it's all below 16ms so you still get a solid 60fps, despite the CPU being idle for 6ms of that, and the GPU idle for 13ms.

Now you double the IR - this causes a 4x increase in GPU load, and no increase of CPU load. Now the CPU takes 10ms, and the GPU takes 12ms - for a total of 22ms, missing the 16ms target for 60fps so has to drop to 30fps. Neither alone takes more than the 16ms frame time, and in a "well written" PC game they'll overlap as much as possible, and task manager shows that /neither/ is the bottleneck, as both are less than 50% utilisation (10ms of work in a 32ms frame for the CPU, and 12ms of work for the GPU).

(02-27-2019, 01:39 AM)DJBarry004 Wrote: [ -> ]You can´t have different performance between different IRs when your GPU isn´t the bottleneck.

That's more or less what I thought! As far as I tested, if a game wasn't running properly in 1080p, it wouldn't run properly in 480p either!

(02-27-2019, 06:24 AM)Toletheus Wrote: [ -> ]Would you please tell me what version of the apk you are currently running? I see in your settings template that you have Vulkan enabled, but when I do that with more recent builds, I get an issue where Vulkan won't initialize. I can get it running under 5.0-6302, but newer releases don't seem to fire.

I use the latest APK available, Vulkan doesn't want to initialize at first launch it's a well known issue! But it works actually. Went it displays the error message, just hit OK, use the back button on your gamepad to bring Dolphin menu and hit Exit (do not quit Dolphin app). Then, launch your game again and you'll be good to go!

@JonnyH thanks for the extended explanation, for sure the SHIELD isn't powerful enough but well... It's awesome to get some games working properly!

For the update, I added several games to the list

Games that work with default settings(Vulkan) at 100%-
GC -Wario World
Rampage Total Destruction
Crazy Taxi
Wave Race Blue Storm(PAL)
Marvel Nemesis
Batman Begins
Mario Kart DD(used codes for 25FPS and Widescreen Hack, PAL)(4 player)
Wii- Dragon Ball Z BT3
Metal Slug Anthology
WiiWare- Frogger Returns
Contra Rebirth(Dual core might be broken but works without it)

Games that work great at 60% OverClock-
GC-Soul Calibur 2 and Battle Stadium DON
Viewtiful Joe 1&2 and SSX3 works good but I can't remember if they're default or 60% overclock

I use widescreen hack or widescreen AR codes for all of these.
I also use AR unlock codes for levels and characters.

Thanks a lot @Moukrea for doing this thread!

Have a NVIDIA Shield TV too and were always looking for good configs and a 'Playable Games' list.

Didn't know the '60Hz is more demanding' thing - will test this later.

If I can help you with testing something just let me know!

@feelix93 The 60Hz thing is not always true though! But the SHIELD struggles to hit the 60FPS cap served by the 60Hz versions of the games, having it running in 50Hz makes the FPS cap down to 50 max, which makes the SHIELD work a little less hard as it has 10 less frames to render! But in some cases, the 60Hz versions doesn't run at 60FPS like with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess that runs at 30FPS... However the 50Hz version of the game, if I'm correct, runs at 25FPS which is a little less, hence keeps making the SHIELD work less hard!

@rclong Thanks! I'll add them into the list!

Quote:the 60Hz versions doesn't run at 60FPS like with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess that runs at 30FPS

So it doesn't really matter for Zelda Twilight Princess?
I didn't note any difference though.

@feelix93, I'm actually not sure the FPS cap differs between the 50Hz and 60Hz version of this game, gotta check it out!

Also, I updated the list with 87 games tested and 56 games stated as playable!
I also made a F-A-Q style guidelines in the first post to help users of all sorts (from newbie to confirmed) setting/tweaking up Dolphin on their SHIELD, it might also help other users too!

Sorry for the long time without update, I actually had a big problem with my adopted storage on the SHIELD so I pretty much lost everything in there...

If a moderator/admin come across this post, what happened to [color] support? It messed-up my entire post, and I've seen many other topic with [color] all over the place!