Amateur Gamer

Today, after reading an article on one of forums I participate in, decided to download the Wii and GameCube emulator known as Dolphin. Now, before you decide to hang me for using somewhat sketchy software that is normally used to play games without buying them, let me explain myself. Simply, I just wanted to see how far the emulator has come since it was first released and see how well my new computer is able to run some current Wii games. I plan on purchasing a Wii by the end of 2010 and don’t want to ruin my experience with the console by playing a bunch of illegally downloaded games on an emulator.

After downloading Dolphin you have to setup some plug-ins which might be a little difficult for the average user but after tweaking some settings I was ready to try out a Wii game. Dolphin allows for all the Wii remote controls to be easily used via your keyboard. It even allows buttons for shaking in different directions. I decided to test out Dolphin on New Super Mario Bros. Wii which was recently released on November 15th, 2009. I set my resolution to 1280 by 720 and started up the game. The controls worked well because the game has such simple controls to begin with. Now, for some reason, the game seems to run at about 75% speed no matter what I changed the settings to. The frame rate was solid but I guess that is just how the emulator works. I might test it with another game at some other point.

Here is the video.

This program has improved drastically since I tried it out about a year ago and it is quite impressive that it even exists in the first place. Being able to up the resolution of Wii games makes the amazing artwork found in good Wii games even better. I wonder if we’ll see emulators for both the 360 and the PS3 down the road? I guess we’ll see in a couple years.