Homebrew Official Retroarch WiiU (wip.)

[jul16ares]

Which shaders do you use to get an image close to a CRT display?

For compile Shaders, we need proprietary code. The ones do exists are very heavy demanding on the console. Better use filters, part of RA package

 

[CORE]

CRT Overlays would be a better Option less demanding , just do a web search 1080 and 720 CRT Overlays RetroArch or similar.

 

[Check120]

CRT Overlays would be a better Option less demanding , just do a web search 1080 and 720 CRT Overlays RetroArch or similar.

To have CRT aspect, I use the shader crt-easymode with scaling x3 and bilinear filtering. No slowdown for most cores except for Mame depending the game.

 

[sasja-san]

PART 1 - A Simple CRT Look

Which shaders do you use to get an image close to a CRT display?

For all this, my Wii U is set to output 1080p in the Wii U Settings menu.

I'm doing all this on version 1.21.0 (git: 31e54ca) on Tiramisu. Check yours in Main Menu >> Information.
First you need to have some shaders compiled for the Wii U.
Google something like "wii u retroarch shader zip", find some instructions and install. Retroarch provides "Update Slang Shaders" but I don't think that one works.

The first thing you need to do is to is in Settings >> Video >> Scaling:
Integer scale: ON
Integer Scale Axis: X+Y (removes MANY weird screen artifacts)
Integer Scale Scaling: Smart (my preference, you may like Underscale better)
Aspect Ratio: Core provided
Bilinear Filtering: OFF (shaders will handle it)
Crop Overscan: ON

From now on all settings are reached from Main Menu >> Quick Menu.

Let's start with SNES. I would recomend you load up something like Kirby Super Star because it has a lot of blank single colored surfaces, so any bad artifacts will be instantly visible. I just used the first location when playing Spring Breeze.

Core Options:
Preferred Aspect Ratio: Auto
Crop Overscan: Auto
Hi-Res Blending: Merge (will cause stutters & artifacts in Seiken Densetsu 3 otherwise)
Blargg NTSC Filter: OFF (do it with shaders instead, if you have to)

Now let's set up some shaders! From the Quick Menu, all this done from the Shaders submenu.

A simple one, which just works

Load Preset >> crt >> sd:/retroarch/Load Presetwii-u-slang-shaders/crt/fakelottes.slangp

Shader #0 Scale: 6x (use APPLY CHANGES after changes like this)

Shader Parameters (XXX = change from default, changes are applied instantly):
XXX shadowMask: 2.00
XXX Scanline Intensity: 1.00
XXX warpX: 0.00
XXX warpY: 0.00
maskDark: 0.50
maskLight: 1.50
XXX CRT Gamma: 2.00
Monitor Gamma: 2.20
Scanline Sine Comp A: 0.00
XXX Scan Base Brightness: 0.75

If you find that the performance allows it here are some alternate settings. This works for SNES but is too intense for Sega MD and Neo Geo.

Shader #0 Scale: 9x
xxx shadowMask: 3.00

Or if you don't like the whole shadow mask thing, just turn that setting to 0.00

Picture is of 6x scaling with shadow mask 2.00. I can't get RetroArch to take screenshots after applying shaders, so shitty photos of my TV will have to do

Next: A more complicated shader setting, but it does things like "glow" aroud light elements surrounded by dark graphics.

Post automatically merged: Aug 9, 2025

PART 2 - More Advanced Shader Settings

Here's a photo of what the 9x scaled fakelottes shader looks like, when I took a photo of my TV.

And here's the same scene but rendered with a more complitaced shader. The glow around Diddys ball is not an effect from my camera, but a glow that is being rendered.

This will more or less be crt-easymode-halation. But because the Retroarch menu is pretty shitty when it comes to shader editing this will be something difficult to set up.

Start by loading the preset crt-easymode-halation.slangp and then change Shader Passes to 2 and apply.
Now your list of shaders should be linearize and blur_horiz.

Change Shader Passes to 3, press OK on Shader #2 (N/A) and select crt/shaders/crt-easymode-halation/threshold.slang.

Finally change Shader Passes to 4 and pick crt/shaders/crt-easymode-halation/crt-easymode-halation.slang as your Shader #3. Set this to 4x scale.

So these should be your four shaders, all from the crt/crt-easymode-halation directory. This is pretty much the same as the standard easymode-halation, but skipping over the blur_vert shader improves things a LOT.

• linearize.slang, 1x
• blur_horiz.slang, 1x
• threshold.slang, 1x
• crt-easymode-halation.slang, 4x

I'm too lazy to manually write all the settings, so these photos of them will have to do.

Once you're done with all this make sure to use
Save Preset >> Save Shader Preset As
because all of this is quite tedious to get right, and you don't want to do it again.


As before, the "glow" is not my shitty camera, but actually a property of the rendered image.

As a final trick, to really get that oldschool look, first change crt-easymode-halation to 3x then pick Prepend Preset.
Select crt/tvout-tweaks.slangp, set it to 1x and in Shader Parameter lower the setting TVOut Signal Resolution. If your default is 256.00 then setting it to 192.00 should give you a good CRT vibe with some cozy horizontal bleed. Setting TVOut Composite Enabel will ignore the first resolutoin setting and instead use the values from Y, I and Q.

Here you can see Donovan, first with a TVOut Signal Resolutoin of 512 and later with a resolution of 160. The Sonic 1 waterfall looks quite nice as well.


Note about masks and shader scale
If you have a CRT style shader which comes with a mask setting then changing the shaders Scale setting will surely mess with it. So if you do this final trick mentioned above (TVOut) then you should also change your Mask Type as the resolution scale often produces weird screen artifacts when paired with certain mask types.

That's all I have for now. Happy playing! And have fun tweaking!

 

[90sfan]

How do you get MAME games like Area 51 and Maximum Force working?

 

[depaul]

Hi guys.
The latest Aroma RA build I tried is from the file (RETROARCH WIIU AROMA WIP) shared by @ploggy

Is there any new version of Retroarch for Aroma?
Are new RA builds from official site compatible with Aroma?
Thanks

 

[ploggy]

Hi guys.
The latest Aroma RA build I tried is from the file (RETROARCH WIIU AROMA WIP) shared @ploggy

Is there any new version of Retroarch for Aroma?
Are new RA builds from official site compatible with Aroma?
Thanks

Hi, the latest available Aroma build will always be in my sig.. Currently Aroma RA isn't merged so the build that is on the official site will only be Tiramisu compatible. I know it's not ideal but that's where we are right now

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Hi, the latest available Aroma build will always be in my sig.. Currently Aroma RA isn't merged so the build that is on the official site will only be Tiramisu compatible. I know it's not ideal but that's where we are right now

What kind of timeframe are we looking at for a merge?

 

[ploggy]

What kind of timeframe are we looking at for a merge?

I have no clue :/ work has stopped. I'm sure the dev will work on it again but for now they are working on other projects.
So no timeframe. (but when it does start back up, any updates will be posted here)

 

[MrHaram]

Hey sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but, does anyone else have issues with the aroma build? I'm not able to load any roms, the import function doesnt seem to show the systems I have despite seeing said roms, and closing the app through the home button causes the console to freeze. For that latter issue, I did see some others complain about it too, but I did find closing it by using the exit buttons at least works

 

[depaul]

Hey sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but, does anyone else have issues with the aroma build? I'm not able to load any roms, the import function doesnt seem to show the systems I have despite seeing said roms, and closing the app through the home button causes the console to freeze. For that latter issue, I did see some others complain about it too, but I did find closing it by using the exit buttons at least works

Worked fine for me.
Can you test using a blank SD card?
Or probably backup (rename) old "SD:\Retroarch" folder, extract the 2 folders inside the zip file into SD card.

-Important : Check "Directories" settings in retroarch and make sure the path is correct. I had to manually set folders for my Aroma build since they had wrong path format (incorrect : SD:\retroarch\cores .. correct : vol**:\retroarch\cores)

 

[MrHaram]

Worked fine for me.
Can you test using a blank SD card?
Or probably backup (rename) old "SD:\Retroarch" folder, extract the 2 folders inside the zip file into SD card.

-Important : Check "Directories" settings in retroarch and make sure the path is correct. I had to manually set folders for my Aroma build since they had wrong path format (incorrect : SD:\retroarch\cores .. correct : vol**:\retroarch\cores)

I don't have a spare SD card handy but I did extract the folders a few times with the same outcome. The directories seem to be correct to me "/vol/external01/retroarch/*".

Are you able to use the home bottom to exit the app successfully on your end?

 

[depaul]

I don't have a spare SD card handy but I did extract the folders a few times with the same outcome. The directories seem to be correct to me "/vol/external01/retroarch/*".

Are you able to use the home bottom to exit the app successfully on your end?

Yes, I can press the Home button and return to Retroarch menu.
Just to be sure: you launching Retroarch through the new WUHB icon? and not the old forwarder?

 

[MrHaram]

Yes, I can press the Home button and return to Retroarch menu.
Just to be sure: you launching Retroarch through the new WUHB icon? and not the old forwarder?

I assume so? I did extract the wuhb to /fs/vol/external01/wiiu/apps. Unless i'm overlooking something?

 

[MrHaram]

I assume so? I did extract the wuhb to /fs/vol/external01/wiiu/apps. Unless i'm overlooking something?

Okay I have it working. I wasn't aware I needed to convert my roms to headered versions. I normally use emulators that can play headerless roms

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

How does emulating on the current Aroma build compare to emulating on the Switch?

Also, how does Retroarch compare to vWii homebrew emulators? What does it offer that they don't? Genuinely asking, I'm not shitting on it or anything.

 

[depaul]

Okay I have it working. I wasn't aware I needed to convert my roms to headered versions. I normally use emulators that can play headerless roms

Glad it worked anyway.

How does emulating on the current Aroma build compare to emulating on the Switch?

Also, how does Retroarch compare to vWii homebrew emulators? What does it offer that they don't? Genuinely asking, I'm not shitting on it or anything.

Unlike RA for NSW: no Dreamcast or Saturn core for the WiiU. All systems work fine up to the PS1. The WiiU can load big roms (kof99, kof2003..) that vWii can't.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

All systems work fine up to the PS1.

Up to and including PS1/N64? Full speed?

 

[Dakangel]

Glad it worked anyway.

Unlike RA for NSW: no Dreamcast or Saturn core for the WiiU. All systems work fine up to the PS1. The WiiU can load big roms (kof99, kof2003..) that vWii can't.

Its ironic coz the original Wii Retroarch has cores for CPS2, CPS3, and Neogeo games like kof99 , kof 2003, MvC, Street fighter 3, etc and all work incredible fine.

 

[depaul]

Up to and including PS1/N64? Full speed?

No N64 core. You can use VC injection and they work ok in most cases.

Its ironic coz the original Wii Retroarch has cores for CPS2, CPS3, and Neogeo games like kof99 , kof 2003, MvC, Street fighter 3, etc and all work incredible fine.

Never known that. I only tried the vWii side very long ago and IIRC it had RAM limitation, so roms bigger than 20 MB can't be loaded.