Gaming Gamecube Emulator confirmed?

[BvanBart]

So we already knew that for people in China there is a thing going on so that Nvidia Shield owners can play certain Wii games.

Now this video popped up on Youtube... What do you think?

 

[sansnumen]

This is merely baseless speculation. The Switch is nowhere near as powerful as an Nvidia Shield.

 

[DBlaze]

This is merely baseless speculation. The Switch is nowhere near as powerful as an Nvidia Shield.

Isn't it using the same chip, but underclocked though?
If that's true they can just clock it to the normal speeds, granted it won't overheat and just throttle again anyway, like the shield does as well.

 

[BvanBart]

This is merely baseless speculation. The Switch is nowhere near as powerful as an Nvidia Shield.

That is new for me? I thought apart from the housing it is 1:1?

 

[sansnumen]

That is new for me? I thought apart from the housing it is 1:1?

The Shield has 3GB RAM vs 4GB on Switch. The A57 cores on the Shield run at ~1.9GHz while on Switch they run at ~1.0GHz. The X1 runs 90 percent faster on the Shield. That speed boost is very beneficial for emulation.

 

[isoboy]

Those 4 godly gb of ram on the switch allows for 900 golden shits in Zelda whereas a shield version would only be able to contain 765 due to it's 3. It's damn powerful hardware. (Wii U is just magic.)

 

[KiiWii]

Havent been following this recently but:

Someone on resetera stated that some dolphin team members were hired to help nvidia with this? Is that known fact or conjecture?

Looking forward to seeing these dumped files when they appear.......

 

[Jayro]

This is merely baseless speculation. The Switch is nowhere near as powerful as an Nvidia Shield.

Depends on the Shield at stake. It's more powerful than my Shield Portable, with it's Tegra 4 Processor. (The predecessor to the K1 and X1 chips)

 

[InsaneNutter]

Nintendo should be able to optimize a GameCube or even a Wii emulator pretty well for the Switch.

Here is a random old video of my PC emulating a Wii game in 720p almost 9 years ago:



Specs at the time:
Core2Duo E4500 @ 2.93Ghz
Geforce 8800GT 256MB
4gigs Ram
Vista x64

Granted comparing the Switch to an old Core2Duo CPU is like comparing Apples to Oranges, however if a mid-range PC could do that almost a decade ago i'd like to think the Switch is more than capable, especially with the resources Nintendo has to make it happen officially.

 

[BvanBart]

Nintendo should be able to optimize a GameCube or even a Wii emulator pretty well for the Switch.

Here is a random old video of my PC emulating a Wii game in 720p almost 9 years ago:



Specs at the time:
Core2Duo E4500 @ 2.93Ghz
Geforce 8800GT 256MB
4gigs Ram
Vista x64

Granted comparing the Switch to an old Core2Duo CPU is like comparing Apples to Oranges, however if a mid-range PC could do that almost a decade ago i'd like to think the Switch is more than capable, especially with the resources Nintendo has to make it happen officially.

Nice vid.! Lets hope we see this pretty soon . With all the positive PR about the Switch lately things should not be to long away...

 

[Jayro]

I also have faith that they could make it happen.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Isn't it using the same chip, but underclocked though?
If that's true they can just clock it to the normal speeds, granted it won't overheat and just throttle again anyway, like the shield does as well.

That may be possible, how well ventilated is the switch vs the shield, also depends on the heatsinks.

 

[SoslanVanWieren]

The Shield has 3GB RAM vs 4GB on Switch. The A57 cores on the Shield run at ~1.9GHz while on Switch they run at ~1.0GHz. The X1 runs 90 percent faster on the Shield. That speed boost is very beneficial for emulation.

they can change it with an update

 

[Captain_N]

neither method. ima use an actual gamecube.....

 

[gman666]

IF they are able to run an emulator on the switch... It would most likely run at 720p or less, and there would have to be some hacky workarounds for playable emulation. I don't see Nintendo releasing many titles if they were to re-release Gamecube games. They'd probably choose the least demanding titles first.

 

[SoslanVanWieren]

i bet it won't get gcn emulation due to the down clocked cpu its down clocked because it would overheat if it was not.

 

[gman666]

Havent been following this recently but:

Someone on resetera stated that some dolphin team members were hired to help nvidia with this? Is that known fact or conjecture?

Looking forward to seeing these dumped files when they appear.......

This seems so unbelievable, but apparently it is a former Dev from the Dolphin team. I've seen a few statements from Twitter and Resetera as well, but I would love to know the story behind this, and what it could mean for Dolphin development for Android devices. A Dolphin contributor, Atelier Fiora, has stated that someone she knows was hired for Wii implementation or sumthin... Not sure how credible that is tho

 

[ShadowOne333]

Homebrew all the way due to two game changers:
Emulation options and Cheats.

I can bet my whole reproductive system (and not just one testicle) that IF Nintendo ends up releasing Gamecube and/or Wii Virtual Console to the Switch, they will continue their stupid trend of releasing the emulators with no options for the end user.

What options?
Well, aspect ratio is the starting one, and they will have Gamecube locked at 4:3, even though a great variety of GC games support native 16:9.
Second, forced filters (darker screen) and changes to certain games will most likely come due to recent changes in videogame policies.

Really, the only thing they will be adding is customizable controls and that's about it, no screen ratio options, nor filters or at least border images if they keep their obnoxious 4:3 ratio.

No thanks, I'd much rather play my GC library through homebrew emulation, with proper 16:9 output and Widescreen cheat codes for games that have them. I don't care if I play them in upscaled 720p, both GC and Wii games look awesome in that resolution.
Same applies to all other consoles covered by the VC service.

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

Homebrew all the way due to two game changers:
Emulation options and Cheats.

I can bet my whole reproductive system (and not just one testicle) that IF Nintendo ends up releasing Gamecube and/or Wii Virtual Console to the Switch, they will continue their stupid trend of releasing the emulators with no options for the end user.

What options?
Well, aspect ratio is the starting one, and they will have Gamecube locked at 4:3, even though a great variety of GC games support native 16:9.
Second, forced filters (darker screen) and changes to certain games will most likely come due to recent changes in videogame policies.

Really, the only thing they will be adding is customizable controls and that's about it, no screen ratio options, nor filters or at least border images if they keep their obnoxious 4:3 ratio.

No thanks, I'd much rather play my GC library through homebrew emulation, with proper 16:9 output and Widescreen cheat codes for games that have them. I don't care if I play them in upscaled 720p, both GC and Wii games look awesome in that resolution.
Same applies to all other consoles covered by the VC service.

But I think the biggest reason for homebrew over Nintendo's solution is that, if Nintendo really did make a GC emulator for use on Switch, it would be to package it with single pieces of software and sell it a la carte as Virtual Console titles. That means only a select library of games are playable in the first place. Whereas with a homebrew solution, you could theoretically load any GC iso you wanted. Nintendo's clearly not gonna sell a whole emulator to you for loading your own .isos.

 

[Xzi]

The Shield has 3GB RAM vs 4GB on Switch. The A57 cores on the Shield run at ~1.9GHz while on Switch they run at ~1.0GHz. The X1 runs 90 percent faster on the Shield. That speed boost is very beneficial for emulation.

1.0GHz is plenty enough for GCN emulation if you optimize for multi-core support. Native internal res is low af.