Can the Wii handle all SNES games full speed and which is considered the best emulator?

saulin · Sunday at 5:36 PM

I just got a CRT TV and I'm trying Retro Games on my Wii

I tried some TG-16 VC titles that support 240p and I was impressed with how sharp and nice they look on the my CRT TV that I started injecting roms for games that do not have 240p support into a wad that has the emulator with 240p support.

I tried Snes9xGX 5.0.2 and I did get SNES games looking pretty good but I'm not sure they did look as good as some of the TG-16 VC titles with 240p support. Is Snes9xGX 5.0.2 the best SNES emulator to use for the Wii?

I did try Yoshi's island and to me it looked like it was running full speed at least of the first couple of levels but maybe it was doing frame skipping? I did not see options for frame skipping in the emulator so I don't know

So my question is does the Wii have enough power for full speed emulation of the all SNES titles, including the ones with special chips like StarFox, Yoshi's island and I believe SFA2? since Nintendo never made a VC releases for Yoshi's island or StarFox for example on the Wii.

JuanMena · Sunday at 6:05 PM

SNES9xGX = Best SNES emulator.

As far as I understand, Virtual Console relies in custom built emulation, meaning, each Virtual Console channel/was has a different version of an emulator/translator, so not all SNES roms will work if injected. You're better off using SNES9xGX, which I remember already supported 240p.

If you're like: "bUt mY cHaNnEls LoOoOk prEttTy" then I guess be prepared for some trial and error. Of course, not saying you shouldn't, just saying SNES9xGX already does a pretty good job.

saulin · Sunday at 6:36 PM

JuanMena said:
SNES9xGX = Best SNES emulator.

As far as I understand, Virtual Console relies in custom built emulation, meaning, each Virtual Console channel/was has a different version of an emulator/translator, so not all SNES roms will work if injected. You're better off using SNES9xGX, which I remember already supported 240p.

If you're like: "bUt mY cHaNnEls LoOoOk prEttTy" then I guess be prepared for some trial and error. Of course, not saying you shouldn't, just saying SNES9xGX already does a pretty good job.

I tried the nightly build from

https://github.com/dborth/snes9xgx

And it does have more options and yes this one is looking better and Yoshi's island appears to be running full speed without frameskip on.

I don't mind emulators. It's just that for TG-16 I was not finding very good emulators. They are very outdated. I found the emulators that were officially released for the VC to look better.

JuanMena · Sunday at 6:42 PM

saulin said:
I tried the nightly build from

https://github.com/dborth/snes9xgx

And it does have more options and yes this one is looking better and Yoshi's island appears to be running full speed without frameskip on.

I don't mind emulators. It's just that for TG-16 I was not finding very good emulators. They are very outdated. I found the emulators that were officially released for the VC to look better.

Ah yes... Turbo Grafx 16 is a somewhat obscure console. For Turbo Grafx 16 in Wii I use RetroArch.

If I'm honest, RetroArch in Wii is fine because of convenience... but for SNES in Wii, SNES9xGX is unbeaten.

Retroarch in Wii can do:
- Nes
- Sega Master System / Megadrive/Genesis
- TurboGrafx 16
- SNES (has some issues)
- GB / GBC / GBA
- Mame 2003
- Neo Geo
- CPS 1 / CPS 2
- CPS 3 at some extent
- Neo Geo Pocket
- Wonderswan
- Atari 2600 / 5200 / 7800
- Spectrum / Commodore / MSX

So yeah it really depends on how you want to suffer and if you're willing to conform. Let's be honest the Wii is no powerhouse, and the emulators are already doing a lot of magic.

Explorer200 · 2026-09-15T16:53:58+0100

JuanMena said:
SNES9xGX = Best SNES emulator.

As far as I understand, Virtual Console relies in custom built emulation, meaning, each Virtual Console channel/was has a different version of an emulator/translator, so not all SNES roms will work if injected. You're better off using SNES9xGX, which I remember already supported 240p.

If you're like: "bUt mY cHaNnEls LoOoOk prEttTy" then I guess be prepared for some trial and error. Of course, not saying you shouldn't, just saying SNES9xGX already does a pretty good job.

Is there any reason to use SNES9xTX for some specific feature over GX or is Tx an old fork of GX that is now inferior to current day GX? Thanks.

grandosegood · 2026-09-15T17:30:36+0100

For me, the most accurate emulator has been SNES9x RX

niuus · 2026-09-16T00:19:32+0100

JuanMena said:
If I'm honest, RetroArch in Wii is fine because of convenience... but for SNES in Wii, SNES9xGX is unbeaten.

You likely don't play a lot of SNES games in its library, or at least not on the Wii.

If you want the "closest to original" experience for SuperFX games (Star Fox games, Stunt Race, etc.), Snes9xGX runs those at an "accelerated" rate, which is a problem inherited from the updated main Snes9x (even Canoe on the Super Nintendo Classic, gameplay is faster than normal). One quickly noticeable example is Star Fox, all its musical cues and pacing are wrong, you can verify it by letting the intro play on your Wii, and compare it to gameplay that uses the cartridges. It has been like this for many, many years. For those, you would need Snes9xRX.

Currently, MSU-1 games are running with issues on GX, music and video skips a lot, while RX is 100% fine. You can playtest MSU-1 games like Street Fighter Alpha 2, Super Road Blaster, or Pasta La Vista, among many others, to see the problem.

Through the years i've been documenting specific game issues with each emulator core. For now, there is no definitive SNES emulator on the Wii (maybe AI will change that in the close future). Each will offer you something.

I have 5.7.0 on the backburner, for which i've been slowly adding some extra stuff (plus the unreleased fixes), I'll probably post it later. I managed to fix some games that never ran before on any GX/RX builds, not a big deal, but it was pretty cool.

Can the Wii handle all SNES games full speed and which is considered the best emulator?

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