Homebrew What happened to emulators for the Wii?

[clembo2021]

I got into Wii emulation back in 2008 when it was just starting out. It seemed for sure that Wii was going to be the next Xbox, with almost every emulator coming out for all the systems. But then in 09 it seems like 95% of emulator production grinded to a halt except for Tantric and ekeeke. There was a Neogeo emulator that could run lots of roms at nearly 100%, which is amazing. There were also many others that seem to be abandoned after a few beta revisions.

Have people moved on to another platform? Or did people just lose interest in emulation altogether?

 

[lolzed]

There's a sticky up here ya'know

http://gbatemp.net/t260782-emulator-status-updated

 

[whoomph]

Plenty of emulators have had updates this year. Quite a few are being constantly updated.
But there's one incredible machine that the wii is missing from its emulator roster...

Spoiler

 

[koji2009]

(looks at his Wii with NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, N64, PSX, Genesis, Sega Saturn, and many many other emulators)





Nope... The wii doesn't emulate anything... I totally see your point.

 

[Juanmatron]

This happen

Arikado is porting NullDCe with drkIIRaziel to the Wii. You're happy now?

 

[Clarky]

i think the original poster was refering to some of the emus that the original xbox had which haven't made there way to the wii. i recall the genesis/mega drive emu on the xbox being able to run mega cd and 32x games unlike what we have now but as far as my knowledge on such things go many developers used a leaked xbox dev kit to port over the emus and because the xbox was very similar to a pc made it easy to port them. as far as i understand of wii homebrew the only development tools are all written by homebrewers and all emu's have to basically be re-written for the wii, not an easy task. still for what we have right now i couldnt be happier, wii64 and wiisx work a whole lot better than i recall a n64 or psx emu running on the xbox ever did and the scene keeps on growing with the likes of the nds emu and upcoming ones like the dc emu and the vritual boy emu if they ever come out. for what the homebrew community have made with the wii i'm happy

 

[clembo2021]

Yeah, I was referring a lot also to the abandoned emulators in the "Emulator Status" thread. GxGeo, WiiEngine, HugoWii (ekeeke is obviously too busy with Genesis, but someone else could pick it up, his latest updates weren't really anything all that interesting like CDDA support or anything), O2Em, ColEm, Wii Handy, NeoPop, Trojan Wii, AtaWii, etc. etc. etc..

We have lots of emulators, but they all get abandoned early on. All the emulators I listed haven't been updated in well over a year. And it's not like the Wii is an outdated system, as far as I know it's still the best home console for homebrew this generation.

It wouldn't be so bad, but the Xbox homebrew scene also seems abandoned.

 

[Clarky]

i can cannot speak for the emu authors themselves but i guess the reason they have been left is due to the ammount of time needed to see these projects through i guess. i still don't know if the wii can offer much more than the xbox did in terms of emulation but i aint the right person to ask, as for xbox homebrew i dont know if that has been fully disbanded or not, i know the dreamcast homebrew scene still has glimmer of life in it but personally i think the ps3 emu scene might start to pick up soon, hard to say, the xbox 360 has been cracked for quite a while now with its jtag and i have only ever seen a snes emu on it

 

[MrTea]

The original xbox is still numero uno for emualtion (bar a pc). Decent Mame, CPS2, CP3, Neo Geo, Killer Instinct 1/2, Sega CD & 32x, Amiga (full speed with whdload support). Daphne (Laserdisc) etc etc.

We do have some very nice emu's on the wii though... but yeah its a shame its not up to the same standards as to whats on offer on xbox1.

 

[Jacobeian]

We do have some very nice emu's on the wii though... but yeah its a shame its not up to the same standards as to whats on offer on xbox1.

you are comparing two different shits, Xbox emulators were easy to do because both PC & Xbox use the same CPU family (and similar architecture). People did not have to focus very much on the porting effort (which is the hardest part) but could spend all their time bringing new stuff and fancy interfaces. People usually don't realize that guys like Wii64 team are doing 10x much work than anything XPort has done with its leaked SDK and lightly modified open-source PC emulators

 

[whoomph]

So clembo, which games are you desperate to play on O2Em, ColEm, Wii Handy, NeoPop, Trojan Wii, AtaWii, that you can't play now?

I play apb on wii handy a lot. No problems here.

 

[zeedds]

I would like to see the PC Engine emu get arcade card support.

 

[StupidGamer1]

If MAME got a big update on what it could run such as killer instinct and cps 2/3 games, Sega got 32x/scd support and PCE with CD and arcade card support. I would not ask for anything else. This is all I would like on the wii. It's cool that we are getting Dreamcast and Virtual Boy but I would like to see emulators that are running now that are insufficient be updated Namely GXgeo,UAE and Wii64.

 

[MrTea]

We do have some very nice emu's on the wii though... but yeah its a shame its not up to the same standards as to whats on offer on xbox1.

you are comparing two different shits, Xbox emulators were easy to do because both PC & Xbox use the same CPU family (and similar architecture). People did not have to focus very much on the porting effort (which is the hardest part) but could spend all their time bringing new stuff and fancy interfaces. People usually don't realize that guys like Wii64 team are doing 10x much work than anything XPort has done with its leaked SDK and lightly modified open-source PC emulators

I really appreciate all the hard work that homebrew programmers do on the wii (which is why I donate money or contribute when I can to those coders) and playing wiisx, scummvm, all the snes light gun games, operation wolf on mame etc with a wiimote is truly amazing.

I'm just saying that for anyone who wants perfect emulation then the console of choice is surely still the xbox 1 (although the ps3 willl probably take that crown soon?) where you can pick one up very cheap now for about £15 and with little effort have it running all the emu's... and I'd say the majority of people (especially on sites like this) couldn't give 'two shits' if all the emu's on the xbox have been programed from an illegal/leaked sdk?

QUOTE(StupidGamer1 @ Oct 29 2010, 08:17 AM)

If MAME got a big update on what it could run such as killer instinct and cps 2/3 games, Sega got 32x/scd support and PCE with CD and arcade card support. I would not ask for anything else. This is all I would like on the wii. It's cool that we are getting Dreamcast and Virtual Boy but I would like to see emulators that are running now that are insufficient be updated Namely GXgeo,UAE and Wii64.

Well wiiengine is pretty amazing on the wii already for PCE CD (although arcade card support would be lush)... but yeah mame is my love too so hopefully we'll see some sort update in the future? The psp with caching can run loads of mame (including a lot of cave shooters, all cps2 and neogeo), plus sega cd etc and thats not from an illegal sdk (at least I don't think it is?)... so maybe one day somthing might happen like this on the wii too?

 

[Jacobeian]

The answer is simple: not enough people motivated in coding emulators, too much people impatiently waiting for others to feed them with new cool stuff

 

[Bladeforce]

I am still scratching my head as to why someone would want a BBC emulator on Wii. Each to their own I guess. It had crap graphics and sound and the only decent game on it was elite that was released on every platform known to man anyway!

 

[Gabelvampir]

Some people like things other people find pretty crappy.
Hmm, something like Elite on the Wii would be nice. Or something like Elite with modern graphics/physics.

 

[whoomph]

The bbc micro is an important machine that contributed to the development of modern computing and electronics.

However, my love for the bbc micro is deeply rooted in nostalgia. It was the first computer I ever got to use/play on. My primary school had a few of them and I even had a science teacher in secondary school that used one well into the mid 90s.

I'm not gonna beg for a bbc emulator though. There's some so-called 'easily portable' beeb emus in SDL that make me want to try to do it for myself.
Besides, I can still get my fix from PSPBeeb, and pocket beeb through VBA-GX

@Gabelvampir: Have you tried Oolite on PC?

 

[Bladeforce]

My primary school had them and juniour school still glad to get off them and home and play a better machine (C64)

Go boot up the Amiga, C64, Amstrad, Speccy, MSX, Apple II emulators on Wii if you're that desperate to play Elite

Damn I bet even the old DOS PC version works on DOSBOX, speaking of which, what a great idea to go and try it!

 

[StupidGamer1]

Dosbox on my PC pisses me off. Doesn't reckonize my joypad for Mortal Kombat II and Fx fighter doesn't work. GRRR!