Hadlee Simons / Android Authority
TL;DR
- GameCube and Wii emulator Dolphin just launched Release 2506.
- It has numerous fixes and new features, including breaking the 60fps barrier for the first time.
- The Nintendo Wii catalog is now fully compatible, with the last obscure title fixed.
Dolphin emulator has been absolutely spoiling the emulation community for decades, and today yet another update has dropped to make GameCube and Wii emulation even better. Dolphin Release 2506 has a long list of fixes and new features, some of which are game-changing for compatible titles.
The first fix has to do with audio stuttering on relatively weak machines. The team explained that user reports of audio stuttering are often due to games running below the target framerate. A new system has been implemented to hide audio hiccups better when frames are lost.
Speaking of framerates, another series of fixes targeted frame pacing, which in simple terms is the time between frames. After some investigation, it was discovered that Dolphin suffered from significant variance in frame pacing, which can feel like judder to users who are sensitive to it. After the update, there should be little to no frame pacing issues on any platform.
In terms of graphics, new anisotropic filtering options make games appear more similar to playing on a real console. The GameCube and Wii had native support for anisotropic filtering, but it was quite resource-intensive, so developers chose specific textures to apply it to. Dolphin applied to the filter to all or none of the textures previously, but a new option allows you to use the game’s default settings, which will apply the filter as developers intended.
The final non-compatible Wii game has now been patched to boot in Dolphin.
Perhaps one of the biggest additions is the possibility to emulate games beyond 60fps. GameCube and Wii games were designed for analog televisions, with a hard limit of 60fps built into the systems. Thanks to a clever override added in this update, games like Super Mario Strikers and Mario Strikers Charged can now run at 120fps. Others, like Wind Waker and Super Mario Galaxy, have physics tied to frames, so the hack won’t work.
Dolphin also hit a major milestone with this update, as it can now boot the full GameCube and Wii catalogs. The final title giving trouble was an obscure Wii game called The Daring Game for Girls, but a new patch finally got it to work.
On Android, you can now display your time played for each game. The feature was added in the last major update, so your play times will have started tracking then. However, there wasn’t a way to see those times on Android until this update. You can now long press a game tile and tap Details to see how much time you’ve spent in game.
There are a few more minor changes, such as adding support for PS3 Rock Band guitars and Wii Speak without the original hardware, so check out the full patch notes for more details. The Google Play Store listing hasn’t been updated as of writing, but you can download the latest version for all platforms on the official website.
