3 ms·
I recently wanted to play the original Paper Mario, but sadly it's not available on Switch, only Wii U. So I decided to go the emulator route. Dolphin is so goo
by umvi 5y ago
I recently wanted to play the original Paper Mario, but sadly it's not available on Switch, only Wii U. So I decided to go the emulator route. Dolphin is so good that Paper Mario runs better as a Wii U Virtual Console ROM under Dolphin than it does as an N64 ROM under Project 64.
- ravenstine 5y agoProject 64 is pretty dated, though. Surprisingly, it looks like it's now open source, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't always the case, and it sat unimproved for several years. Someone can correct me on this, but that's my understanding. (that isn't to say there wasn't a time where PJ64 was hands down the best N64 emulator) Mupen64plus, in my experience, has been far superior to PJ64 for a long time. These days the emulators have come along enough that the differences can be somewhat trivial, but a decade ago Mupen64plus ran better for me on lower-end hardware and had way fewer idiosyncrasies than PJ64. Comparison: https://youtu.be/W5alOzrL_Hw?t=556 https://youtu.be/W5alOzrL_Hw?t=556 Nevertheless, it wouldn't surprise me if Paper Mario ran better through Wii U Virtual Console on Dolphin than through Mupen64plus! ;)
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y agoDolphin isn't a Wii U emulator, are you confusing it with the Wii?
- umvi 5y agoDolphin can't play Wii U games, but it can play games released on Wii U's Virtual Console platform, which is the case here
- nohr 5y agoI never knew that! This project is just so well done. Always amazing to find out new features.
- umvi 5y agoActually I may have been mistaken. Paper Mario was also released for Wii Virtual Console (not exclusively Wii U) so I may have downloaded that one.
- chungy 5y agoAre those games distributed as Wii titles rather than Wii U? I'd imagine that you can't actually play anything exclusive to the Wii U virtual console.
- umvi 5y agoI'm not sure how it works technically under the hood. I got Paper Mario as a ".wad" file instead of the normal .iso that you see for GC/Wii/WiiU games, and Dolphin was able to load the .wad file.
- chungy 5y agoShall I assume you didn't copy it from your Wii U console? if you downloaded it from somewhere, it probably was the original Wii version.
- DSMan195276 5y agoMy understanding is that `wad`s are specifically for the Wii (and Google seems to back me up on that), so regardless of where they got it from the fact that it was a `wad` means they were playing the Wii version. If it was an actual Wii U version it would be some other format.
- umvi 5y agoAh, you are probably right, my mistake. Unfortunately I can't edit my original comment now. I was under the impression it was a Wii U file since I downloaded it from a reddit link I found that said it was a Wii U Virtual Console title. But, doing some research it was also released for the original Wii VC at some point, so it's likely that's where the file came from.
- TazeTSchnitzel 5y agoThe Wii U Virtual Console games only run on the Wii U.
- container 5y agoI feel like that makes a lot of sense. You're getting the N64 emulation for free from Nintendo there. Of course, Dolphin has to be good enough to emulate the emulator correctly, but somehow seems easier than emulating a complex native GC/Wii game.