Playing older games proves difficult. Many players lost their old console, and buying a used one in good condition has become hard and expensive. Yet, there are other ways to play old games than using the original console. One solution is to use an emulator. This is a piece of software that enables you to play games designed for another platform by emulating the platform.
Dolphin is a program that enables you to play games that were originally designed to run on the Nintendo Gamecube and Wii consoles. Installing it is quite easy, and it contains no adware. The interface is also quite easy to use. The main interface is kept simple, while the settings screen contains more fine-grained options. If you're not comfortable with settings, this is not a problem as Dolphin will run out of the box without any issue. However, if you're more tech-savvy, you will feel at home since there are a lot of options. And this is one great advantage Dolphin: keep it simple for average users, but don't frustrate experts by limiting their control.
Compatibility-wise, Dolphin is very successful. With 85% of games that run perfectly or have minor issues, it is miles away from similar programs. Also, it is able to greatly upscale and improve the graphics of the games that you run. The result is very neat, you can play on big screens without seeing pixels, which is quite an impressive feat considering the original resolution of the Wii.
All in all, Dolphin is an easy-to-use Wii and Gamecube emulator, but it nonetheless doesn't keep skilled users at bay with its wide range of options.
v5.0 [Jun 25, 2016]
The long awaited Dolphin 5.0 release is finally here! After nearly a year of bug-hunting and handling the release process, everything has come together for our biggest release yet! The three previous releases followed a very distinct pattern: sacrifice performance, hacks, and features in exchange for higher accuracy. As such, Dolphin 3.0, 3.5, and 4.0 progressively grew slower. But thanks to the cleanups put forward throughout those releases, Dolphin 5.0 is the fastest Dolphin has ever been!
By removing all of those hacks and outdated features while cleaning up the codebase, Dolphin has reached a new level of efficiency, powered by a revitalized dynamic recompiler. On the GPU side, OpenGL and D3D11 have seen tons of optimizations and accuracy improvements, and have been joined by a brand new D3D12 backend for huge performance gains. If there's a CPU or GPU extension that can make Dolphin faster, we take advantage of it.
At a basic level, Dolphin 5.0 is more accurate and more efficient than previous builds in every way. Individual games will vary, especially due to various hacks being removed along the way. Dolphin 5.0 can be downloaded for Windows and Mac OS X from our official website: dolphin-emu.org.
Great platform for gamers who want to have access to all their favorite Electronic Arts games in one place
