Around two years ago, Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, went open source. Today marks the first official release since that magical day. And let me tell you something: Dolphin works really, really well. Give it a shot when you have a chance.
I spent the better part of yesterday tooling around with the emulator—never let it be said I don’t live a charmed life—and was patently shocked with how well it runs games. Granted, I’m packing a beefy video card, so your mileage may vary, but being able to play REmake again is completely fantastic.
Throw in anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, support for gamepads (I used a wired 360 controller) and real Wii remote support (your computer just needs to be able to see Bluetooth devices, otherwise Dolphin will emulate the Wii remote using your mouse and keyboard) and you’re looking at a very fine piece of software indeed.
Here’s a few screenshots of REmake running inside Dolphin. (I think you should be able to click them for a bigger version.) It looks quite good, yes?
For the record, my specs are: Intel Core i7 860 (overclocked to 3.8GHz), ATI Radeon 5970 (adios, paycheck!), and 4GB of RAM. I’d say REmake runs at a full 30 fps, Metroid Prime is anywhere from 30-60 fps (tends to spike here and there), and Twilight Princess runs at 25+ fps. Those are the only ones I’ve really tried so far. And yes, I own all of those games.
