This tutorial is about how to play Wii & GC games on your computer with the dolphin emulator. Dolphin is an open-source Nintendo GameCube, Wii, and Triforce emulator for Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (Intel-based). It is the first emulator to successfully run commercial Nintendo GameCube and Wii games and is the only emulator capable of running commercial Wii games. Its name gives reference to the Nintendo Dolphin, which was the development codename for the GameCube.

Tutorial

Step 1 - Download Dolphin here.

http://www.dolphin-emu.com/downloads.php

Step 2 - Once you downloaded it install it and follow all instructions to setup Dolphin. Once installed you can then play Wii and GC game by either running backups disks or ISO'z of games. Further, to obtain Wii and GC games I would recommend either backing up your games with a LG GDR drive which more info can be found on the internet or by obtaining games from other sources, of which I recommend Retro-burner.

Step 3 - Before playing games load the emulator and configure all the plugins prior to playing by first clicking the options menu and then clicking Configure. For the best settings for specific games, see the individual game posts in the Game Discussion forum.
For most games The best config is as follows:
*ON: Dual Core, Idle Skipping, HLE the BIOS all the time, Enable the JIT dynarec, Lock Threads to cores, Optimize Quantizers, LLE DSP on Thread, Confirm on Stop.
*OFF: Use Panic Handlers.

Step 4 - In the second tab, you can set your language, controller types, and paths to memory cards. For most games, the defaults will be fine.

Step 5 - The next tab over is the Wii tab, Most Wii games prefer Progressive Scan on, but some do not, if you're having difficulties playing some wii games, you might want to disable this. You can also set sensor bar location, screen saver, aspect ratio and language. These are all you own preference options, the other option is called Enable EuRGB60 Mode (PAL6) Use this if playing PAL games.

Step 6 - The following tab is the Paths Tab. In this tab add the paths to your roms, you might also want to set it to use subfolders depending on how you have your folders setup with your roms. Simply click Add, and browse to the location of your roms and click OK.

Step 7 - The last tab is the Plugins tab, here you can select different plugins for Dolphin to use, Currently there are two video plugins for Dolphin, OpenGL or Direct3D. Direct3D currently runs faster than OpenGL, however has more graphical problems, if you're looking more for quality/compatibility use OpenGL, if the game seems to work with Direct3D without problems, you might be better off with it. Next is the DSP plugin, and you have 2 choices here, HLE and LLE. Unless you're just testing things on LLE, you're better off using HLE for the DSP plugin. (this is mostly for audio) The Pad plugin is for your controller or Keyboard setup, best to use nJoy 0.3, but you can play with the others and see which ones work best for your controller/keyboard. Last is the WiiMote plugin, there is only one as of this time.

Step 8 - Click OK on this and click Options and select Graphics. Here you have options to setup resolution, aspect ratio, filtering, vsync, rendering to main window, post processing shaders, etc. Most of these are going to be your own preferences, If you are setting your own resolution and not using the native one, you should turn on Auto Scale.

Step 9 - In the Graphics tab configuration, here's where the dolphin game discussion forum will come in handy, most people have listed the best settings for most games online.
- The top portion is informational, most of these you'll just leave off, I like to have FPS displayed so I turn that on.
- The Rendering portion is where you can disable certain features depending on the game, they require different settings. EFB Copy for the most part should be set to Copy EFB to system RAM. But again some games require this to be different.
- Below these is the Utilities, most of the time you'll just leave these disabled. Free look is kind of fun, but not useful to playing the game.
- Below that we have the hacks. Here's some of the hacks that help games to work better or work at all. Unless the game you're playing needs the hack, it's best to set this to none. Safe Texture cache is mainly for the Metroid Prime series, this should be off unless you're playing those games.

Step 10 - Now click Close on that window, From here click Options and go to DSP Settings. Here you can set the volume and Audio and DSP settings, most games will use HLE Audio, DTK Music and Other Audio, enabled. RE0 fix is just a fix for Resident Evil game. should be disabled unless you are playing that game.

Step 11 -Click OK on that screen. Now all you have to do is set up your controller settings in the options. (Options -> Pad Settings or Wiimote Settings for Wiimote) These screens are pretty self explanatory just click the button you want to setup and press the button on your controller or keyboard you want to set it to.

Step 12 - Once you have configured everything you can now click on a game which should appear in the list as long as you have backed up your game into an ISO/Rom correctly and have the directory settings correct. You can now enjoy all the old school Gamecube and new Wii games. Enjoy!!!!! :-)


N.B. Dolphin is still in development so please understand this and if you find a game that runs buggy check their info and then possibly send them and email to let them know.

N.B. To create a backup of your nintendo Wii or Gamecube disk you require a special DVD drive in your computer to backup games. Generally the LG GDR series work however the best bet to find a suitable drive would be to find one on an online site like ebay or search on google for other compatible drives.
Credit goes to:

*Dolphin Emulator Team
*Retroburner
*Wikipedia (Dolphin)