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Discussion Wii U is finally getting full speed native Playstation emulation, and it's flying under the radar

Reinhard Schneider

Reinhard Schneider

Forgotten vampire hunter
Pronouns
He/Him
Wii U is touted by us fans as one of the best Nintendo consoles partly because of how good as a legacy enabling console it is, if you have a Wii U you can basically emulate anything up to NDS (via rom injection), there's even a proof of concept port of PPSSPP that can run a small amount of games! However, one of its weakest points is the lack of native full speed Playstation emulation.

The solution for that has been, for years, a patched version of WiiSX that allows Gamepad play and runs on an overclocked Wii mode.

Until now.

On July 18th the user Ploggy reappeared in the gbatemp thread for the Wii U version of Retroarch to reveal the active development of a dynarec for the PCSX ReARMed core for Wii U's Retroarch. From that very version, PSX emulation on Wii U made a huge jump both in performance and compatibility, and sees improvements almost daily.

Sadly, my Wii U is boxed again, but i'm looking into taking it out again, if anything, to follow the evolution of this core and test, just like i did back in the day with the 3DS Playstation core.

So the only thing left is GL implementation, wich would give it full compatibility with the Wii U's GPU, allowing for higher resolution rendering.

The core is easily available for download through Retroarch's online updater, but if you haven't used your Wii U in a while maybe you should fully update Retroarch altogether.
 
TheMoon said:
but it's fucking retroarch. yuck :(
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It's not like you have many options on Wii U.

Honestly, i prefer to stomach any frontend we may have to deal with. I've been waiting for native PSX emulation for years, and at one point even started used WiiSX.

This is huge.
 
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Tangerine_Cookie said:
This is actually pretty incredible to hear, not having followed the WiiU scene at all.
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It's a breakthrough, plain and simple. There have been many attempts but they either never went too far or just plain and simple never started at all, not because of the lack of demand, but because of higher development difficulty and the generally small scene surrounding the console, wich is a shame.

Users had settled with WiiSX and that was it, so no one was expecting this anymore.

PS: This could, potentially, open the door to more cores getting further development, like N64 or Dreamcast wich have been deemed possible, but need a PowerPC dynarec.
 
Frankly, i'm more of a standalone emulator myself, but only whenever it's possible. Retroarch, as a frontend, is manageable when you focus on locating whatever you need instead of diving through countless menus hidden under other menus.

Controller config is indeed a mess.

oomoepoo said:
Not sure how much of this has changed in the meantime but apparently there's been some toxic behaviour from the project leads, mainly towards some developers. They even banned a core from their collection because a dev pointed out some flaws in their system.

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Oh yeah, i read about this, they also compiled PCSX2 as a Retroarch core without the developers' permission, right?
 
"Diving through countless menus hidden under other menus" is the quintessetial RetroArch experience for me, especially if you like tweaking graphical settings (aspect ratio, shaders, etc.) or you are dealing with a more complex system, e.g., N64 (Parallel Launcher only exists to avoid RA UI). Dolphin is the gold standard of a good emulator UI IMHO.

And then yeah, you have all the behind-the-scene drama, with RA folks fucking over the actual people who developed the emulators.

That said, for a niche platform such as the Wii U, RA is a godsend. Nobody was even going to write a stand-alone PS1 emulator for the Wii U, or, well, even a standalone GB emulator for that matter. One way or another, RA made emulating these platforms possible.
 
oomoepoo said:
Not sure how much of this has changed in the meantime but apparently there's been some toxic behaviour from the project leads, mainly towards some developers. They even banned a core from their collection because a dev pointed out some flaws in their system.

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One of the leads harassed Byuu and Byuu's friends, leading to Byuu's suicide. The person has had a track record of doing this in the part and Byuu's desire to run the game with as few hacks through BSNES, rubbed people the wrong way.
 
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Smash Kirby said:
One of the leads harassed Byuu and Byuu's friend, leading to Byuu's suicide. The person has had a track record of doing this in the part and Byuu's desire to run the game with as few hacks through BSNES, rubbed people the wrong way.
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Oh damn. That's new to me :/
That's super ugly
 
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Finally got around to getting this working and I'm thrilled to say it runs like a dream.

WiiU continues to be a retro emulation heaven.
 
Smash Kirby said:
One of the leads harassed Byuu and Byuu's friends, leading to Byuu's suicide. The person has had a track record of doing this in the part and Byuu's desire to run the game with as few hacks through BSNES, rubbed people the wrong way.
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Near was their preferred name, the name you're using is an old alias.
 
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Reinhard Schneider said:
It's a breakthrough, plain and simple. There have been many attempts but they either never went too far or just plain and simple never started at all, not because of the lack of demand, but because of higher development difficulty and the generally small scene surrounding the console, wich is a shame.

Users had settled with WiiSX and that was it, so no one was expecting this anymore.

PS: This could, potentially, open the door to more cores getting further development, like N64 or Dreamcast wich have been deemed possible, but need a PowerPC dynarec.
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tbf, WiiSX isn't bad if you overclock it in vWii mode. Takes away some of the performance issues and you can use the Gamepad with it.
 
epicmartin7 said:
tbf, WiiSX isn't bad if you overclock it in vWii mode. Takes away some of the performance issues and you can use the Gamepad with it.
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Yeah, i was using It before the last time i boxed my Wii U, but it has its own set of issues and to make things worse, my Gamepad has aftermarket sticks so anything that uses them on vWii gets wild drifting.
 
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Booted up Alundra last night through Retroarch and had a great time until I started it up this morning and the game won't load my save file. It's definitely saving since when I booted up a new game to test it out my old file was still there, but it won't load any save file from the title screen when I try.

There's functionally no problem since I can just save state, but I'm annoyed nonetheless.

Edit: Man I can't even load the save state now wtf šŸ˜­
 
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kasparov77 said:
If only we had 3ds emulation...
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epicmartin7 said:
3DS emulation on Wii U would honestly be godsend. Would fill in for that DS Player everyone wanted but never got.
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I would say that's hardly possible. It requires too much CPU for the Wii U to handle it.

TrueBenjamin said:
So how "native" we talking here really? Because the 3ds is a PlayStation unit, and it can run it pretty darn good. Not full speed, but impressively so.
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As far as i tested before i boxed my Wii U again, basically full speed on everything i tested, including some heavy hitters like Gran Turismo 2
 
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