Dolphin is considered the best GameCube and Wii emulator, and we’re delighted to inform you about the release of its 3.5 version. This new version features shader cache optimizations (resulting in reducing the stuttering to a point where Red Steel 2 got playable with full FPS), UI refinements and Gamecube microphone support.
We should also note that Dolphin works – and looks – great with Nvidia’s 3D Vision, so make sure to run the games in 3D mode if you own Nvidia’s 3D pack.
Those interested can download Dolphin 3.5 from here.
Here is the changelog for this latest version of Dolphin:
•Gamecube BBA support: Gamecube games supporting online mode using Nintendo’s BBA (ethernet adapter) can now be played online on Dolphin. This includes Mario Kart: Double Dash 8 players mode support, as well as Phantasy Star Online.
•Gamecube microphone support: The 6 Gamecube games using a microphone (Mario Party 5/6 for example) can now use your system configured microphone to get audio input.
•WBFS support: If you dumped your games as WBFS files in order to play your dumps on a real Wii, you can now use the same WBFS files on Dolphin. WBFS includes features such as compression and splitted files (to avoid the FAT32 4GB file size limit).
•Free replacement for the DSP LLE ROMs: DSP LLE normally requires you to dump ROMs from your real Wii. This free replacement, while working only with some Mario and Zelda games, removes this requirement.
•Wiimote support on OS X Mountain Lion: The latest version of Mac OS X brings several Bluetooth changes, breaking Wiimote support with Dolphin 3.0. Dolphin 3.5 supports real Wiimotes, including MotionPlus addon, on OS X 10.8.
•TAS and recording improvements: Read only mode, better determinism, more checks to avoid using wrong settings or wrong version of a game when playing back a movie, bongo recording support.
•FreeBSD support: Rather theoretical than anything else, but worth a note. OpenGL backend may or may not work for you.
•UI refinements: New wiimote configuration dialog, improvements to the game list sorting, minor changes to simplify usage.
•Wii disc integrity checking: Use Dolphin to check if your dumped Wii game is corrupted.
•Improvements to the custom textures feature: Improved stability, added support for custom mipmaps, removed texture size limit.
•Shader cache optimizations: Reduced stuttering to a point where Red Steel 2 got playable with full FPS.
•A lot of minor emulation fixes: Texture preloading implementation, better FIFO emulation, HLE audio fixes, more accurate DSI/FPU exceptions, …
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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