Dolphin Emulator Now Supports Every Gamecube Game

Since its launch in 2009, the best way to play Gamecube (and even a handful of Wii) games has been using the open-source Dolphin emulator. Throughout its life, though, there was one game that Dolphin just couldn’t handle: Star Wars: The Clone Wars. That is, until now. Dolphin’s development team has finally figured out how to emulate the game, meaning that every Gamecube title is now supported by the latest development build of the emulator.

“Every single GameCube game can at least boot in Dolphin 5.0. Except one,” the Dolphin team posted earlier today. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars and its complex way of using the PowerPC Memory Management Unit rendered it unplayable in Dolphin up to this day. But finally as of Dolphin 5.0-540, this challenge has come and gone: Dolphin can finally boot every single GameCube game in the official library.”

“So what makes Star Wars: The Clone Wars so special? To truly understand what’s going on, you need to have some knowledge on how the PowerPC’s processor handles memory management and how Dolphin emulates it,” the blog post explained.

To cut a long story short, the Dolphin team tweaked the emulator’s engine to allow Gamecube games to set up its own custom RAM structure, much in the same way as the Gamecube hardware operates.

This change not only makes Star Wars: The Clone Wars playable, but improves the stability of other playable titles. So, whether you care about Star Wars: The Clone Wars or not, the latest version of Dolphin is sure to enhance your Gamecube emulation experience.

The latest version of Dolphin can be downloaded for Windows PC, Mac, and Android here.