Dolphin Offers a New Way to Emulate Classic Nintendo Games
When the Steam Deck’s announcement, the term “emulation” was on everyone’s lips. In theory, we’d end up with a handheld gaming platform capable of running any game ever, including older never-sold-anymore Nintendo games. Assuming emulation software was accessible enough, of course. And accessibility was a big concern there – just picking up a steam game is pretty easy. But downloading a whole independent system, handling setup yourself, and migrating everything onto a Steam Deck? Still possible, but perhaps more daunting than your average gamer is willing to bother with. You know, compared to the alternative.
But no more! Dolphin’s jumping in on Steam itself, reducing that access barrier as much as possible. With its presence, it’ll be infinitely easier to play Nintendo’s entire catalogue of Wii and Gamecube games.
Some may view this as asking for a lawsuit. Nintendo’s been famously litigious when it comes to certain fields, after all. But Steam has already hosted a selection of emulators in the past, including 3dSen, which targets vintage Nintendo Entertainment System games. But given Dolphin’s prominence in the emulation scene, they might be a much larger blip on Nintendo’s radar. Only time will tell how Nintendo may respond to this, if at all.
“When we launch on Steam, we’ll have a feature article detailing the process and features of the Steam release,” Dolphin contributor MayImilae writes on the official blog. “We’re pleased to finally tell the world of our experiment. This has been the product of many months of work, and we look forward to getting it into users’ hands soon!”