Dolphin (emulator)
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Dolphin 5.0 running on Windows 10
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| Original author(s) | F|RES, ector |
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| Developer(s) | Dolphin Team |
| Initial release | September 22, 2003 |
| Stable release |
5.0 / June 24, 2016
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| Repository | github |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | C++, C, Objective-C++ |
| Operating system | Windows 7 or later, OS X 10.10 or later, Linux, Android 5.0 or later |
| Platform | |
| Size | |
| Available in | 29 languages |
| Type | Video game console emulator |
| License | GNU General Public License version 2+ |
| Website | dolphin-emu |
Dolphin is a free and open-source video game console emulator for the GameCube and Wii that runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. It was the first emulator to successfully run commercial GameCube games, and is the only emulator capable of running commercial Wii games. Its name refers to the development code name for the GameCube.
Dolphin was first released in September 2003 by programmers Henrik Rydgård (ector) and F|RES as an experimental Nintendo GameCube emulator that could boot up and run commercial games. Audio was not yet emulated, and there were performance issues. Many games crashed on start up or barely ran at all; average speed was from 2 to 20 frames per second (FPS).
Dolphin was officially discontinued in 2004, with the developers releasing version 1.01 as the final version of the emulator. The developers decided to revive the project in 2005 and then in 2007 version 1.03 was released with minor improvements and basic sound support.
Dolphin became an open-source project on July 13, 2008 when the developers released the source code publicly on a SVN repository on Google Code under the GPLv2. At this point, the emulator had basic Wii emulation implemented. Upon its open sourcing, various developers were attracted, and development on the emulator has been continuous since, with regular releases of SVN builds. These preview builds and unofficial SVN builds were released with their revision number (e.g., RXXXX) rather than version numbers (e.g., 1.03). As with previous builds, differences between consecutive builds are typically minor.
Dolphin's Wii emulation reached a milestone in February 2009 when it successfully booted and ran the official Wii System Menu v1.0. Shortly after, almost all versions of the Wii OS became bootable.
By April 2009, most commercial games, GameCube and Wii alike, could be fully played albeit with a few minor problems and errors, with a large number of games running with virtually no defect. Improvements to the emulator had allowed users to play select games at full speed for the first time, audio had dramatically improved, and the graphics capabilities were fairly consistent except for a few minor problems.
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Wikipedia