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Nintendo GameCube

The Nintendo GameCube is a console developed by Nintendo. It was released in 2001.

Nintendo Gamecube is emulated through the Dolphin emulator, which is the same emulator we use for the Nintendo Wii. Its emulation performance are stunning, and it offers several options to enhance the graphic quality of the Gamecube titles, that can be upscaled and look gorgeous, even by today's standards, if your PC can support it.

Some of the options for enhanced visual quality are available from the “Advanced System Options”. In particular you can enable a higher VIDEO RESOLUTION that will upscale the 3D models to a higher resolution, in combination with the use of HIRES TEXTURES.

This system scrapes metadata for the “gc” group(s) and loads the gc set from the currently selected theme, if available.

Quick reference

  • Emulator: Dolphin
  • Accepted ROM formats: .gcm, .iso, .gcz, .ciso, .wbfs, .rvz, .elf, .dol, .m3u
  • Folder: /userdata/roms/gamecube

BIOS

No Nintendo GameCube emulator in Batocera needs a BIOS file to run.

ROMs

Place your Nintendo GameCube ROMs in /userdata/roms/gamecube.

Emulators

Dolphin

For general information about the Dolphin Emulator itself, you can also visit the Dolphin Emulator page.

Dolphin configuration

Standardized features available to all cores of this emulator: gamecube.videomode, gamecube.ratio

ES setting name batocera.conf_key Description ⇒ ES option key_value
Settings that apply to all cores of this emulator
GRAPHICS BACKEND gamecube.gfxbackend Choose your graphics rendering
⇒ OpenGL OGL, Vulkan Vulkan.
UBERSHADERS gamecube.ubershaders Improve performance with Ubershaders (may not work well on all hardware); asynchronous is preferred, synchronous is more compatible
⇒ No Ubershaders synchronous, Ubershaders (synchronous) synchronous_ubershader, Ubershaders (asynchronous) asynchronous_ubershader.
PRE-CACHE SHADERS gamecube.wait_for_shaders Wait for shaders to compile completely before starting the game, can reduce micro-freezes
⇒ Off (default) 0, On 1.
PERFORMANCE HACKS gamecube.perf_hacks Increase emulator performance, at the cost of accuracy/stability
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
USE PAD PROFILES gamecube.use_pad_profiles Search for custom configured joystick profiles
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
VIDEO RESOLUTION gamecube.internal_resolution Improve the fidelity of 3D models (does not affect 2D sprites)
⇒ 1x native (640×528) 1, 2x 720p (1280×1056) 2, 3x 1080p (1920×1584) 3, 4x 1440p (2560×2112) 4, 5x (3200×2640) 5, 6x 4K (3840×3168) 6, 7x (4480×3696) 7, 8x 5K (5120×4224) 8.
ANISOTROPIC FILTERING gamecube.anisotropic_filtering Enhance the quality of distant perspective textures
⇒ Off 0, 2x 1, 4x 2, 8x 3, 16x 4.
DUAL CORE MODE gamecube.dual_core Usually not much faster than single core mode
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
GPU SYNC gamecube.gpu_sync Speed hack for dual core mode to fix some glitches
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
ANTI-ALIASING gamecube.antialiasing Smooth out jagged edges on 3D object polygons
⇒ Off 0, 2x 2, 4x 4, 8x 8.
ANTI-ALIASING MODE gamecube.use_ssaa Toggle MSAA/SSAA. Depends on anti-aliasing being enabled.
⇒ MSAA (default) 0, SSAA 1.
HIRES TEXTURES gamecube.hires_textures Use HD texture packs
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
WIDESCREEN HACK gamecube.widescreen_hack You must use a 16/9 RATIO to work
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
ENABLE CHEATS gamecube.enable_cheats To use game cheats or 16/9 Aspect Ratio Fix codes
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
MEMORY MANAGEMENT UNIT gamecube.enable_mmu Allows many games to boot and work properly
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
FAST DISK SPEED gamecube.enable_fastdisc Speeds up disc speed to remove any loading
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
VSYNC gamecube.vsync Fix the heavy screen tearing in games (CPU heavy)
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
DUALSHOCK MOTION CONTROL gamecube.dsmotion Emulate the Wii pointer with your DS4's gyroscope
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
MOUSE AS IR WIIMOTE gamecube.mouseir Emulate the Wiimote IR control with a mouse
⇒ Off 0, On 1.
RUMBLE gamecube.rumble To use vibration on games with Rumble mode
⇒ Off 0, On 1.

Controls

Here are the default Nintendo GameCube's controls shown on a Batocera Retropad:

GameCube adapter for Wii U USB passthrough

In a similar fashion to using Bluetooth passthrough for Wii controllers, you can use USB passthrough to allow Dolphin to entirely handle the GameCube controllers from your adapter.

Download the following file:

51-gcadapter.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", ATTRS{idVendor}=="057e", ATTRS{idProduct}=="0337", MODE="0666"

Save it as a udev rule to userdata/system/udev/rules.d/51-gcadapter.rules (there is no need to “reload” the udev rules, if you want to be sure just reboot Batocera).

You must activate “Custom Pad Profile” and select “GameCube Adapter for Wii U” in Dolphin's controller settings. Boot up Dolphin, attach the Adapter, and it should become selectable.

You can access Dolphin's menu in-game with [Alt] + [Tab] to do this.

Custom Pad Profile

Since v31, it's possible to create and save custom pad profiles for GameCube (Dolphin emulator)

All you need to do is to go to pads options on Dolphin emulator by pressing the F1 key from system menu on EmulationStation.

Here, you can customize and save buttons mapping, and stick calibration.

Only one profile per pad.

After that, you simply need to set the USE PAD PROFILES option (in Dolphin advanced options on EmulationStation) to TRUE and your custom profile will be loaded.

Pad profiles are saved in /userdata/system/configs/dolphin-emu/Profiles.

Troubleshooting

There are infrequent frame-drops in my games despite them running at full-speed most of the time

Your GPU might not be strong enough to calculate the caches in real-time while playing. This can be worked around by activating the PRE-CACHE SHADERS gamecube.wait_for_shaders setting, at the cost of having to wait a while on your next launch of the game (one time only).

It's still happening!

For exceptionally weak hardware, it might also be worth turning off UBERSHADERS gamecube.ubershaders altogether.

Further troubleshooting

For further troubleshooting, refer to the generic support pages.

  • systems/gamecube.1637975322.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 5 years ago
  • by atari