If something characterizes Nintendo, it is that it is not “just another company”, but rather a company that thinks, above all, of the family and of revolutionizing the video game industry. After the great success of its portable consoles, the company wanted to re-open space next to televisions with two consoles that, without a doubt, have changed the way of playing at home: the Nintendo Wii and, later, the Wii U. Two great consoles, with great titles, that are already out of their life cycle.
Emulating these two consoles is possible, of course. But you have to bear in mind that it is not something simple. In addition to having a fairly powerful PC (especially in the case of the Wii U), it must also be taken into account that the controllers of the consoles have movement functions, or screens from which to interact, among other things. Therefore, to be able to use these functions without problems and enjoy the games, we may need additional accessories, such as the original controllers of the consoles.
Being relatively modern consoles, it is not well seen to download their free games from the Internet, although to be honest it is not too difficult to find them. We recommend using these emulators if we once had the console (and it has stopped working) and we have the original Nintendo games in our possession.
Best Wii Emulators
The Wii was a sixth-generation console launched in 2006, and it was active in our country until 2014, when it was discontinued to make way for its successor. It had a 729 MHz processor, a 243 MHz GPU, 88 MB of RAM and 512 MB of internal storage used, mainly, for saved games and some simple app.
Despite its limited power, this console has hosted great games that have made history. And not only that, but it revolutionized the way of playing as a family.
Dolphin
This emulator started out as the first GameCub emulator capable of running the games on this console. However, when the Wii hit the market, its creators decided to make it compatible with this console. And so, it was also the first emulator capable of loading its games.
Dolphin requires a fairly powerful computer in order to obtain high emulation precision and good performance. But if we have it, it is even possible to play the original GC and Wii games in FullHD 1080. It is compatible with all kinds of controllers, network game, game acceleration and much more.
We can download this emulator from the following link .
Dolwin Wii Emulator
Dolwin is another Nintendo Wii emulator that was born from a GameCube emulator. This is one of the few emulators that are still in development for this console, and it is characterized by being completely written in C.
We can download this emulator from this link . Of course, we must bear in mind that it is not capable of running commercial games, only homebrew and demos.
Gcube
This emulator started its development from scratch, not based on a previous console emulator. Your main goal is to be able to run at least one commercial game with 100% perfect emulation. However, so far it has not succeeded. Its developers have limited the ability to load commercial games on this emulator for legal reasons. Therefore, we can only use it to play demos and run homebrew designed for this console.
We can download this emulator from here .
Must-have Wii U emulators
The Wii U hit the market in 2012, in the middle of the eighth generation of consoles. This console left a little aside the typical controls of the previous console to bet on a larger control with an integrated screen. This can be used as a secondary screen in games, or to play the console when TV is not available. If we had the original Wii controls, we could also use them with this console.
Inside we find a 1.24 GHz processor, a 550 MHz graphic, 2 GB of RAM and an internal memory of up to 32 GB. Certainly a worthy successor to the Wii, and a precursor to the Nintendo Switch, which was discontinued in 2017.
Cemu
Cemu is, without a doubt, the most complete Wii U emulator we can find. This emulator is compatible with practically any game on this console, even the most sought after by users, such as Mario Kart 8 or Zelda BotW. However, there are some games that, due to their technical requirements, run very slow on this emulator, or require complex configurations and resource pre-compilations in order to run fairly well.
Its main strength is the customization of games on the go. Cemu allows us to use resource packs that allow us, for example, to improve the graphic quality of games. We can even run them at 4K resolutions, something that the console does not allow anywhere. It has very frequent updates focused on improving performance and correcting bugs, both in the core and when emulating some games.
An emulator as complete as it is complex. We may need to invest some time to get hold of your options and be able to guarantee the correct operation of it if we do not want problems.
We can download this emulator for free from this link .
Decaf
More than an emulator, Decaf is a research project created to see how accurately the Wii U can be emulated. It is a project in constant development and on which its managers are doing a great job. It is an open project which is available to everyone, although they have to compile it on their own. Those who have made it work claim that it has excellent compatibility with commercial games, with some minor bugs. But, of course, it is not an emulator for everyone.
We can access your code and build instructions from here . Also, it is the only one that will work on Linux .
Which Wii and Wii U emulator is better?
There may be a lot of technical ties with other consoles. With these emulators the truth is that no.
If we want to emulate the Wii , the best emulator we can find is Dolphin . This emulator is the most complete of all and the one that works best with all kinds of games. A simple, precise emulator, compatible even with the original controllers of the console, to give us the best gaming experience.
And likewise, with the Wii U there is no room for doubt either. Cemu is the best (and only) home use emulator that we can use. Unless we want to emulate the Wii U on Linux, in which case we will have no choice but to turn to Decaf .
