Running Gamecube games on the Wii?

Yes, the Wii can of run Gamecube games, unfortunately it doesn't do it very well. I'm not entirely sure how the Wii does it (I'm sure many of the developers here are quite capable of explaining that better than I ever could) but it seems to have abosolutely no Wii-centric fuctions, you have to treat the thing as if it was an actual GC, with wired gamecube controllers, memory cards and no easy way of getting back to the System Menu.

What would be involved in running GC games in a way that takes advantage of the Wii? It would be fantastic to be able to wrap controls to the Classic Controller, save to the on-board NAND or an SD card and perhaps even get some extra performance on some of the more demanding games. The ability to use the Home button would be pretty awesome as well.

I'm just throwing the idea out there.

Not possible afaik. You see, when you launch a GameCube game, it effectively turns the Wii into a GameCube. It locks out all hardware not present in GC, and uses the same software as GameCube for running the games, because they're both made by Nintendo, and they can do that sort of thing. For it to boot in Wii Mode, there'd have to be an AMAZING emulator, because I'm pretty sure its not possible to access the GameCube mode and still keep Wii hardware active. I've probably explained this badly, and not made you understand any more than you did already, but hopefully someone else can improve my explanation.

I'm well aware that when running in Gamecube mode it blocks out all Wii features by running the code in a sandbox, likely for security reasons (by the time the Wii was made the Gamecube's security was cracked wide open). However, I doubt an emulator would be needed, more like a wrapper. The hardware is almost identical, there wouldn't be a need for any code recompilation, only a software layer to translate gamecube-only functions into wii functions, as well as fixing up other GC specific features.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2009 03:47PM by SwissCM.

this should be in your intrests

Well, its been discussed before, I think there's a thread in Ideas and Requests, check it out.

about my above post's hyperlink:

MIOS is the gamecube compatability layer
BC is the Loader for it

Theres tons of reasons why this wouldn't work (thus why Nintendo can't do it).

Let's start with the basics:

1)The Gamecube runs under MIOS, the Wii under IOS -- They are entirely incompatible with each other

2)You can't apply a software patch to games when they launch from the Wii (AFAIK low level architecture limitation) (cheat codes are different, they are not a patch)

3)The Wii SDK holds the Wii Control infos, the GC SDK the GC Controller infos. How would you get the Wii controller infos to replace the GC controller infos? In short: You can't (infos used for lack of a better term)

Now some replies to some comments already made:

Quote
SwissCM
...only a software layer to translate gamecube-only functions into wii functions, as well as fixing up other GC specific features.

That is emulation.

Quote
SwissCM
likely for security reasons (by the time the Wii was made the Gamecube's security was cracked wide open)

There's essentially no security differences at all. This is why modchip manufacturers were pumping out modchips only mere weeks after the Wii was on the market.

In general:
How can you seriously complain about backward compatibility? Most game companies exclude it (Sony -- doesn't allow PS2 games in some models of the PS3 Microsoft -- Some XBOX games won't work. Originally, none did.) The gamecube games run perfectly as intended.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2009 07:16PM by Arikado.