If you are looking for a way to enjoy console games Nintendo Wii or the Wii U on your computer, you will definitely need a wii emulator that it fulfills its mission well. In other words: let it reproduce the game with a high level of quality on the screen of your computer.
Spending hours of fun playing the best Nintendo Wii games wherever we want and without spending a fortune on classic consoles is becoming a more popular way to enjoy these classic games. And all thanks to emulators.
The Nintendo Wii appeared in 2006 and was sold until 2014, at which time its successor, the Wii U, was released. It was a power-limited console (729 MHz processor, 243 MHz GPU, 88 MHz RAM). MB and 512 MB of internal storage. It may seem like a small thing, but with this the Wii managed a spectacular sales success around the world and featured some legendary games. Among them we must mention Mario Kart Wii, Zelda Twilight Princess, Xenoblade Chronicles or the hilarious WiiSports.
However, there is something important to keep in mind: downloading a Wii emulator is perfectly legal. Instead, downloading ROMs is frowned upon and is declared against Nintendo policy. In this post we will limit ourselves to recommending emulators, analyzing the best ones with their pros and cons. We will in no way encourage or recommend downloading ROMs to anyone. It is best to use the Wii emulator to play on the PC with the original nintendo games that we have at home and that we used to use in a console that we no longer have or that has stopped working.
It should also be noted that emulating these two consoles (Nintendo Wii and Wii U) is possible, although not exactly easy.
Firstly, you need a relatively powerful PC, especially if we want to emulate the Wii U. This must be the case if we want it to reproduce all the functions without problems. It is also recommended to use the original controllers of the consoles to enjoy all the functions.
That said, let's review which are the best Wii emulators that we currently have at our disposal:
Cemu
Cemu is considered one of the best emulators of the Wii U console
Cemu is a free emulator for PC users that allows you to play any game on the Nintendo Wii U console. It was created by Exzap and Petergrov and quickly became the great rival of Dolphin. Its great virtues are its high degree of compatibility, its ease of use and its simple user interface.
Its functions are very complete: it can load and save games, change key assignments and even improve the image and graphic quality of games (they can be run at 4K resolutions, if our PC is powerful enough). The emulation is fluid, offering a great gaming experience.
For many users, Cemu is without a doubt best Wii U emulator. Very complete, although somewhat complex. Despite that, it is true that it has difficulty emulating certain games. Those that have special technical requirements or require complex configurations. Emulation in that case is slow and has some bugs.
In any case, Cemu is constantly updated to achieve continuous performance improvements and correct those annoying errors that we referred to before.
Link: Cemu
Decaf, Wii emulator for Linux
Compared to what Dolphin and Cemu offer, the big names that everyone knows in this world of Nintendo Wii emulation, decaf it is a humbler Wii emulator. Does his name come from there decaf (decaffeinated in English)?
To be fair, you have to talk about Decaf more as a project in development than a product. It was born from an environment driven by the user community and therefore does not have the support or updates that would allow it to keep up with its competitors.
But that is not why Decaf ceases to be an option to consider. It is a free emulator that came out as a test. Seeing that it worked well, it gradually gained more followers. Its popularity is well deserved: It is easy to install, has a very simple user interface and perfectly fulfills all the basic functions expected of it.
El main drawback Decaf is that it tends to run at low speeds. This is a problem with the heavier 3D games offered by Wii and Wii U.
Link: decaf
Dolphin
Dolphin is the first name that comes to mind when we think of a Wii emulator. This free tool is perfect for playing all Nintendo Wii games on PC, Mac and Android smartphones. At this point it should be noted that emulating these games requires a lot of power, so if we want to do it on a mobile phone we are going to need a really powerful device. Not just any phone is worth it.
You have to explain something about the origins of Dolphin. This emulator was born for the GameCube console. It can be said that during that period it perfected its operation. So when the Wii appeared, all that knowledge and accumulated experience were used to turn it into an effective Wii emulator.
It is precisely this aspect that is the only weak point of this emulator. For some players, Cemu is better than Dolphin because it is an emulator exclusively focused on the Wii U. It seems like a minor question, because in the end what matters is the final performance, but for some this has its importance.
Without a doubt, the best thing about Dolphin is the large number of configurations it supports and its ease of use. In addition, it is above other emulators in terms of game fluency- It is very rare for the frame rate to freeze, freeze, or slow down. So it's nice to play.
In addition to all this, Dolphin is compatible with all types of controllers, network game, game acceleration and many more options. It might be our favorite from this list of five emulators for Wii.
Link: Dolphin
dolwin
Wii Sports, one of the many games that can be played on a Windows PC thanks to the Dolwin emulator
dolwin It was one of the first Nintendo console emulators to hit the market. It was back in 2005 when it appeared, initially intended to emulate GameCube games. Later it expanded its features and capabilities to be a Wii emulator.
This open source software seemed to have a promising future, but its development stalled and no new version has appeared for a long time. This may be due to the success of other emulators, especially Dolphin, the effective Wii and GameCube emulator that we have listed above.
But Dolwin deserves to be featured in our selection of the best Wii emulators for a number of reasons. The most important is that the project has been resurrected and since 2020 its developers have come a long way to bring it to the same level as its competitors, investigating the characteristics of the GameCube hardware and reverse engineering the technologies used in the emulator.
It can be downloaded as a zip file at the following link:
Link: dolwin
GCube, another Wii emulator option
GCube, a Wii emulator in its early stages with a great future ahead
We close the list with a Wii emulator that, as in the previous case, has great potential. However, it is still in an early stage and therefore its functionalities are still quite limited.
The truth is that GCube you have not yet reached a level of fluent emulation such as Cemu or Dolphin. Another obstacle that its developers have encountered is that of not being able to load the most popular and commercial games for legal reasons. So for now we can only use this emulator to play demos and run homebrew designed for this console. Hopefully as time goes by this will change and GCube will become the five star emulator it aspires to be.
Link: GCube
Conclusion: What is the best Wii emulator? If you have read the post calmly, you will have already understood that there are two names that stand out above the others.
There seems to be consensus that Dolphin is the best option we have to emulate the Wii. This is the most complete emulator, the one that offers the best performance whatever the game. Almost at the same level, perhaps a small step behind, would be Cemu. In any case, there are no big differences between one and the other. Regarding quality and fluency in emulation
The option of decaf It is also important, especially if we are looking to emulate the Wii U on Linux. In that case this is the most appropriate choice.