Alright this is pretty cool! RetroArch has been ported to the Wii courtesy of Toad King (the man behind MAME Wii)! For those of you who are not familiar with RetroArch please read this,
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WHAT IS RETROARCH?
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RetroArch is a modular multi-system emulator system that is designed to
be fast, lightweight and portable.
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WHAT IS LIBRETRO?
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Libretro is the API that RetroArch uses. It makes it easy to port games
and emulators to a single core backend, such as RetroArch.
For the user, this means - more ports to play with, more crossplatform
portability, less worrying about developers having to reinvent the wheel
writing boilerplate UI/port code - so that they can get busy with writing
the emulator/porting the emulator/game.
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WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?
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Right now it's unique in that it runs the same emulator cores on
multiple systems (such as Xbox 360, Xbox 1, PS3, PC, Wii, etc).
For each emulator 'core', RetroArch makes use of a library API that we
like to call 'libretro'.
Think of libretro as an interface for emulator and game ports. You can
make a libretro port once and expect the same code to run on all the
platforms that RetroArch supports. It's designed with simplicity and
ease of use in mind so that the porter can worry about the port at hand
instead of having to wrestle with an obfuscatory API.
The purpose of libretro is to help ease the work of the emulator/game
porter by giving him an API that allows him to target multiple platforms
at once without having to redo any code. He doesn't have to worry about
writing input/video/audio drivers - all of that is supplied to him by
RetroArch. All he has to do is to have the emulator port hook into the
libretro API and that's it - we take care of the rest.
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WII PORT
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The Wii port of RetroArch has the following features:
- Switching between emulator cores seamlessly, and ability to install
new libretro cores
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EMULATOR/GAME CORES BUNDLED WITH WII PORT
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The following emulators/games have been ported to RetroArch and are included in
the Wii release of RetroArch.
For more information about them, see the included
'retroarch-libretro-README.txt' file.
- Final Burn Alpha Cores (CPS1 - CPS2 - NeoGeo) [version 0.2.97.26] (**)
- FCEUmm (Nintendo Entertainment System) [recent SVN version]
- Gambatte (Game Boy | Super Game Boy | Game Boy Color) [version 0.5.0 WIP]
- Genesis Plus GX (Sega SG-1000 | Master System | Game Gear | Genesis/Mega Drive |
Sega CD) [version 1.7.0]
- SNES9x Next (Super Nintendo/Super Famicom)
- VBA Next (Game Boy Advance) (*)
- Prboom (for playing Doom 1/Doom 2/Ultimate Doom/Final Doom)
- Mednafen PCE Fast (PC Engine/PC Engine CD/Turbografx 16)
- Mednafen Wonderswan (WonderSwan/WonderSwan Color/WonderSwan Crystal)
All of the emulators listed above are the latest versions currently
available. Most of them have been specifically optimized so that
they will run better on Wii (some games would not reach fullspeed
without these optimizations).
* Some games don't run at fullspeed on Wii (VBA Next is a
RetroConsole Level 2 emulator port). It will be replaced by a
port of gpSP in the near future.
** The biggest Neo-Geo ROMs that can be loaded are around 23+MB in
size, such as Real Bout Fatal Fury 1 and King of Fighters '96.
This is actually the first I've heard of RetroArch and I I'm quite astounded by the unique approach it's taking! What is even more exiting is the future plans for RetroArch,
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What can you expect in the future?
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- An official Android port of RetroArch (no, no App Store 'fee' - 'free'
as in beer AND as in libre - will be the focal point of RetroArch 0.9.
- Port of NxEngine to libretro - runs Cave Story (PC version is already done,
runs on big-endian consoles but has too many bugs to be playable)
- Port of MAME 0.72 to libretro
- Port of VICE to libretro
- Port of ScummVM to libretro
- More emulators, more games that will run on RetroArch
- Lots of other crazy ideas that might or might not pan out
A port of MAME 0.72 to libretro! That's awesome! Now it makes sense way Toad King ditched MAME Wii in favor of this!
Credits
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- Mudlord for his Waterpaint/Noise shaders.
- Hyllian for the xBR shader.
- Opium2k for the nice manual shaders (bundled with PS3 release).
- Deank for assistance with RetroArch Salamander on CFW PS3s and
Multiman interoperability.
- FBA devs for adopting the libretro port.
- Ekeeke for help with the Genesis Plus GX port.
- ToadKing for having done a lot of work on RetroArch Wii.
- Freakdave for helping out with the Xbox 1 port.
(Source)
http://gbatemp.net/topic/333126-retroar ... -emulator/
(RetroArch's Site)
http://www.libretro.org/
Gotta give this a try tonight.