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GameCube and Wii emulation on Switch just got easier with Tico
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cm0002 lemy.lol cm0002@lemy.lol
Joined: 2025-02-15
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CerebralHawks lemmy.dbzer0.com cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Joined: 2025-08-18
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Ooh, an Android site that knows what custom firmware is! I'm impressed. (Most Android blogs assume their users are idiots and refer to them as "skins".)

Switch originally ran Android (pre-release; in fact, the Switch is actually just an Nvidia Shield tablet (2014) with some hardware customisations), and I'm not sure it doesn't, to some extent. The OS is very Android-like, in what it presents to the user. They could have customised it more, but it looks and feels like Android (with a custom launcher).

But just like the NDS included the GBA entirely at launch (and in its Lite iteration) and while they removed the port, the hardware still supported the games, I think the Switch can technically run Wii/Wii U code. I'm not sure about NGC. Of course, getting the software to actually do it is another matter entirely.

I like how well Switch emulation runs on my Mac. I feel like Switch emulators do heavier lifting getting the games running on x86-64 (e.g. Intel/AMD PCs running Windows or Linux) than they do getting the games running on macOS, which runs on the same ARM64 platform as phones (both iOS and Android) and Switch. Which they're also doing on x86-64 platforms, meaning they're emulating twice. Once for the OS and once for the hardware, whereas on Macs (Apple Silicon, anyway), they're only emulating the OS. Macs themselves are not good for gaming, but there are some cases where gaming can be good on Macs (if it's optimised for it).

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