If you’re someone who loves taking a trip down memory lane to replay old games you have fond memories of, there are plenty of great emulators that let you do that, such as PCSX2 for the PS2, RPCS3 for the PS3, and Delta for NES, N64, and DS games.
However, arguably one of the most popular emulators is Dolphin, which lets you emulate hundreds of Nintendo Wii and GameCube games. The emulator was first released in 2003 and has been consistently updated since to support more games and platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Android. And now, over 20 years after the emulator’s launch, it has just released one of its largest updates ever.
In a recent blog post, the Dolphin team announced that the emulator now supports games from the Triforce system, a prominent arcade platform from the mid-2000s, allowing you to play rare arcade titles such as Mario Kart Arcade GP, F-Zero AX, and Virtua Striker 3 for the first time ever via emulation.
What is Triforce?
All but one Triforce game works on Dolphin now
If you’re unfamiliar with Triforce, it was an arcade platform developed by Nintendo, Sega, and Namco that launched in the early 2000s and was based on the Nintendo GameCube’s hardware. However, unlike the GameCube, which ran games from mini-DVDs, Triforce used flash memory to store games and physical cards to save progress, letting repeat arcade visitors pick up right where they left off.
Although Triforce was based on the GameCube, its arcade-focused design made it much harder to emulate than the GameCube and Wii, and after more than a decade of work by a developer named Credin, who teamed up with Dolphin to make this happen, it’s now available in the latest development release of the Dolphin emulator, version 2512-395.
“After many months of review, cleanups, and testing within the team and the community, Triforce emulation is finally here. And it is here to stay,” the Dolphin team said in a blog post.
According to the Dolphin team, almost all the Triforce-based arcade games now run “beautifully” via Dolphin, with Mario Kart Arcade GP and Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 being the most instantly recognizable games you can play, alongside other titles such as F-Zero AX (a futuristic racing game), Virtua Striker 3 (a soccer game), and Gekitou Pro Yakyu (a Japanese baseball game). The only Triforce title that isn’t playable on Dolphin is Key of Avalon, as it requires touchscreen support.
“Triforce games were designed to be a part of an arcade experience, with a cool cabinet, interesting features, and unique control schemes,” the Dolphin team explained. “Through emulation, we were able to bring some of that arcade magic back to these games that no longer have a cabinet to call home.”
Compared to booting up Wii and Gamecubes to play via Dolphin, getting Triforce games to work requires a few more steps, including using a Tridump tool to dump arcade games from an arcade unit and obtaining a component called “Segaboot,” which is required to access the service menu for Triforce and in-game settings. If you’re interested in trying out Triforce games, the Dolphin emulator has a full blog post and explanation of how to do so here.
The Dolphin emulator is available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. So if you’ve always wanted to give it a try, it’s quite accessible. However, it’s worth noting that Triforce games currently work only on the PC and Android versions of Dolphin, though this could change in the future.
