Dolphin Emulator on Android finally lets you drag your friends into online Gamecube and Wii games

Dolphin Emulator is unquestionably one of the most popular retro game emulators for Android, Windows, Mac, and even a Steam Deck. It’s the first option enthusiasts turn to for Nintendo Wii and GameCube because of its upscaling, custom graphics mods, and easy Bluetooth and USB controller support, among other features. Another advantage of Dolphin is that it lets you play games originally designed for local multiplayer online, enabled by a feature called NetPlay. Traditionally, this feature required a specific mechanism to sync gameplay across multiple devices and was therefore limited to scenarios where all players are on the same operating system—and to desktop environments. That changes now with Dolphin announcing NetPlay support for Android and opening it up for cross-platform gameplay.

In its latest progress report, published earlier today, Dolphin explained the steps taken to enable NetPlay on Android and open it to cross-platform play. The blog notes that NetPlay still relies on a method called lockstep, where emulators on different devices run in parallel, so they only have to record user input rather than account for all scene-related updates. Because this requires games for all players to run at nearly the same pace (and falls back on intentionally delaying frames to stay in sync), Dolphin’s solution was to run the application on a single CPU core—i.e., intentionally limiting its power.

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