Gaming on the Raspberry Pi is reaching new heights thanks to the debut of the Raspberry Pi 5. This new board isn’t available to the public just yet but it will be from October 23. In the meantime, units have been sent to select vendors and makers to see what they could cook up with it before the big release. Today we’re excited to share Leepspvideo’s latest exploration into gaming on the Pi 5.
In the video, Leepspvideo demonstrates his success at emulating the Nintendo GameCube on the Raspberry Pi 5. This is running on an emulator dedicated to the GameCube known as Dolphin. The performance is playable and as long as you keep the Pi plenty cool, it’s going to handle many GameCube ROMs without too much fuss.
Leepspvideo has also tried out Wii emulation using the same emulator. Performance was slower than a real Nintendo Wii, but it was a consistent speed. A little overclocking and active cooling could just make Wii work.
You’ve got a couple of options to choose from when it comes to graphics on the Raspberry Pi 5. It’s also worth noting that since the Pi 5 isn’t even released yet, you can expect updates to many platforms and applications over the coming months once it’s available. That said, Leepspvideo opted to use OpenGL rather than Vulcan as this tool is desperately in need of some attention for the Pi 5.
No additional hardware is necessary to emulate the GameCube, everything onboard the Pi 5 is plenty capable of making it happen. When it comes to actually playing the games, you’ll need something for input. In this case, Leepspvideo is using an Xbox 360 controller but you can use any compatible controller.
Because everything is so new, it’s likely that the emulation performance will only get better in time—especially once users have access to the Pi 5 and can try it out for themselves. Leepspvideo encountered some latency and suggested, as well, that some work would be needed to refine the experience.
If you want to get a closer look at this Raspberry Pi project in action, check out the videos shared to YouTube by Leepspvideo.
