Hacking Just how powerful is the Wii U (compared to Wii), and what can be emulated?

[Johnny2071]

Ever since I heard that Yooka-Laylee was canceled on the Wii U, due to technical difficulties, and since modding is now a thing, I begin to wonder.

Just how powerful is the Wii U anyway? Concidering that this is an HD system that can run games like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros., compared to the 3DS, that couldn't run the Ice Climbers (but the Wii U allegedly could).

There's also the fact that the Wii itself had hardware limitations as well, especially when it came to homebrew and emulators such as Wii64, WiiSX, and Yabause (Saturn). Would the Wii U be able to do a better job with these emulators, as well as finally allow emulation for 32X, 3DO, Jaguar, Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox (2001) games, as opposed to the Wii?

 

[the_randomizer]

Emulation is heavily reliant on the CPU/processor far more than the GPU, but the GPU still plays a significant. As far as emulation capabilities, right off the bat we already have the following running full speed without any hiccups, slowdowns, stuttering,
RetroArch already has a solid port so far, and it's still in alpha.

Snes9x 1.53
Nestopia Undead
mGBA
Gambatte
Capcom CPS1
Capcom CSP2
Capcom CPS3
MAME/Arcade
Virtual Boy
Wonderswan
Atari 2600

For the more complex emulators:

PSX
PSP
Dreamcast
N64
DS
etc

You will need what's called a dyarec or dynamic recompiler core due to the architecture of the Wii U, it will need to coded from scratch to get performance, so these will take a long time.

 

[YugamiSekai]

I'm not too sure on this myself, but someone reputable said 3DS emulation was possible (I guess they meant at 1 frame per second )

 

[Deleted member 42501]

Said it before, will say it again, I'd happily chip in 50 bucks as an incentive to get that Dreamcast emulator happening for the WiiU as it would bring an amazing library of games to it plus they'd be output via HDMI.

And if 10 of us did the same that would be $500 and with a 100, whew, you can do the math...

 

[KiiWii]

If only there was a Wii u homebrew bounty....

 

[Blue]

The Wii U had OK specs in 2012...