Recently I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker emulated with Dolphin-emu. It's not the first time I've done it, but this time I decided to check if it was possible to experience the full game. On the Nintendo GameCube, you could actually connect a GameBoy Advance into a controller port, and have some additional features in the game. The Wind Waker is a game that makes use of this, but I have never had the chance to try it out. When I had a GC many many years ago, I didn't have a GBA. It turns out that the dolphin-emulator actually lets you do this linking! In dolphin-emu I had to set the second controller to "GBA", and then just launch the game. Then I start up VBA-m (the visualboyadvance-m) emulator, which emulates GB, GBC, and GBA. Set it to launch with a GBA BIOS file, which you need to have. And then there is a link option in the emulator settings, and just have it link to localhost (127.0.0.1), and launch the bios file. I could suddenly access all the additional content! Not that it was much, but it still was so satisfying to be able to make full use of all the in-game features. I never knew that these emulators could do this before now, so for me this was a huge discovery, and a game changer!
Geesh these emulators have gotten really good! I've played a few for Playstation and Nintendo 64, but I have to admit, there isn't a lot of games I like from those systems. I used to have a Playstation back in college and found myself watching movies and listening to CDs more than playing games. Its years later when I found there are tens of thousands PC games out there and growing... I was hooked on PC
I've also always been a PC gamer, ever since I was a kid. But I do have a great fondness for the Legend of Zelda series, which are the only games I use the emulators for. I use emulators for N64 and GC primarily. I even played the Zelda Wii game (Skywards Sword), even got myself a Wii controller which worked perfectly with the dolphin-emu. But I did not enjoy the motion controls at all. Thankfully, Skywards Sword just got a Switch rerelease, which has the motion controls as optional, so I might get it for the switch just to play it normally. I might enjoy it a lot more then. I also had a PS1 back in 1996/97, I think. But I don't really find myself missing any of those games. I was 12/13 in those days.
Yeah, I have never played the Zelda games... EVER! That is probably why... I've never given a cent to Nintendo or a cent to iTunes Mac. Not really against them or their services, just have been a Google, Android & PC gaming guy. I'm happy with the environment and services I currently use. There are a few games I've watched the cutscene movies which look pretty good. Like these games: Uncharted God of War Ratchet and Clank
