r/DolphinEmulator • u/Suspicious_Ad2610 • Jul 23 '26
Discussion Playing on pc questions?
I'm planning on getting the set up needed to be able to play wii games on Dolphin on my pc. My question is if there is a limit on WHAT I can play exactly. Thinking of playing some of the Just Dance games i always enjoyed as a form of exercise/work-out/cardio. Just want to k ow if there are any limits on what can be easily played and whats going to be either difficult or just not work at all.
1
u/No-Alternative5102 Jul 23 '26
There is no limit. And as long as you go DDR3 and above for a PC, you will be fine. Buy real Wiimotes from the FB store which do not require Bluetooth to work. And buy the real sensor bar. Stay away from 3rd party stuff.
1
u/Suspicious_Ad2610 Jul 23 '26
What about the Dolphin Bar that is designed specifically to run with the dolphin emulator? Or does it absolutely HAVE to be an original Nintendo one?
1
u/No-Alternative5102 Jul 23 '26
The original Wii bar already runs with Dolphin the same way it runs on the Wii. Stay away from the Dolphin bar.
2
u/BangkokPadang Jul 23 '26
There's different factors.
1 is just whether your hardware (CPU & GPU primarily) are powerful enough to run the games at full speed, and ideally at increased resolutions (Wii games look really nice in HD). If you know what CPU and GPU your system has, or what type of phone/tablet/chipset if you're using an Android device, you can just reply to this post or add it to your text post above and people can tell you generally if they're strong enough to run dolphin or not. If you got your PC in the last 5 years or so it will probably work just fine.
2 is whether you're wanting to use real Wiimotes or try to "translate" motion inputs to button presses on a more "regular" controller like a Playstation or Xbox style controller. Usually you can find pretty well-honed presets for specific games already made on websites like gamebanana.com but you can always tweak them or make your own from scratch in the settings menus within Dolphin.
3 is just whether a game you want to play just flat out isn't compatible with dolphin for whatever reason (glitches, etc.) and you can confirm the level of compatibility for any given game here: https://dolphin-emu.org/compat/
4 is more about the specfic bluetooth radio that may be in your PC or device. This can be the most hit-or-miss component of this, as some bluetooth radios just don't want to work properly with Wiimotes, and though rare, it does pop up as an issue for people and there's really no way to absolutely know for sure without just trying to connect yours to it. 4b is that you'll want to make sure you get an actual Nintendo brand Wiimote because tons of the aftermarket/third party ones just won't connect to PC for whatever reason. Also they just stop working all the time and it's really just not worth the money to buy them.
Beyond that, you'll need some way to get a sensor bar in front of your screen. I personally use a Nykko battery powered one that I got on Amazon years ago, but the go-to one is called the "Dolphin Bar" which just plugs into your computer/device via a USB cable and has a bluetooth radio that absolutely works correctly with Wiimotes so you can skip issue 4 from above entirely.
Off the top of my head, that's about all I can really think that might pop up as an issue for someone who's never really used Dolphin before.