Gecko is still in development. While many games work well, most will likely have varying degrees of visual glitches or will be outright broken. Refer to the screenshot databases to gauge compatiblity:

• GameCube
• Wii

Gecko now also has a community driven compatibility database! Feel free to leave a vote when trying out games. The database is still new, so please take the ratings with a grain of salt!

Gecko is developed with homebrew development and reverse engineering in mind, but also aims to provide a faithful and playable experience!

• Cross-platform: Windows, Linux and macOS
  • x86 and ARM supported on each platform
  • More platforms supported if compiling yourself
• Cranelift based JITs
  • PowerPC, DSP, vertex decoder
• Upscaling 1x - 4x
• Controller support
  • Xbox, Steam, etc.
  • PS5 DualSense Wiimote motion control
• Starlet HLE
• IPL skip patches for NTSC and PAL
• wgpu based renderer backend
  • Supports all major platforms
• wesl based specialized shader compiler
• JIT and shader cache
• FIFO recorder, player and debugger
  • Compatible with Dolphin
• GameCube memory cards
• Frame pacing
• Modular audio backend, defaults to cpal
  • Supports mixing audio sinks
  • Supports dumping to .wav files
• MCP server
• Lua scripting system for runtime introspection
• A beautiful yet advanced egui-based debugging UI
• Symbol parsing from ELFs and IDA Pro databases
• IDA Pro loaders for DOL and Apploader
• RenderDoc captures with all sorts of debug markers
• ISO and RVZ support
  • Supports either compressed as ZIP
• Included multitool, supports:
  • IPL decode/encode
  • SYSCONF decode/encode
  • setting.txt decode/encode
  • DVD filesystem extraction
  • Disassembler for PPC and DSP
• Various built-in diagnostics for JIT and GX
• Support for web browser
  • incl. debugging capabilities

Prebuilt releases (including debug builds) can be downloaded here. GameCube and Wii require system files to use the emulator, please refer to the "Required Files" chapter. Minimal commands to launch a game:

# Launch a GameCube game
./tinyapp --ipl IPL.decoded.bin --dsp dsp_rom.bin --coef dsp_coef.bin --skip-ipl --dvd YourGame.rvz

# Launch a Wii game
./tinyapp --dsp dsp_rom.bin --coef dsp_coef.bin --dvd YourGame.rvz

A more modern and friendly experience is provided via gecko (short preview on YouTube):

It scans the configured GameCube and Wii folders for .iso, .rvz and .zip files. Double-clicking on a row opens a dedicated player window for that game. The decoded GameCube IPL and DSP files are expected to be inside the system folder and must be named exactly as follows:

<gecko exe dir>/
  config.toml                # settings, auto-generated
  cache/library.bin          # cached library, auto-generated
  screenshots/               # F12 screenshots, auto-generated
  internal/                  # contains SRAM and memory cards, auto-generated
  system/                    # system file folder (user provided!)
    IPL.bin                  # GameCube only (must be decoded! see multitool)
    dsp_rom.bin              # GameCube and Wii
    dsp_coef.bin             # GameCube and Wii
  fs/                        # Wii NAND, auto-generated if missing (or drop in a Dolphin/real dump)

Gamepads are supported on all frontends through SDL3. Xbox, DualSense (PS5) and anything else SDL recognizes works out of the box. Keyboard and mouse stay active.

On Wii, the pointer source is picked automatically based on what the connected gamepad can do: gyro aiming on a DualSense (press R3 to recenter), right stick otherwise, mouse as the fallback. The DualSense touchpad can also act as an pointer. Its accelerometer drives Wiimote motion directly, so physically shaking the controller shakes the Wiimote. Pads without motion sensors use R1 as a shake button instead. The right stick doubles as the Wiimote D-pad whenever it is not serving as the pointer, and game rumble is forwarded to the controller on both GameCube and Wii.

Bindings, pointer source, sensitivity and axis inversion are configurable in gecko under Settings > Controller Bindings, persisted in the [input] section of config.toml (see other/example.conf for every option). tinyapp uses the default bindings and points with the mouse. Pass --pointer gyro|stick|touchpad|auto to override.

Gecko does not ship any system files.

Reference SHA-256 hashes (these are the files the project is developed against):

• IPL (NTSC and PAL tested)
• DSP IROM
• DSP coefficient ROM

If you only have an encoded IPL, decode it first with multitool:

multitool ipl --action decode private/IPL.bin private/IPL.decoded.bin

A NAND is generated on boot whenever fs/ is missing. The folder can be overriden using the GECKO_FS_ROOT environment variable.

# optional!
GECKO_FS_ROOT=/path/to/dolphin-nand tinyapp --dvd wii_game.rvz # ... and other arguments

Examples you might find useful:

multitool ipl --action decode ipl.encoded.bin ipl.decoded.bin
multitool sysconf --action decode fs/shared2/sys/SYSCONF SYSCONF.txt  # edit, then re-encode
multitool sysconf --action encode SYSCONF.txt fs/shared2/sys/SYSCONF
multitool setting --action decode fs/title/00000001/00000002/data/setting.txt setting.decoded
multitool setting --action encode setting.decoded fs/title/00000001/00000002/data/setting.txt
multitool dvd --extract game.rvz

tinyapp --dol homebrew.dol  # may also require a DSP depending on the DOL
tinyapp --dvd game.iso --ipl ipl.decoded.bin --dsp dsp_rom.bin --coef dsp_coef.bin --skip-ipl

debugger --dvd game.rvz --ipl ipl.decoded.bin --dsp dsp_rom.bin --coef dsp_coef.bin --script example.lua

fifoplayer recording.dff # just the player
fifoplayer recording.dff --debug # enable the debugger

The CLI options are largely the same across the sub projects (such as the debugger). For more options, see --help.

This is a table of the main projects. Refer to crates/ to find out about all available projects.

git submodule init && git submodule update

cargo build -p gecko-app --release                               # game launcher (binary: gecko)
cargo build -p tinyapp --release                                 # tinyapp
cargo build -p debugger --release                                # debugger
cargo build -p multitool --release                               # multitool
cargo build -p fifoplayer --release                              # fifo player and debugger
wasm-pack build crates/web --target web --out-dir pkg --release  # web version

Release builds compile out all tracing output (the gecko crate pins tracing with release_max_level_off), so --release binaries are silent. Build with --profile dev if you want log messages.

Features below are listed based on the frontend crate that supports them. Most of them are simply forwarded into the core gecko and backend-wgpu crates, so the underlying flag of the same name is what actually toggles the behavior. These can be useful when debugging the emulator itself and when investigating various issues (example: performance bugs in games).

Why do we get a new Wii emulator? Well, it all started a few years ago. I wanted to do something nostalgic and as a kid I spent countless hour in this one Wii game called Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicals: The Crystal Bearers. It wasn't a well received game but I loved it so much, I chose my online persona "Layle" after the main protagonist. I figured it would be cool to spend some years learning about emulation development with the goal to eventually run the game in my own emulator!

Gecko is being developed alongside other amazing emulators that shaped how Gecko came to be. Without them, Gecko wouldn't exist!

• lazuli by vxpm
• solstice by hazelwiss
• beanwii by zayd

Besides these "sister projects", Dolphin has also been a major contributor in many ways.