Dolphin Emulator Finally Brings NetPlay to Android and Lets Phones Play With PCs

Dolphin Emulator's September release has finally brought NetPlay to Android, allowing GameCube and Wii games designed around local multiplayer to be played online from mobile devices. Even better, Android clients can participate in cross-platform NetPlay sessions with desktop Dolphin users, so a phone and PC can theoretically share the same virtual couch.

The feature works by keeping emulator instances synchronised and exchanging player inputs, which is considerably more complicated than simply adding an online button. Dolphin warns that cross-platform sessions can still desynchronise because ARM phones and x86-64 computers use different JIT implementations, while graphics-driver differences can cause further problems in games relying heavily on framebuffer behaviour. Still, this is a major addition for Android emulation.

Modern premium phones are becoming increasingly capable retro-gaming machines, and pairing Dolphin's mature emulation with online multiplayer makes the argument for carrying a separate emulation handheld slightly harder. Nintendo's old living-room multiplayer is therefore being resurrected on phones through a mechanism its original designers almost certainly never imagined.