Announced during the Nintendo Switch 2’s big reveal, GameCube games will be officially be added to the roster of classic titles available with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. 24 years and four console generations on, Nintendo is finally able to tap into a truly rich, much-beloved catalogue on its new platform. The long wait to see GameCube games appear is a surprise though. Both because it is a Switch 2 exclusive feature, and also given that Nintendo has had official Wii emulation – essentially an overclocked GameCube in GPU and CPU – working already for the last .
We actually covered this back in 2018 (a year after its launch), with Nintendo’s Wii emulator running on the Nvidia Shield TV – which uses the very same Tegra X1 chipset as the original Switch. Nintendo’s emulated games were only released for the Chinese market on the Nvidia store, but included the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros Wii, and Punchout. In short, it showed how the older Switch processor could in theory run an emulator capable of not just Wii games, but almost certainly GameCube too, given the exceptional similarity of their architectures.
Before we go into depth on what might have been, it’s worth acknowledging what we’re getting on Switch 2. To start, there will be over ten GameCube titles available (three at launch), each with the promise of enhanced resolutions, faster loading times and even online play if there’s a multiplayer mode. The games shown in the Direct all arrived in the west in 2003 and include some bona fide classics: the futuristic racing of F-Zero GX, the iconic The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and third-party fighter Soul Calibur 2. Tallied alongside the full list, it broadens an already expansive library of emulated ports on Nintendo’s online service, but the snag is that the GameCube back-compat is exclusive to Switch 2. So why are we getting GameCube games now, and why only on the new hardware?
It’s a tricky question to answer bearing in mind that the Wii is more capable than GameCube, while the Tegra X1 processor in both Shield and OG Switch is significantly less capable than Switch 2’s T239. Looking back at that older emulated titles, these were born out of the Nvidia/Nintendo partnership that resulted in Switch’s use of the mobile Tegra X1 chipset – considered a great deal at the time for Nintendo, given the availability of the part. As part of that deal, core development of four Wii titles for the Chinese market were handled by Nvidia Lightspeed Studios. The route to getting these working is onerous if you want to give them a go: you’ll need a Chinese Shield TV unit – or flash your Shield TV, update your console and then use a VPN to access the store.