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Comment by Phelinofist | Hacker News Reader

In what way is Dolphin different from e.g. RetroArch, that is also available via Steam?

Retroarch doesn't include any copyrighted BIOS files, or decryption keys which could make it run afoul of the DMCA. Dolphin does include keys dumped from the Wii, which are nessesery to run common dumps of retail games which are usually distributed in their original encrypted form.

The legal dubiousness of bundling keys was already well established, emulators for Nintendos other recent systems (3DS/Switch) don't include the keys, and instruct the user to dump them from their own hardware to shield the project from liability (of course the keys can easily be found online, but the projects don't endorse that out of abundance of caution).

> which are nessesery to run common dumps of retail games which are usually distributed in their original encrypted form.

I think people should just share roms with the encryption pre-removed and that's would be the end of the legal reach for Nintendo here.

Not sure why we still reproduce undesirable code from the console.

Before the Wii was fully jailbroken, piracy was achieved by modifying the optical drive to trick the system into thinking burned DVDs were official factory pressed discs. That approach means the system still expects the disc to be signed and encrypted like a legitimate disc would be, so the standard for pirate releases was to retain the encryption and that convention stuck.

In another timeline where the Wii was jailbroken earlier the standard might have been to distribute decrypted versions, but that's not how it worked out.

Ah interesting, thanks for the history reasons, I did not know that.

Literally just that RetroArch doesn't support any Nintendo system from the last 20 years?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

whoops wrong link but fuck it, serendipity

Here's the correct link showing dolphin core can be loaded into retroarch: https://docs.libretro.com/library/dolphin/

Maybe retroarch itself doesn't emulate anything, but just provide a render surface/input abstraction to 'cores'?

The cores are also on Steam as free DLC

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