I've been wanting to play a few wii games for ages now. Zelda Twilight princess and certainly Skyward sword are the two I really wanted to play, but xenoblade was also up there. I've also known that Dolphin, the emulator, could play wii games but I needed a wiimote to do that. and to get a wii mote working I need a bluetooth adapter. And if I'm doing it on windows I need to get one that works with the toshiba bluetooth stack as the windows one is buggy as hell with wiimotes. Oh, and I'd also need a pretty powerful computer to pull this off too.
All that came together recently. I've had a pretty beast computer for a while now but I had kinda forgotten of my desire to play wii games, I'm not sure what inspired it, perhaps I walked by soe wii stuff at wall mart and remembered. In any case I went and did some research. Turns out a device called a
"Mayflash Dolphin Bar" Was recently released and the Dolphin emu people help Mayflash integrate the bar with their software. basily the bar is a self contained bluetooth adapter and sensor bar for a wiimote. the brilliant thing is that instead of passing the bluetooth hardware on to the computer and make you deal with the windows bluetooth stack they did all the hard work for you. sure it only works with wiimotes but the drivers for the bluetooth are built into the bar and it works flawlessly with the wiimote. They also added the bonus feature to let you control a mouse with the wiimote (this part even works on linux). the bar has 4 modes. mouse mode, mouse + controller mode, controller mode, and emulator mode. in the first two modes you get to control the computer with the wiimote by translating the moth to mouse motion and linking the A and B button to the mouse buttons, they also intergrated volume control and set up the D-Pad to trigger media button like pause, play, forward and backward. I(t's like having the perfect remote control for your computer.
The 2ed and exspecial the third mode cause the wiimote to be treated like a normal controller, IE xbox controller and you can play your games like normal (the second mode keeps mouse control but maps the other buttons to the game controller).
but most importantly for me the 4th moe links the wiimote to Dolphin EMU without any problems.
all but the 4th mode are self contained INSIDE THE BAR. the bard just presents itself as a different USB device every time you change modes. the 4th mode uses a driver shipped on a mini CD with the bar to inject a wiimote into the windows hardware bypassing the bluetooth stack and using the bar's. that means the first 3 modes work without any drivers of any kind and work in linux. you have no idea how happy I was when I figured that out.
The result? I spent 24 on the bar and 40 on a wiimote with motion plus and got a media remote, wireless game controller, and the ability to play wii games. I'm pleased
I've been playing Skyward sword flawlessly for the past month or so, putting in about 4-6 hours a week. Honestly the best Zelda game I've ever played. and I've played most of them. IF you guys are interested in playign wii games on your computer. Look into the dolphin bar.
I'm hella happy with it
How about you guys, played any wii recently?