Old news: The Wii U can play GameCube games

Complex arduous hack could be good sign

With the GameCube controller adapter for the Wii U coming soon, a lot of people are hoping we’ll be getting GameCube games on the Wii U eShop to boot. Getting another crack at some analog trigger-specific games like Super Mario Sunshine would definitely be a treat, especially for those who didn’t get a chance to play them the first time around. I ran the idea past some programmer pals, and they all said “don’t get your hopes up”. Unlike the Wii, the Wii U doesn’t have the guts for easy GameCube backwards compatibility. That doesn’t make playing GameCube games on the Wii U impossible, but it might take a lot more work and money than it would be worth. 

Well it looks like the Wii U homebrew community managed to pull it off anyway, thought it’s far from perfect. You can’t run actual GameCube discs with this hack, and you have to switch over to Wii Mode to boot the emulation app, but it runs pretty smoothly after you get it going. The 3DS reportedly has to do something similar when running the GBA Ambassador games.

That’s a lot of hoops to jump through, but it gives an old fan like me hope that Nintendo could find a way to do this on the level. While I have just about every GameCube game I ever wanted on their original discs, I may being willing to pay for the convenience of having a few of them on my current console. I’m sure Nintendo could make at cool million on Smash Bros. Melee on the Wii U eShop. Easy access to Roy and Pichu is worth at least $12.

_{[Image by Mushbuh]}