WiiCompiled

A native PC port of Mario Kart Wii, made with static recompilation.

There's no emulator in the loop, no interpreter, no JIT, no PowerPC anywhere at runtime.

What is a github, I just want to play

Unlocked framerate with interpolation. The original game is hard-locked to 60 fps. The runtime can generate interpolated frames in between, so on a 120/144 Hz monitor things genuinely look smoother.

Any aspect ratio you want. Drag the window bigger, wider, whatever, the camera adjusts live.

Native rendering via aurora. The graphics layer is built on aurora. Aurora is a source-level GameCube & Wii compatibility layer.

High internal resolution. Play at several times the console's resolution.

Music ducking. Start playing something else, Spotify, a YouTube video, and the game automatically mutes its own music until the other audio stops. Optional, if you'd rather it didn't. All audio that shows in your display media controls on your windows pc fall under this.

An in-game settings bar. Press F10 while the game window has focus:

• Internal resolution
• FPS counter
• Controller assignment for all four ports
• Full per-controller button mapping
• Volume, instant mute, and the music ducking toggle

Everything you change is saved to Config.toml on the spot and restored next launch.

Real controller support. Controllers are fed to the game as a GameCube controller. Mappings are positional (south, east, west, north) rather than Xbox-labelled, so the same config makes sense on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo and generic SDL pads alike, and extra inputs like paddles, touchpads and share buttons show up when the hardware reports them. The official Wii U / Switch GameCube adapter (WUP-028) works too; as with Dolphin, on Windows the adapter must be switched to the WinUSB driver once (Zadig).

Real Wii Remotes over Bluetooth. Pair a Wii Remote with Windows (Settings > Bluetooth > Add device, press 1+2 or SYNC, leave the PIN empty) and the game reads it as an actual Wii Remote through KPAD: Wii Remote icons and prompts, Wii Wheel tilt steering, wheelies and tricks all come from the game's own motion code. Nunchuk and Classic Controller are real Wii extensions too: the game gets the Nunchuk's stick, C/Z and accelerometer, and the Classic Controller through KPADGetUnifiedWpadStatus with its own layout and icons, so its buttons do what the game says they do and no mapping is involved. Plug an extension in or pull it out mid-game and the game switches control scheme like on the console (the runtime patches SDL's Wii driver, which otherwise loses the remote for good on an extension change). Only the Wii U Pro Controller, which has no Wii-era equivalent, is fed to the game as a GameCube pad with Nintendo's layout. If a remote drops out or was switched on after launch, the runtime keeps rescanning Bluetooth until it comes back (F10 > Controller settings > Wii Remotes). SDL's read of the remote's factory accelerometer calibration often times out over Bluetooth (console.log then says "Using fallback accelerometer calibration") and it falls back to a nominal zero point, so the same menu has a one-button calibration (remote flat, buttons up) that removes the small tilt offset some remotes show.

Known limitations of the Wii Remote path:

• No IR pointer yet: menus are navigated with the D-pad and A (the game treats the remote as pointing away from the screen).
• Battery level is not reported to the game and the remote's speaker is not implemented.
• Only the Wii Remote's own accelerometer is calibrated; the Nunchuk's uses SDL's fixed zero point.
• The Classic Controller's L/R triggers reach the game as digital (full pull on click): SDL does not expose their analog travel.
• Turn the Wii Remote support off in that menu if you use a Mayflash DolphinBar, which already presents the remote as a regular gamepad.

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• GPU: GTX 1650 / RX 6400 / Arc A310 or higher
• CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (4c/6c, ~3.5GHz+) or higher
• About 20 GB of free disk space during installation (Final game size ~5 GB)
• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later on Apple Silicon
• On macOS, Apple Xcode Command Line Tools (Setup opens Apple's installer when they are missing)
• A clean, unmodified PAL RMCP01 disc image of Mario Kart Wii, dumped by you. ISO, GCM, GCZ, CISO, WBFS, WIA and RVZ are accepted.

Only the clean PAL revision will work. Anything else (other regions, patched executables) is rejected outright.

For an easy experience, use Wheel Wizard. Pick your clean PAL RMCP01 image under Settings, turn on WiiCompiled (beta), and hit install from the Home page. Wheel Wizard downloads the setup tool from this repo and walks you through install, updates and launching. The backend itself is deliberately command-line only, Wheel Wizard is a wrapper around it.

WiiCompiled, Wheel Wizard, Retro rewind and other related projects are developed independently and each has its own contribution rules and all have their own rules. What applies here does not automatically apply there, and vice versa. Check each project's own CONTRIBUTING and README files.

Retro Rewind, ZPL's Mario Kart Wii mod distribution, can be built as its own static profile: instead of applying Code.pul as runtime patches, the Kamek/Pulsar code is statically translated together with the base game into a separate native executable.

Wheel Wizard drives this too.

Owning the game is still required even if you compile everything yourself.

You'll need: .NET 8 SDK, CMake, Ninja, and LLVM/Clang (the shipped build uses LLVM-MinGW targeting x86-64-v3).

Build the translator:

dotnet build translator/Translator.sln -c Release

The default test suite needs no binaries and no host C++ compiler, so you can hack on the translator without any game data around.

For everything beyond that, feeding in your own main.dol/StaticR.rel, running the translation, generating the manifest and build graph, and compiling. see translator/README.md.

Is this an emulator? No. Everything is compiled to native code before you ever press play. At runtime there's nothing emulating a Wii CPU or GPU.

Do you provide the game? No. Don't ask. Nothing in this repo or any release contains Nintendo code or assets.

Why does setup take so long? Because we don't ship the translated binary, most other recomp projects do, but we don't want to risk it right now, setup has to run a static recompiler over the whole game and then throw a C++ compiler at the result. It's a one-time cost on your machine.

Which game version works? Clean PAL RMCP01. Other regions and modified executables are rejected. Translating them against the wrong manifest would give you a subtly broken game that's miserable to debug for us.

Can I recompile other GameCube/Wii games with it? The translator itself handles DOLs and RELs generically, see projects/examples/generic-dol.yml. The catch is that a playable port also needs a runtime: audio, input, GX, everything the game touches.

The game crashed / stopped with an error. Errors are deliberately loud instead of quietly swallowed. Send a report along with the run log from %LOCALAPPDATA%\WiiCompiled\Logs.

Will you fix original bugs? Not in the base game, behavior identical to real hardware is the goal. Only report things where this port differs from the original game. As for Retro Rewind, some base-game behavior is patched, so if it differs from the base game, that's normal. If Retro Rewind behavior differs between Dolphin/Wii and WiiCompiled, open an issue on GitHub.

How accurate are the physics? 100% - this is proven by in-game ghosts. Since ghosts are replay files based on inputs rather than tracked positions, matching ghosts prove the physics match across Dolphin/Wii/WiiCompiled.

Is it done? Not fully. The game is in a state where everything should be playable and the physics do match 100% with the original game, but compatibility, rendering, networking and performance are all actively being worked on. If you do find an issue, we strongly encourage you to open one on GitHub so we can take a look at it.

AI coding tools were used during development of this project. All translated output is verified against real hardware behavior and most importantly, physics accuracy is proven synced across Wii, Dolphin, and WiiCompiled (see FAQ).

• aurora - the GX rendering/windowing backend this project's whole graphics layer sits on. MIT licensed.
• Dawn - Google's WebGPU implementation, powering aurora's Direct3D, Vulkan and OpenGL backends.
• Dolphin Emulator - an invaluable reference for Wii hardware behavior during development, plus the source of the free DSP coefficient ROM and the unmodified default WiiConnect24 bootstrap tree bundled with the runtime.
• Retro Rewind by ZPL and team - the mod distribution this project supports.
• Wheel Wizard - the mod manager this project integrates with as a launch backend.
• Everyone in the static recompilation community.

Bundled third-party components and their licenses live in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.

WiiCompiled is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 as published by the Free Software Foundation.

WiiCompiled is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

Any mkwii distribution making use of WiiCompiled must be licensed under GPL v3.0.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Nintendo. Mario Kart Wii is a trademark of Nintendo. No Nintendo intellectual property is contained in, distributed with, or obtainable through this project.