Dolphin is a fantastic emulator for Nintendo Wii and GameCube games. Now, it has added emulation support for the GameCube-like ‘Triforce’ system, allowing arcade titles like Mario Kart Arcade GP and F-Zero AX to run on modern computers and Android devices.
In the early 2000s, Nintendo and Sega created the Triforce system, which combined a GameCube console with additional hardware to power arcade games. Notably, it used flash memory for game storage instead of the GameCube’ usual mini-DVDs, and it could save game process to physical cards for repeat arcade visitors.
There were only nine arcade games built around the Triforce system. That includes Mario Kart Arcade GP and Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, Gekitou Pro Yakyuu, Virtua Striker 3 ver. 2002, Virtua Striker 4 and Virtua Striker 4 ver.2006, an unreleased Star Fox port, F-Zero AX, and Monster Ride. There was also The Key of Avalon: The Wizard Master, The Key of Avalon 2: Eutaxy Commandment, and their subversions, powered by a whopping five Triforce cabinets running in parallel.
Following several attempts using hacks and other workarounds, and a forked version maintained by developer crediar, the Dolphin Emulator now has mainstream support for Triforce arcade games. You can now play those arcade titles in the standard Dolphin app on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. That includes save state support, and even multiplayer with multiple emulated arcade cabinets. It’s still rough around the edges, and not everything is fully documented yet, but much of the difficult work has been completed.
The blog post explained, “This is the culmination of over a decade of work. While were focused on advancing GameCube and Wii emulation, crediar doubled down and continued maintaining his own fork specifically for Triforce emulation. […] Everything changed mid-2025 when crediar contacted us about potentially making a pull request to get his Triforce emulation code into our official builds. […] After many months of review, cleanups, and testing within the team and the community, Triforce emulation is finally here. And it is here to stay.”
The setup process has a few extra steps compared to GameCube and Wii emulation. There’s a custom ‘Tridump’ tool for dumping games from an arcade unit—you do own a Mario Kart Arcade GP machine already, right? The ‘Segaboot’ firmware is also required for some features, which can be extracted from certain update discs and games.
The team also said, “When we first started on this journey, most of us hadn’t had the opportunity to play any of the Triforce games on an original cabinet. The best we could do was buy the core systems and games and try to get them running with what we had. The experience on bare hardware was rarely good and never great, but that was not how they were meant to be played. Triforce games were designed to be a part of an arcade experience, with a cool cabinet, interesting features, and unique control schemes. Through emulation, we were able to bring some of that arcade magic back to these games that no longer have a cabinet to call home.”
There are more improvements and fixes planned for the future, including custom cabinet configurations, a better interface for managing save state cards, force feedback motor support, and more. The Key of Avalon games are also not yet working. It’s exciting to see more games arrive in a playable state in Dolphin, though, especially as the original hardware is rare or no longer existing.
Source: Dolphin Blog
