Comment by larusso
First Wii was able to play Game Cube Games. WiiU was backwards compatible to Wii. All theses consoles used nearly the same chipset anyways.
First Wii was able to play Game Cube Games. WiiU was backwards compatible to Wii. All theses consoles used nearly the same chipset anyways.
GC emulation wasn't emulation; it was done with a separate chip. It was more like native support. Eventually Nintendo removed that chip and backward-compatibility support from the console.
(so, even if you could put a GC disk in, it didn't have capability to natively play the game)
It sounds like you're confusing the Wii's backwards compatibility with the PS3's. The Wii didn't have a separate "GameCube chip", its core was effectively an overclocked GC.
https://youtu.be/meZA9KHkFuY?si=5xrsSjNxKLxLnd6J
He explains it quite well. Sorry it’s German but I guess the information about the chips and reasons Nintendo choose them should be all over the net.
I was always amazed the Wii with its full size discs could play the GameCube mini discs.
Ability to play smaller discs was normal in most CD-ROM and DVD players for many years before the Wii. A few people (probably half of whom have HN accounts) used to give out mini-CD business cards...sometimes even with truncated edges so the disc was not entirely round: https://www.duplication.com/cd-business-card-duplication.htm
WiiU also had the back compat hardware of the Wii, just couldn't take a gamecube disc in it's drive.
Similarly, a lot of the SNES internally looks like it was at least initially designed for back compat with the NES.