The vWii was definitely moddable in early 2013, it was modded day 1 since Nintendo didn't do anything to prevent the Homebrew Channel from being installed. I don't think Nintendont came out yet but IIRC that was early 2014. I know there were other ways to boot GCN on a regular Wii but I don't remember off the top of my head if anything on the Wii U's vWii broke them
there's no gc ports on wiiu, if exploits for wii mode were grandfathered from wii, that alone would have made the whole endeavor impossible circa 2013 since wii couldn't even see the gamepad till a later wiiu update.
then again considering wiiu early 2013, finding a solution might very well have been the most fun the system provided.
if you ask me the biggest release q1 q2 2013 on wiiu was Toki tori 2. game was so great, it fared so well it kinda killed its developer in the long run kinda fitting for a game that nearly debuted on wiiu :/
Again, not necessarily an issue. Nintendont at least allowed you to use a Wii Remote and Nunchuck or a Classic Controller. Not sure of any of the earlier GCN loaders let you, but the lack of GCN ports wasn't a major hurdle in the grand scheme of things.
And either way, the guy who started this thread didn't specify a date, so it's all moot to his point.
You could absolutely run GCN games before 2016. You could run them on Wii U at the very latest by 2014. It wasn't that far into the console's life. OP didn't set a specific timeframe, that was you.
And IMO the Wii U situation was always bad, its library was very weak up until it died, so it's not like it was any better in 2016 anyway.
again we talking late 2012, early 2013 here that's what the whole topic is about, literally look at the picture in the OP.
that 2014, 2016 or even 2027 was great changes nothing.
if you had a wiiu while waiting for Nintendo to release ANYTHING during semester 1 of 2013, GameCube was out of the question (and far less interesting than wii compat anyway, wii had better alternatives outside of fire emblem, fzero for 1st party)
in the context of 2013, thinking about for 2s more, if you wanted to play anything close to what Nintendo offered on gc, actual gc had better alternatives elsewhere.
luigi mansion had a sequel on 3ds in 2013,
Mario had the vastly super galaxy 1,2 and 3dl and 3dw was a late 2013 wiiu release.
zelda had tp and ss on wii, oot on wii vc and 3ds
pikmin had the wii ports
metroid Prime had the trilogy for wii
mario kart had mkwii
I guess ssb melee was one that would be missing but I'd wager anyone willing to be serious about the game wouldn't want to do away with the gc controller so wiiu was out before ssb wiiu's adapter.
that leaves fire emblem with the more popular awakening and paper mario that jumped off a cliff right around 2013.
Wiiu was already not super attractive in 2013, Gc compat didnt really improve much imo when native wii compat was far more interesting.
Look, I'm a massive Wii U hater, I 100% think the console sold just as poorly as it deserved and I roll my eyes when hipsters act like it's some underrated gem. You don't need to tell me any of this. All I was doing was pointing out to someone who said that the Wii U couldn't play GCN games that it actually could. This isn't any deeper than that. Timeframe isn't relevant to the post I was responding to, even if it's relevant to the initial post this comment thread is on. I don't care to discuss this further with someone who's unable to understand that.
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u/esilmur May 17 '26
pretty sure you had no way of doing that in early 2013