Porpoise is a GameCube and Wii emulator for jailbroken PS5, built on Dolphin, with its own launcher for the TV and the DualSense.

Download Porpoise 2.0 · Install · Controls · Build from source · Credits

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What it is

Porpoise is a PS5 homebrew app (title ID PPSA99764) that runs the Dolphin emulator's libretro core inside its own launcher. It has a game library with box art, a memory-card manager, per-game settings and an in-game menu, all driven with a DualSense. Dolphin's x86-64 JIT runs on the console's CPU, and graphics go through Vulkan on Mesa's RADV driver.

It plays your own GameCube and Wii disc backups. It doesn't include any games, BIOS or firmware files.

Features

The library

• Games are shown as a row of box-art tiles. Left and right move between them.
• Porpoise looks for games in the usual folders and on USB and extended drives (see Adding games). You can also add your own folders; each is searched four levels deep.
• Formats: .iso, .gcm, .rvz, .ciso, .gcz, .wbfs and .wia, plus WiiWare, Virtual Console and channels as .wad, and homebrew apps (see Channels, WiiWare and homebrew).
• Filter the library to everything, GameCube, Wii or Channels.
• Sort by title, recently played, most played or favorites first. Each game shows its play time and when you last played it.

Revolution theme

• Settings → Interface → Theme switches between Porpoise (the cover flow) and Revolution: a bright home screen of game tiles, twelve to a page, with a segmented clock and the date along the bottom and round buttons for Settings and the memory cards. Arrows at the sides (or L2 / R2) turn the page. Home screen can switch it to a cover flow instead.
• Point with the controller: a hand pointer that follows the DualSense, opens over empty space, points over anything you can choose and leans as you twist. The D-pad works too, the touch pad turns pointing on and off, and R3 centers it.
• Wii games play their own tile and banner, animated, read from the disc (any of the formats above), with the banner's jingle when a tile opens. GameCube games show their covers.
• Cross on a tile grows it to fill the screen and opens it, with Wii Controls (or Game Settings) and Start, plus save states, save data and favorite. Square on a tile plays it straight away.
• Memory Cards, Settings, dialogs and the in-game menu all go white with it. Switching to Revolution shows your Wii games and Wii saves; switching back shows every game and the GameCube cards.

Wii Remote on the DualSense (beta)

• Each Wii game gets a Wii controller: Remote + Nunchuk (the default), Remote, Remote sideways, Classic Controller, or two controllers (alpha: a second DualSense is the Nunchuk).
• The Remote's pointer comes from the gyro (hold R1 a moment to center it), the touch pad or the right stick. The DualSense's motion is the Remote's, and a quick flick shakes it.
• Wii Remote setup: pick the controller, center, then point at two corners of your screen, so the pointer matches your TV and how far away you sit. It can come up before each Wii game (Triangle skips it), has Simple and Advanced modes and keeps up to four presets.
• Grip: Auto reads how you're holding the DualSense, or choose one. How to hold it (Settings → Wii Remote) draws the DualSense as each Wii controller with every button labeled.
• Your own buttons for each Wii controller: Settings → Controls → Customize buttons, then L1 / R1 to pick Remote + Nunchuk, Remote, Sideways or Classic.

RetroAchievements (softcore)

• Earn RetroAchievements as you play. In the library, press L1 + Square (or go to Settings → Games → RetroAchievements) and sign in with your RetroAchievements account; the panel has its own on-screen keyboard. Porpoise keeps a sign-in token, never your password, in /data/porpoise/retroachievements.ini. Until you sign in, nothing connects.
• Unlocks pop up like PS5 trophies: the badge, the title and the trophy sound, in the Trophies notifications (your trophy notification settings apply). Completing a game plays the platinum sound, and each game starts with a popup of how many you've unlocked.
• The popups go through your jailbreak's ELF loader (port 9021, as etaHEN and the ELF loader payloads have); without one they're plain notifications.
• Softcore only: hardcore mode isn't available. Your game has to be a version RetroAchievements knows; Porpoise says so when it isn't.

Box art and game info

• Front covers, back covers and disc art download from GameTDB while the console is online.
• Game details from GameTDB: description, developer, publisher, release date, genre, number of players and rating.
• To use your own art, put a PNG named after the game's disc ID in the covers folder.
• Covers and info can each be turned off under Settings → Games.

The details page

• Square opens a game's details. Triangle shows the back of the box, the right stick turns it, and L2 / R2 move to the previous or next game.
• From here: Play, Save states, Game settings and Save data.
• Save states: three slots per game, each with a picture. You can start a game from any of them.
• Options marks a game as a favorite, here or in the library.

Memory cards

• Slot A and Slot B side by side, with each save's icon, banner, title, block count and date, and each slot's free blocks.
• Square copies a save to the other slot and Triangle deletes it. Both ask first.
• Save data on a game's details page goes straight to that game's save.
• Wii saves: L2 / R2 switches to the Wii saves Dolphin keeps, each with its banner, icon and name. Square backs one up and Triangle deletes it.

Controllers and players

• Up to four players. Every controller signed in to a PS5 user is a player, and controllers can join in the middle of a game.
• Button layouts: PlayStation (the default: Cross is A, Circle is B), GameCube (Circle is A, Cross is B, as in Dolphin) and four layouts of your own (My layout 1–4).
• Customize buttons shows the DualSense with the GameCube button each control plays. Pick a GameCube button, press the DualSense button you want, and the two swap. It also works from the in-game menu.
• Any game can use any layout. Analog L and R follow the triggers.
• The light bar shows each player's color.

Settings

Settings are split into sections:

Section	What's inside
Video	Output resolution (Match the PS5 by default, or 1080p, 1440p, 4K), internal resolution (1080p by default; 4x and above marked experimental), widescreen hack, aspect ratio, anisotropic filtering, texture filtering, anti-aliasing (MSAA/SSAA), output resampling, screen filter and its strength, border, FPS counter
Graphics	Shader compilation (asynchronous ubershaders by default), texture cache accuracy, per-pixel lighting, disable fog, crop overscan, custom texture packs, skip duplicate frames
Audio	Game volume and mute; menu music and menu sounds, each with its own switch and volume; and, in beta, accurate audio, the Wii Remote speaker (TV or controller), audio buffer, audio stretching and the microphone (see Sound)
Controls	Button layout (PlayStation, GameCube or one of your four), Customize buttons, vibration, fast forward buttons, connected controllers; per game, Console (Auto, GameCube or Wii) for a game Porpoise detected wrong
Wii Remote	Wii Remote setup, presets, setup before each Wii game, How to hold it, Wii controller, pointer, pointer speed, grip, motion, flick to shake
System	Emulated CPU clock (50–300%), dual core, emulator on its own cores, exact multiply-add, fast disc loading, cheats, console language, progressive scan; and, in beta, Wii widescreen, PAL games at 60 Hz, sensor bar position, start Wii discs in the Wii Menu, the GameCube boot animation (see Your own BIOS and Wii Menu) and Online (WiiConnect24 channels through WiiLink)
Games	Find games automatically, add or remove game folders, search again, download covers, download game info, move Porpoise's folder to extended storage or a USB drive, RetroAchievements
Interface	Menu language, Theme (fifteen, among them Porpoise, Star Cube and Revolution), Colors, Font, library and Memory Cards views, Revolution's home screen and pointer, reset all settings, Reinitialize Porpoise
About	Version, Updates (check GitHub and install a new Porpoise), the Discord for help and bug reports (with a QR code), Report a bug, and credits

• Per-game settings. Any game can override the Video, Graphics, Audio, Controls and System settings. Changed values show in blue, and This game → Reset to default clears them.
• Recommended settings (beta). Supported games come with recommended settings you can switch on. The list is small for now and will grow as more games are tested. A game's settings open with Recommended: Dolphin's own fixes for it, from Dolphin's per-game database (on by themselves), and Porpoise's picks, settings tested on PS5. Each has an on/off switch — green is on — and a tag saying where it comes from; changes apply the next time the game starts. Picks can set Porpoise's own options and Dolphin's per-game settings alike (the first, for WWE Day of Reckoning 2, keeps EFB copies and texture decoding on the GPU). They come from data/recommended.ini in this repository and update by themselves once a day; suggestions for more games are welcome.
• Setups. Save a game's Video and Graphics settings as one of four setups (in-game menu → Graphics → Save as a setup) and use it on any other game, from the in-game menu or the game's settings.

Screen filters and borders

• Screen filters: Smooth, Sharp, Sharpen, CRT (scanlines and an aperture grille), Arcade CRT (a curved tube with rounded corners), VHS (tracking wobble, color bleed and tape noise), Soft VHS (soft, faded color and a gentle glow, no glitches), 8-bit (a small palette, big pixels and dithering) and Pocket (a four-green handheld screen), each with a strength.
• Borders fill the bars beside a 4:3 picture when widescreen is off: Porpoise (the logo and name), Porpoise glass, Midnight, Frost, Carbon, and three cabinets with a curved opening — Arcade cabinet, Retro cabinet (wood and 70s stripes) and Synthwave cabinet (a striped sun and a neon grid). Make your own: a 1920×1080 PNG, transparent where the picture shows (the 4:3 picture fills x 240–1680), in /data/porpoise/borders/. It appears in the list by its file name.
• Reset all settings puts Porpoise back the way it ships. Your games, folders and saves are kept.

In-game menu

Press Options + touch pad together while playing. The game pauses and the menu opens, with four tabs (L1 / R1):

• Game: Resume, Save state… and Load state… (three slots, with pictures: pick a slot with left and right; saving over a used slot asks for a second press, and a spinner shows while the state is written), Fast forward (2x or 4x), Volume, Quit to library and Close Porpoise.
• Video: resolution, widescreen, aspect ratio, anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, screen filter and strength, border, FPS counter.
• Graphics: shader compilation, texture cache, texture filtering, output resampling, per-pixel lighting, fog, overscan, duplicate frames, and Save as a setup / Use a setup.
• Controls: button layout, Customize buttons over the paused game, vibration, and the DualSense drawn with a line to every button saying which GameCube button it is.

Changes apply immediately and are saved for that game.

Fast forward without the menu: with Settings → Controls → Fast forward buttons on (the default), touch pad + R1 steps fast forward (off, 2x, 4x) and touch pad + R2 fast-forwards while you hold it. A quick press of the touch pad alone still reaches the game.

When you resume, the game ignores your buttons until you let go, so the press that closed the menu never reaches the game.

Music and sound

• Original menu music and sound effects by Ruben. The music fades out when a game starts and comes back in the library.
• Music and effects each have their own switch and volume.

Sound (beta)

Settings → Audio, for every game or one:

• Accurate audio: Dolphin's exact sound chip (LLE) instead of its fast one. It fixes missing or wrong sound in a few games but needs much more of the processor, so turn it on for the game that needs it.
• Wii Remote speaker: the sounds Wii games play from the Remote's own speaker. TV mixes them into the game's sound; Controller plays them from each player's DualSense, as on a Wii (if a controller's speaker can't be opened, they stay on the TV).
• Audio buffer: Low, Normal or Safe. Safe keeps more sound ready, against crackling in demanding games, for a little delay.
• Audio stretching: when a game slows down, its sound slows with it, slightly lower, instead of crackling.
• Microphone: the DualSense's microphone becomes the GameCube Microphone (Mario Party 6 and 7: hold R3 to talk) and the Wii Speak.

Languages

• Sixteen languages, each with its flag in the language list (Chinese with its script's character instead): English, Español (España), Español (Latinoamérica), Français, Deutsch, Italiano, Nederlands, Polski, Português (Portugal), Português (Brasil), Türkçe, Русский, 日本語, 한국어, 简体中文 and 繁體中文. Porpoise follows your PS5's system language, and Settings → Interface → Language overrides it.
• Game descriptions from GameTDB come in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Dutch too, where GameTDB has them (English otherwise).
• The translations are first drafts, and fixes are welcome. To fix a line without waiting for an update, create /data/porpoise/lang/<code>.txt — es, es-419, fr, pt, pt-BR, it, de, nl, pl, ru, tr, ja, ko, zh-Hans or zh-Hant — with lines such as Quit to library = Volver a la biblioteca. In the source, translations live in i18n/.

Performance

• When the TV's refresh rate allows it, each frame is shown on its own vblank; otherwise Porpoise keeps its own clock. Games run at their normal speed, with 48 kHz sound.
• Dolphin compiles shaders on four background threads with asynchronous ubershaders, so games stutter less the first time they draw something new. The shader cache is kept between runs.
• Dolphin's x86-64 JIT with fastmem, and Vulkan through RADV.
• Some games are slow on PS5 because of Dolphin's own per-game fixes; see Recommended in a game's settings and the speed line in core.log.

Requirements

• A PS5 able to run homebrew, with etaHEN and kstuff loaded and ShadowMountPlus (or your usual method) to register homebrew titles.
• A way to copy files to the console: FTP, or a tool such as PS5 Upload.
• Your own games, as backups you made from discs you own. Porpoise includes no games and no system files of any kind.
• Optional: an internet connection on the console, for box art and game info.

Install

1. Download Porpoise-2.0.zip from the latest release and unzip it on your computer. You get a folder named PPSA99764.
2. Connect to your PS5 with FTP (for example etaHEN's FTP server and a client like FileZilla) or with PS5 Upload.
3. Copy the whole PPSA99764 folder into /data/homebrew/, so you end up with /data/homebrew/PPSA99764/.
4. Register it the same way as your other homebrew (for example with ShadowMountPlus). The Porpoise tile appears on the home screen.
5. Copy your game backups into /data/porpoise/games/ (Porpoise creates it on first launch), into any folder listed under Adding games, or onto a USB drive, then open Porpoise.

Box art and game details download automatically while the console is online.

Updating

From 1.1 on, Porpoise updates itself: Settings → About → Updates. Check now looks on GitHub (Porpoise also looks once a day while it's online for covers), and when a newer Porpoise is out the same row installs it. The download is checked against GitHub's SHA-256 and every file against the release's manifest before anything is replaced; if anything goes wrong, nothing is changed. Porpoise then closes; open it again from the home screen. Your games, saves, covers and settings live in /data/porpoise/ and are never touched.

By hand (and from 1.0, which can't update itself): delete /data/homebrew/PPSA99764/, then upload the new folder — ShadowMountPlus keeps serving the old copy until it is removed. If your 1.0 couldn't reach /data (your games were in the app's own porpoise/games folder), copy the new files over the old folder instead of deleting it: 1.1 moves your settings, memory cards and states to /data/porpoise itself and still finds games there. Check Settings → About to confirm the version.

Adding games

With Find games automatically on (the default), Porpoise looks in:

• /data/porpoise/games
• /data/games, /data/GameCube, /data/Wii, /data/roms, /data/iso
• every USB drive (/mnt/usb0–/mnt/usb7) and extended storage (/mnt/ext0, /mnt/ext1)

Each of these is searched four folders deep, so games sorted into subfolders are found too.

To use any other folder, go to Settings → Games → Add a game folder, browse to it, and press Square. The browser shows the game files in each folder, so you can see where they are. Porpoise searches that folder and four levels below it. After copying new games, use Search for games now.

Channels, WiiWare and homebrew

Porpoise ships no Nintendo files of any kind: everything here comes from your own console.

• WiiWare, Virtual Console and channels: put the .wad files you made from your own Wii in any games folder. They appear in the library with their names and banners, marked WiiWare, Virtual Console or Channel (the Channels filter shows only them). Start one like any game; its saves stay in Dolphin's Wii storage between runs.
• Homebrew apps: keep each app in its own folder, as the Homebrew Channel does: boot.dol (or boot.elf) next to its meta.xml and icon.png, for example /data/porpoise/games/apps/MyApp/. The app shows with its name and icon. A .dol or .elf without a meta.xml beside it isn't listed.
• A game shows as GameCube but is a Wii game (or the other way round)? Open its settings: Controls → Console sets it to GameCube or Wii.

Your own BIOS and Wii Menu (beta)

• GameCube boot animation: copy the IPL.bin you dumped from your own GameCube to /data/porpoise/bios/USA/, EUR/ or JAP/ (the region of the games you play), then turn on Settings → System → GameCube boot animation. GameCube games then start with the console's own start-up. If there's no IPL.bin for a game's region, the game starts as usual.
• Wii Menu: put the Wii Menu .wad from your own Wii in a games folder and start it once from the library; it stays installed. With Settings → System → Start Wii discs in the Wii Menu on, Wii discs then start from the Wii Menu, as on a Wii.

Playing from a USB or external drive

1. Format the drive as exFAT on your computer. FAT32 also works but can't hold files over 4 GB (most Wii .iso files are bigger); the PS5 doesn't read NTFS.
2. Copy your games onto it, anywhere up to four folders deep, for example games/Wii/Super Mario Galaxy.rvz or GameCube/Melee.iso. .rvz files are much smaller than .iso and load just as well.
3. Plug it into the PS5 and make sure a jailbreak daemon is running (see Troubleshooting). Porpoise has to be out of the app sandbox to see any drive: if it says it can't reach /data, it can't see your drive either.
4. Open Porpoise. The games appear in the library. If you plugged the drive in after opening Porpoise, use Settings → Games → Search for games now.
5. Games deeper than four folders? Add their folder with Add a game folder (Triangle in the browser jumps to your drives).

You can also copy a game from the drive to the console: in Add a game folder, browse to it on the drive and press Cross on the game.

PS5 extended storage (a drive the PS5 formatted for its own games) shows up as /mnt/ext0 (a second one as /mnt/ext1). A computer can't read that format, so copy games to it over FTP instead (for example into /mnt/ext0/games/).

Porpoise's own folder can live there too: Settings → Games → Move Porpoise's folder to extended storage (or a USB drive) moves your settings, saves, save states, covers and texture packs, then Porpoise closes; open it again. If that drive isn't connected at the next start, Porpoise says so and uses the console's storage until it is.

Your own cheats

Put a game's codes in /data/porpoise/cheats/<game ID>.ini (the 6-letter ID, such as GYQE01.ini; 4 or 3 letters for all regions), in Dolphin's format: [ActionReplay] or [Gecko] sections, as Dolphin writes them. They turn on by themselves when the game starts, and each appears in the game's settings under Cheats with its own switch. Wiimmfi's online patch codes for a Wii game go here too (with Settings → System → Online for WiiConnect24 channels).

Controls

Launcher

Button	Library	Details	Memory cards
D-pad / left stick	Browse games	Choose an action	Move between saves and slots
Cross	Play	Confirm	–
Circle	–	Back to the library	Back
Square	Open Details	–	Copy to the other slot
Triangle	Sort	Front / back of the box	Delete
Options	Favorite	Favorite	–
L2 / R2	–	Previous / next game	–
Right stick	–	Turn the box	–
L1 / R1	Switch tabs: Library, Memory Cards, Settings
L1 + Square	RetroAchievements: sign in or out

In a game

Button	Action
Options + touch pad	Pause and open the in-game menu
Touch pad + R1	Fast forward: off, 2x, 4x
Touch pad + R2 (hold)	Fast forward while held
R3 (hold)	Talk into the GameCube Microphone (with Microphone on)
Circle (in the menu)	Resume
L1 / R1 (in the menu)	Switch tabs: Game, Video, Graphics, Controls

With the default PlayStation layout:

GameCube	DualSense
A / B / X / Y	Cross / Circle / Square / Triangle
Z	R1
L / R (analog)	L2 / R2
Start	Options
Control stick / C-stick	Left stick / right stick
D-pad	D-pad

The GameCube layout puts A on Circle and B on Cross. To set any button yourself, go to Settings → Controls → Customize buttons (or the in-game menu's Controls tab), and give a game its layout in its own settings.

More players: turn on another controller and choose a PS5 user for it. It becomes the next player, up to four, and can join in the middle of a game.

Where things are kept

Path	What
/data/homebrew/PPSA99764/	The app. Replace it to update.
/data/porpoise/games/	A good place for your game files
/data/porpoise/covers/	Box art, back covers and disc art (<disc ID>.png); replace any with your own
/data/porpoise/saves/	Dolphin's data, including the memory cards (User/GC/<region>/Card A, Card B)
/data/porpoise/game-settings/	Each game's own settings
/data/porpoise/states/	Save states, three per game, with their pictures
/data/porpoise/borders/	Your own borders (1920×1080 PNGs)
/data/porpoise/info.tsv	Downloaded game details (info-es.tsv and so on for other languages)
/data/porpoise/recommended.ini	Porpoise's recommended settings, as last downloaded
/data/porpoise/setups/	Your four setups (Video and Graphics settings to use on any game)
/data/porpoise/banners/	Wii discs' banners, read once from each disc
/data/porpoise/saves/User/Wii/backups/	Wii saves you backed up from Memory Cards
/data/porpoise/latest-release.json	What GitHub last said about the newest release
/data/porpoise/lang/	Your own translation fixes (optional)
/data/porpoise/bios/	Your own GameCube BIOS, as USA/IPL.bin, EUR/IPL.bin or JAP/IPL.bin (optional)
/data/porpoise/cheats/	Your own cheat codes, one <game ID>.ini per game (optional)
/data/porpoise/retroachievements.ini	Your RetroAchievements sign-in token (not your password)
/data/porpoise/location.txt	Where Porpoise's folder is, after you moved it to another drive
/data/porpoise/cache/	The menus' lettering, made once at the first start

Troubleshooting

• Adding a game folder: Settings → Games → Add a game folder opens on the whole console (/), on data. Each folder shows how many games are in it, and the games themselves are listed under the folders, so you can see where they are. Square uses the folder you're in (add as many as you like), Triangle jumps to your drives and Porpoise's own games folder, and Cross on a game on a USB drive copies it to the console.

• Still seeing the old version after updating by hand? Delete /data/homebrew/PPSA99764/ completely before uploading the new folder.

• "Porpoise can't reach /data", only a few folders in the folder browser, or games in /data/games not showing? The console started Porpoise inside the app sandbox, and a jailbreak daemon has to free it. Make sure one is running before you open Porpoise:

  • etaHEN: turn on Legacy Command Server in etaHEN's Toolbox settings. etaHEN's own app-jailbreak list is built in and can't be edited to add Porpoise, so this is the setting that lets etaHEN free it.
  • OnionHEN: add PPSA99764 to exact_title_ids under [app_jailbreak] in /data/OnionHEN/config.ini (comma-separated), then restart the console or reload OnionHEN.
  • A standalone daemon such as Lapy (loaded from your Homebrew Launcher or autoload.txt). Porpoise speaks both the classic Lapy request and the newer owned-root one.

  Then open Porpoise. It now keeps asking the daemon for a few seconds as it starts, so a daemon that loads a moment late or needs a second try is handled on its own — but if a launch still lands in the sandbox, just open Porpoise once more. This commonly explains "it worked the first time but not after": the daemon wasn't up, or running, on the later launch. Until it's freed, Porpoise keeps its things in the app's own folder (/data/homebrew/PPSA99764/porpoise/).

• Porpoise closes by itself just after it opens (seen with etaHEN 2.6b's jailbreak list on firmware 13.60)? Once freed from the sandbox, Porpoise reads every game and banner it can find, and 2.0 reads damaged or unusual files far more carefully. If it still happens, take the game files out of the way a few at a time to find the one it trips on, and share trace.txt (below) on the Discord.

• A game runs slowly? Open its settings and look at Recommended: some of Dolphin's own fixes for a game cost speed on PS5, and Porpoise's picks turn them off where that's been tested. The speed line in core.log (below) shows how fast the game really runs.

• No covers? The console needs to be online when Porpoise opens, and Settings → Games → Download covers must be on. A few discs have no art on GameTDB. You can add your own.

• Something went wrong? These two files help when you report a problem:

  • /data/homebrew/PPSA99764/trace.txt
  • /data/homebrew/PPSA99764/porpoise/core.log (records the game's real speed every 10 seconds)

Share them in the bug reports on the RIPALDA Discord with your console firmware, your HEN and its version, the game's disc ID and what happened. Settings → About → Report a bug gathers the logs for you, and the code beside it opens the Discord on your phone.

Help and community

• Discord: discord.gg/GgDE5Vynyu: help, bug reports, news and test builds.
• Website: ripalda.dev: Ruben's projects and downloads.

Known limitations

• Wii support is experimental. The Wii Remote on the DualSense is in beta: pointing works well, motion-heavy games are still being tuned, and two controllers as Remote and Nunchuk is alpha.
• Save states are tied to the Porpoise and Dolphin version that made them; a future update may not load older ones. Your memory card saves always carry over.
• Netplay isn't part of Porpoise yet; it's planned for 2.5.
• RetroAchievements is softcore only, and its popups need the jailbreak's ELF loader to show badges and play the trophy sound.
• Memory-card copy and delete work on saves Dolphin keeps as files (the normal Card A and Card B folders).

Build from source

Porpoise builds on Linux or WSL with clang 18, Mesa's RADV driver for PS5 and the PS5 payload SDK. See BUILDING.md.

Credits

Porpoise was created by Ruben (@elripalda): the design, the launcher, the logo, the menu music and the sound effects. ripalda.dev · Discord

It stands on the work of many people. The full list, with licenses, is in CREDITS.md:

• Dolphin by the Dolphin Emulator Project, the emulator itself, and the libretro Dolphin core.
• libretro / RetroArch, whose API Porpoise uses to host Dolphin.
• Mihawk (mihawk-99), who brought the Dolphin core to the PS5. His PS5 RetroArch, PS5_Vulkan and PS5_Mesa are the PS5 Dolphin port, the platform layer and Vulkan on PS5 through Mesa's RADV that Porpoise is built on. Porpoise wouldn't exist without them.
• ps5-payload-sdk by John Törnblom and contributors, and BlackBearReloaded's native title pipeline.
• GameTDB and its contributors, for the box art and game details.
• Zacksly (@_Zacksly), for PS5 Button Icons and Controls (CC BY 3.0): the DualSense drawings and the button icons, adapted for Porpoise.
• The Wii Banner Player Project (zlib), for how a Wii disc's banner is read and played, and the Zstandard educational decoder, for reading .rvz discs.
• Nunito and Noto Sans JP, SC, TC and KR, JetBrains Mono, VT323, Doto, Exo 2, Lora (as Porpoise Serif) and M PLUS 1 (SIL OFL), and stb by Sean Barrett.
• RetroAchievements and its rcheevos library (MIT), which Dolphin's achievements are built on.
• The PS5 scene: etaHEN, kstuff and ShadowMountPlus, and the front ends PS5SX2 and ProsperoEden for the inspiration. Porpoise asks the HEN to leave the app sandbox the way PS5SX2 does, and its RetroAchievements popups follow PS5SX2's (Spyros, with Gabriel Fonseca's groundwork): the trophy-style notifications sent through the ELF loader.

Legal

Important

Porpoise does not condone piracy. It contains no games and no console BIOS, IPL or firmware files, and none will ever be provided or linked to. The only keys it carries are the two Wii disc keys (standard and Korean) that Dolphin itself includes, used to read a Wii disc's or channel's own banner. Play only games you own, as backups you made from your own discs and consoles.

Porpoise is an independent, free and open-source project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Nintendo or Sony Interactive Entertainment, and it contains no code, artwork, sounds or other material from either. Nintendo, GameCube and Wii are trademarks of Nintendo. PlayStation and PS5 are trademarks of Sony Interactive Entertainment Inc. These names are used only to describe compatibility.

Emulation is provided by Dolphin (GPL-2.0-or-later). Box art and game details are downloaded on your console from GameTDB and are not distributed with Porpoise.

License

Porpoise is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. Parts carried over from other projects keep their own notices. Every component that ships in the app, with its license and exact source revision, is listed in licenses/README.txt inside the release and in CREDITS.md.

_{Made with care by @elripalda · Discord}