

There's also a challenge mode which throws unique challenges at you that can be very difficult. Outside of Legends mode, there is a free mode to let you take any character you want into the story mode levels. Additional missions and characters can be downloaded through updates and bought with DLC. While the writing leaves a lot to be desired, there are tons of cutscenes and missions throughout it. The game has a "Legends" mode which amounts to a story mode. You'll be fighting thousands of enemies, capturing bases, and taking down bosses all while strengthening your heroes through upgrades and leveling. The Wii U version of the game holds up fairly well, with tons of enemies on screen and the gigantic battles still living up to their billing. So let's dig in and see how the game plays across three different systems and three emulators! Hyrule Warriors was originally developed for the Wii U console and released in late Built as a sort of Dynasty Warriors spinoff, it features gigantic battles against hordes of enemies with the world and characters from The Legend of Zelda games. Because it came out across two generations of Nintendo consoles and a handheld, each subsequent release of Hyrule Warriors saw significant changes.

One particular game that that ended up rather interesting to me was Hyrule Warriors. Sometimes analysis gives a rather interesting insight into both the game's design, late additions made to the game, and how unique console features make the same effects different for emulation. Since running into that with THPS4, I've kept my eye on cross-platform ports of games and always been interested the differences between the versions. What these consoles offer, how specific games take advantage of them, and how developers work around limitations all play heavily into how hard it is to emulate a particular title. Over time, I've learned a lot more about emulation and how the target console shapes our favorite emulators. I wanted to understand why and see what the game was doing to create a bug that was not only present in a PS2 emulator, but the GameCube version of the game.

The strange thing was that Dolphin was emulating the effect as it was on the GameCube whereas PCSX2's hardware renderers we're rendering it incorrectly compared to the PS2! As a note, PCSX2's software renderer handled the effect correctly. I was inspired for this when investigating Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 back in PCSX2's hardware renderers and all of Dolphin renderers managed to run into the same bug. While that hasn't exactly worked out as I'd expected, I've still been interested in the analysis of cross-platform games and emulation.
