Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2025)

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader is an arcade-style flight action game co-developed by Factor 5 and LucasArts. The second of three games in the Rogue Squadron series, it was published by LucasArts and released as a launch title for the Nintendo GameCube. The game was praised for its amazing visuals, thanks to an impressive game engine that uses advanced GameCube features.

Similar to its predecessor, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Rogue Leader is a fast-paced, flight action game. Each of the game's ten levels introduces mission objectives such as search and destroy or protection that must be completed to progress to the next level. The players performance on each level is compared to three medals (bronze, silver, and gold), based on completion time, enemies killed, etc. Getting more medals results in unlocking more levels and spacecraft. Rogue Leader also has a large collection of hidden items throughout the game, from powerups, hidden ships, and hidden levels.

Because of its technical prowess, use of rare GameCube features, and plethora of hacks, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader has proven difficult for Dolphin to emulate.

Emulation Information

Shader Compilation Stuttering

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader is one of the most susceptible titles to shader compilation stuttering. The GC and Wii have no concept of shaders - everything is executed directly by the hardware without an intermediate programming language (API). Modern computers and mobile systems do not work in this way, requiring the use of shaders as an intermediary so your system's GPU can perform the tasks that the GC and Wii GPU performed directly. Shaders have to be generated though, and since GC/Wii games are not designed to create shaders ahead of time as a PC game would, when a new effect appears Dolphin has to delay the CPU thread while the GPU thread performs the compilation; a pause that does not exist on the consoles. For most games shader generation takes only a few milliseconds, but for a few demanding titles, the shaders that they generate are so large that they can result in noticeable stuttering, in severe cases pauses of over a second may occur.

Since 5.0-4869, this problem can be solved by enabling ubershaders. Changing GPU, updating GPU drivers, or updating Dolphin may invalidate the shader cache, requiring specialized shaders to be compiled again. Since 5.0-6461, Dolphin caches shader pipeline UIDs independently of the video backend and compiles them on game start. This allows cached shaders to work across different video backends, platforms, hardware configurations and even Dolphin versions as long as changes aren't made to Dolphin's actual shader pipeline. These shaders are compiled in the background when the game starts, which may cause stuttering for a short period. Enable Compile Shaders Before Starting to avoid this.

Problems

Random Hang on Mission Start

Occasionally, the game may hang upon starting missions. Unfortunately, the cause for this is unknown and the best solution is to simply close and reopen the game. This should only happen rarely.

GPU Texture Decode Crash

Leaving GPU Texture Decode enabled will cause Rogue Squadron II to crash on a fairly regular basis.

Enhancements

HD Texture Pack

There is a high definition texture pack for Rogue Leader on the Dolphin forums.[1].

Widescreen Gecko Code

The built-in Widescreen Hack has severe clipping and scaling issues. Using the below Gecko code instead is recommended for 16:9 gameplay.

NTSC-U

$16:9 Widescreen NTSC-U48000000 800AC1C0DE000000 7E007FFF3016B380 3860002014014D08 4848B2F81416B378 48334C99140DB618 483C49F9141F6F78 3FE38E39E0000000 80008000060A0000 00000038C0C20000 EC2101B2D023012C 4BB74D00C0220000 C0030000EC000824 D0030000C003000C EC000824D003000C 388000014E800020 000000000409EA20 3FAAAAAA48000000 80096220DE000000 8000818014000E84 3B19999A14000E90 BF400000E0000000 800080000409935C 3FE38E39

Note that this code causes intermittent crashes on real hardware and may be dependent on unique Dolphin behavior.

Dither Disable

Disables the "sky dithering" effect that causes a grid pattern on skyboxes for ground maps.

043B0C14 00000000043B0C18 00000000

Configuration

Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.

Graphics

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

Testing

This title has been tested on the environments listed below:

Gameplay Videos

• Star Wars Rogue Squadron II- Rogue Leader - Gameplay Nintendo Gamecube HD (Dolphin Emulator 5.0-127) (720p max)
• Rogue Leader (with HD textures) Dolphin 5.0 vs Wii Comparison - The Retro Byte (2160p60)
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron II - Dolphin 5.0 - HD Textures- Gamecube Emulator - HD.1080p 60ᶠᵖˢ
• Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader - GCN 1080p upscaled in Dolphin with Iris Xe Graphics

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