Dolphin Depot, a homebrew app store that runs on the GameCube itself, is in public beta

Browse a catalogue on the TV and download games and emulators straight to an SD card in the console. You need a homebrew-capable GameCube and a network adapter.

AI-drafted from 3 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

The GameCube now has a homebrew app store, and it runs on the console. Dolphin Depot lets you browse a catalogue on the TV, pick a game or an emulator and download it straight to the SD card in your machine, with no PC in the middle. It opened to everyone as a public beta on 2 November 2026, after a closed beta in October for a group of users from the project's Discord server. Retro Dodo wrote it up on 9 November, which is how it crossed my desk.

The project is led by webhdx, named on the site as project lead and developer. Its own history page traces the idea to March 2024 and ETH2GC, an affordable, open-source network adapter for the GameCube: once getting the console online got easier, a store gave it a reason to go there. The name Dolphin Depot came on 20 February 2026, along with the first version of the API, the idea of an app registry and an early indexer to build the catalogue. Work on the GameCube client began four days later, with a dedicated binary API written alongside it so the client could work within the console's limits.

What is in it

The beta client, version 0.0.11 in the screenshots the project shared, opens on Recommended, Most Downloaded, Most Liked and Recently Updated, then splits the catalogue into Games, Emulators, Utilities, Demos and Media. One page of listings shows Retro League GX, described as a Rocket League demake for older consoles, alongside Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Piero's Wiicross, Nicky Boum and Neverball. Retro Dodo also counts several Game Boy emulators and a PS1 emulator among the downloads.

It is a store for other people's work as much as a download button. The documentation has a release guide and a full schema for the manifest.json file that describes an app, and there is a page for developers to submit their own homebrew to the registry.

What you need

The installation guide lists three things. The console has to run unsigned code, through a save game exploit, a modchip such as PicoBoot or PicoLoader, or an optical drive emulator like GC Loader or FlippyDrive. It needs a network adapter: Nintendo's own Broadband Adapter or a modern alternative such as ETH2GC. The Modem Adapter and the FlippyDrive Ethernet Adapter are not supported. And it needs somewhere to put the downloads: an SD2SP2, SD Gecko or MMCE with a suitably sized SD card.

Setting it up is a matter of downloading the client, unzipping it and copying the apps/dolphindepot folder to the root of the SD card, then launching it like any other homebrew. The site is clear that this is a beta and asks people to report bugs on its Discord. Dolphin Depot also notes that it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.

Sources

Image: Image: Dolphin Depot, via Retro Dodo

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