OVERSkies of Arcadia Legends: Recompiled runs the GameCube RPG natively on Android, now with the Japanese disc
Sega's sky-pirate RPG Skies of Arcadia Legends no longer needs a GameCube emulator on Android. Skies of Arcadia Legends: Recompiled, by ogdanimal (who also makes Hybrid Heaven Recomp), translates the game's PowerPC code ahead of time into native code for Windows, Linux, macOS and Android. The GameCube's graphics, sound and input are handled by code taken from Dolphin. The project is GPL-3.0 and still in beta. Version 0.80.0-beta came out on October 21, the day after 0.60.0 added a macOS build.
What's new in 0.80
- The Japanese disc (Eternal Arcadia Legends, GEAJ8P) now plays with every feature the USA and European discs have. The text and voices are Japanese, but the port's own menus stay in English.
- An optional Uncensored mode brings back the original Japanese art that the Western releases changed. It needs your own Eternal Arcadia Dreamcast discs, imported under a new Settings → Dreamcast tab. That tab also holds the Dreamcast music option.
- Fixes for portable mode and for importing European saves, and the Linux build now runs on older distributions.
What it adds over the original
Widescreen and any screen shape, 60 fps, free camera control, battle speed-up, and a field speed of 1.5x, 2x or 3x for towns, dungeons and sailing. You also get save states, a Continue button, HD texture packs and save import from Dolphin or a real GameCube. When a device can't keep up with the field speed, the port lowers it automatically. The developer says a Snapdragon 865 handheld like the Retroid Pocket 5 runs the game at full speed and 60 fps, and settles at 1.25x to 1.5x field speed. On Android you can switch between Vulkan and OpenGL ES, and Adreno devices can load a custom GPU driver if the stock one draws things wrong. Slower phones may not hold 60 fps.
What you need
An arm64 Android device on Android 7.0 or newer and an image of your own USA (GEAE8P), European (GEAP8P) or Japanese (GEAJ8P) disc, as RVZ, ISO, GCM, GCZ, WIA or CISO. No game data is included. Install the APK, tap Select Disc, and the launcher checks and patches your image once. To update, install the new APK over the old one and your saves carry over. If you try it on a Retroid, AYN or Anbernic handheld, send us a compatibility report. Find it in our ports directory. Source: Skies of Arcadia Legends: Recompiled on GitHub, via Recomp's weekly roundup.