GameCube Emulator Pureikyubu Finally Gets a Real Save State System

The Pureikyubu project (formerly known as Dolwin), an open-source GameCube emulator focused on reverse-engineering the console, just merged a major pull request: a full save state system. The change was integrated on September 24, 2026 by project maintainer ogamespec.

In practice, ten save slots are now available per game (files .st0 through .st9), accessible via F5 for quick save and F7 for quick load, with Shift+F5 and Shift+F7 to cycle through slots. The system captures every critical component of the virtual machine: the Gekko CPU, main memory, the DSP and the graphics pipeline, while excluding non-persistent resources such as mounted discs or on-the-fly recompiled code.

Commands are also available for advanced users. The project's JDI debug interface now accepts the savestate, loadstate and states commands, letting users script saving or loading a specific slot, handy for TAS development or game debugging.

Pureikyubu remains an experimental project, more focused on understanding GameCube hardware than on broad software compatibility. The full source code is available on the project's official GitHub repository, where pull request #453 details the full technical implementation of save states for anyone looking to build it themselves.

Source: Retro Replay