u/UCLAKoolman

I started playing the GameCube version of Ultimate Spider-Man in Dolphin on my Retroid Nova and immediately noticed something odd with the aspect ratio.

With Dolphin set to Auto, the game displays much wider than 4:3, almost 16:9 with letterboxed black bars on top/bottom. At first I assumed I had a widescreen hack enabled, but:

• Widescreen Hack is off
• No Gecko/AR widescreen codes are enabled
• I tried both the NTSC-U (GUTE52) and European (GUTP52) versions and they behave the same way
• I tried the same ROM on Dolphin on my PC and got the same result

The attached screenshot is from Dolphin on PC with Auto aspect ratio. You can see it's nearly 16:9, although it doesn't quite reach the sides of a 16:9 screen.

In the settings - Force 4:3 makes the game 4:3, but noticeably squishes everything horizontally (Spider-Man looks even skinnier! Circles are ovals).

On the PC version of Dolphin I tried Custom Aspect Ratio → 4:3 (NOT Force 4:3), and that seems to completely fix it. It fills a 4:3 frame while keeping the character proportions correct.

Unfortunately, Dolphin on Android doesn't have a Custom Aspect Ratio option in the GUI. However, it looks like you can reproduce it manually with a per-game INI file.

For the NTSC-U version, create/edit:

GUTE52.ini

in Dolphin's GameSettings folder and add:

[Video_Settings]
AspectRatio = 4
CustomAspectRatioWidth = 4
CustomAspectRatioHeight = 3

AspectRatio = 4 selects Dolphin's Custom aspect-ratio mode, and the other two values specify a literal 4:3 ratio.

On a standard Dolphin Android installation, the GameSettings folder should be under the Dolphin user-data directory:

Android/data/org.dolphinemu.dolphinemu/files/GameSettings/

After editing the INI, completely close and reopen Dolphin. I would also avoid changing the game's Aspect Ratio through the Android GUI afterward, since Custom isn't one of the options exposed there.

I couldn't find any posts about this issue! I did see a number of youtube videos of this game running on Dolphin and sure enough they were not 4:3. Here's one that says it's running at 1x resolution, default settings on Dolphin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqoV_vSh_go

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