Switch emulator

yuzu

It's important to point out that although I'm dedicating this page to two cutting edge game console emulators, this in no way is an endorsement of software piracy. Firstly, neither of these emulators are particularly better at playing real games than the original (certainly not yuzu, yet). Even the 3DS emulator Citra lacks the real thing's inputs and 3D screen, spoiling and wasting the design of and immersion into the games that run on the real thing. Secondly, the vast majority of those who are fascinated by emulators are fascinated because of what they're doing on a technical level, and not because of the potential end result. What they're doing is virtualizing real hardware with clever bits of code, nailing the timing and the chip interactions to such an extent that the original games and home-brew software you can sometimes run on these emulators thinks they are running on the real thing.

With that in mind, yuzu is the beginning of an exceptional emulator of Nintendo's current-generation console, Switch. Nintendo Switch uses 3DS-related hardware and some elements of Android, along with some FreeBSD code, so it's perhaps no real surprise. But in many ways, Switch is still nascent, and despite its current success, the future of Nintendo relies on its continued profitability. Vitally, games don't yet run on yuzu. You can't really do anything with it – yet – but the fact that it already exists has many people worried. This is a legitimate concern, because gaming will likely never recover from losing a publisher as innovative and brave as Nintendo. However, as an open source project that reverse engineers a piece of hardware, it's an incredible piece of software, and one that follows the long tradition of emulation.

Project Website

https://github.com/yuzu-emu/yuzu

Although the yuzu emulator doesn't yet play games, it's likely to start adding support for 2D titles first.

3DS emulator