Homebrew Question What's the current state of emulation on Nintendo Switch?

[Francesca]

Couldn't find a relevant thread addressing this so I figured I'd take the time to quickly ask. Specifically wondering about:

1. What sort of old gen consoles can be emulated adequately on the Switch?

2. Do you rely on RetroArch for emulation, or do other methods work as well? From my experience with an Android device, RetroArch is hard to understand and configure.

3. How good is the quality of the best consoles it can emulate?

4. Is Multiplayer possible when emulating other consoles?

 

[Rahkeesh]

For Switch, get used to Retroarch because hardly anything else is being updated. Next atmosphere update is going to kill a lot of old homebrew with the control changes. You can also inject NES/SNES online stuff but that might be more complicated than Retroarch.

Retroarch does every 2D console/arcade and a bunch of computers really well, and also plays most Dreamcast, PS1, and PSP acceptably. You can also run N64 but I understand thats a bit more hit or miss. Saturn work is just starting but has a long way to go till fullspeed. Gamecube/Wii are just barely fullspeed at max overclock, but are only available on android/linux, doesn't sound like it is coming to native/Horizon ever.

The other interesting homebrew is Melon DS, which can run many DS games at fullspeed with some overclock. The latest developments are not yet integrated into Retroarch so worth following the standalone.

 

[HyperShadow]

Saturn work is just starting but has a long way to go till fullspeed.

So as I understand it there's a standalone Saturn emulator Yabasanshiro that plays several games at full speed including NiGHTS. But the uoYabause core for retroarch is nowhere as close to playing NiGHTS at full speed? My own attempts led to the switch freezing up. NiGHTS is the only saturn game I've really ever wanted on switch but I'm not willing to set up a separate sd card and reboot the switch just to play it. Is it likely that the retroarch core will be updated in the near future?