Emulation Switch Emulation on Wii U

[OnlyTypical]

Hello, I just recently I had an idea for Switch Emulation on the Wii U.


I know there's an old thread from 2018 about someone asking if he or she could emulate Switch games on their Wii U, which they all said no quite bluntly, BUT I have a strong feeling it is still maybe possible, because I think if the CPU is worked with just enough (Which there are applications for that) can ALMOST be powerful enough to match with the PS4 or Xbox One, and I looked up the GPU and I read that it is equivalent to an AMD HD 6770 or a little lower like a higher 4000 series which I think can emulate (I don't know for sure). But the only thing that would be stopping me is the RAM which the Switch has 4GB meanwhile the Wii U only has 2GB of RAM (1GB usable for games, maybe 1.5GB if I remove any unsupported software) which I do have an idea to remedy that problem. If someone be kind enough to just provide me files that are important to actually getting the games running and working. I'll know what to do from there.

I don't care if this seems stupid, I'm going to try it out anyways because I do have an idea and I have a very strong feeling it might just work, I don't know if it'll work, but I wanna try it.

 

[OM3GAZX]

I'm not the right person to ask, but I'd be amazed if you manage to pull out something like that.
Then again, the Switch was outdated hardware from the very beginning, so that gives me a small glimmer of hope.

 

[CMDreamer]

All I can see here, is that you have no idea what is required to emulate another system (being it a PC or a console) on any given platform.

It's not just about comparing the CPU/GPU, but about how well the resources are managed.

You're not considering that the WiiU MUST first take care of its own requirements/resources to load its own system BEFORE even trying to emulate another. And that's a very resource intensive task.

A proof of this is the N64 emulation, an "older" console that barely can be emulated to a playing state for some games on the WiiU. It's even "easier" to recompile the game for that system instead of trying to emulate it, as already has been done with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask.

Even Nintendo has/had issues emulating N64 games properly on the Switch. That, following your reasoning, should not have much struggle to do it, if you compare both the CPU and GPU, the Switch "should" emulate N64 games perfectly using HD graphics and all that sort of things.

 

[Scipionisafricanus]

this is one of the posts of all time

 

[Deleted member 483379]

this is an eof post that fell through the cracks

 

[Error52]

 

[M7L7NK7]

Even Nintendo has/had issues emulating N64 games properly on the Switch. That, following your reasoning, should not have much struggle to do it, if you compare both the CPU and GPU, the Switch "should" emulate N64 games perfectly using HD graphics and all that sort of things.

That was more Nintendo's fault, Mupen handles N64 great on Switch

 

[OnlyTypical]

All I can see here, is that you have no idea what is required to emulate another system (being it a PC or a console) on any given platform.

It's not just about comparing the CPU/GPU, but about how well the resources are managed.

You're not considering that the WiiU MUST first take care of its own requirements/resources to load its own system BEFORE even trying to emulate another. And that's a very resource intensive task.

A proof of this is the N64 emulation, an "older" console that barely can be emulated to a playing state for some games on the WiiU. It's even "easier" to recompile the game for that system instead of trying to emulate it, as already has been done with Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask.

Even Nintendo has/had issues emulating N64 games properly on the Switch. That, following your reasoning, should not have much struggle to do it, if you compare both the CPU and GPU, the Switch "should" emulate N64 games perfectly using HD graphics and all that sort of things

I see now!
But! I want to still try it out, even if it is seemly impossible like trying to turn Windows 98 SE into an NT operating system, I want to at least try it out.

And I can't let go of the thought of playing Animal Crossing New Horizons like it was released for Wii U, that would be awesome lol.

 

[MysticStarlight]

Good luck! (You're gonna need it)...

I don't see how a console that's less powerful than the Switch will be able to emulate it. At this point it's easier to decompile a Switch game and port it to the Wii U (an incredibly hard task which takes AGES to accomplish).

 

[Captain_N]

Do you relize that the switch in handheld mode is more powerful then the wii U?

 

[tmnr1992]

You will first need to learn a plethora of information on programming, emulation, and hardware among many other things, but you probably need to get the basics first, so here's a good place to start:

 

[Moon164]

This would be more complicated than the Game Cube emulating Wii games.

And just so you know, the Wii is basically a "Game Cube Pro", it has the same CPU, the same architecture, but the Wii is more powerful, has higher CPU/GPU clocks and more RAM, things that you simply cannot get around on the Game Cube.

For example, you can actually run the Metroid Prime 3 prototype on a Game Cube devkit, but the game constantly crashes in several parts simply because there is not as much RAM available on the Game Cube as there is on the Wii.

Now, the Wii U is a good console and even more powerful than the PS3/X360, but it is still weaker than the Switch and that's not to mention that it uses a completely different architecture.

What you are asking for is incredible but also borders on the impossible.

 

[ChibiMofo]

It doesn't border on the impossible. It is impossible. I have worked in emulation since the 1980s. You are not going to emulate a different architecture at an acceptable speed unless you are using faster hardware. The Wii U is slower hardware. End of discussion. (The Wii U isn't emulating the Wii anymore than the Wii is emulating the GameCube. But the Switch, as someone else above pointed out, uses a different CPU/GPU architecture, and thus only emulation is even remotely possible. But it's not because the Switch is a newer, more powerful architecture.)

 

[Ettino]

BUT I have a strong feeling it is still maybe possible

Too bad the console doesn't run on your feeling. You would have a better time coding a Dreamcast emulator for the console.

 

[MRJPGames]

Because I adore being contrarian I will state that as a matter of fact YOU can emulate Switch software on a Wii U. But you don't want to!!!

Most slowdown wouldn't come from the CPU/GPU (though they would already not be powerful enough to get decent speeds) but the lack of RAM. To emulate the Wii U would have to fall back on a method similar (essentially equivalent) to SWAP. Aka using the MMC memory as RAM. MMC is much much much slower and not intended to be used as RAM. For active software using more RAM than is available to the Switch emulator it would create major slowdown.

As for the rest you can emulate it all. In fact you could emulate a switch on a commodore 64 given enough external hardware to expand it's storage, it would just be weeks-months, let's be real years per frame (not to mention the time it would take to boot into anything).

Computers are computers and at the end of the day they can all do the same things. The difference is how they are built will determine how quickly they can do a specific task. The Wii U is unsuitable for running switch software in any playable state. (Though certain smallar simpler games theoretically could be recompiled to run on a Wii U, because their technical requirements are met by the Wii U, but at that point it's more a port than emulation.)

As for the example game you mentioned, Animal Crossing couldn't even be ported without MAJOR modifications to the game to run on the inferior Wii U hardware.

If you want the experience of "running" switch software on a Wii U, use some remote gaming utility like Moonlight on your Wii U, and emulate the Switch on a powerful enough PC.

 

[Captain_N]

Because I adore being contrarian I will state that as a matter of fact YOU can emulate Switch software on a Wii U. But you don't want to!!!

Most slowdown wouldn't come from the CPU/GPU (though they would already not be powerful enough to get decent speeds) but the lack of RAM. To emulate the Wii U would have to fall back on a method similar (essentially equivalent) to SWAP. Aka using the MMC memory as RAM. MMC is much much much slower and not intended to be used as RAM. For active software using more RAM than is available to the Switch emulator it would create major slowdown.

As for the rest you can emulate it all. In fact you could emulate a switch on a commodore 64 given enough external hardware to expand it's storage, it would just be weeks-months, let's be real years per frame (not to mention the time it would take to boot into anything).

Computers are computers and at the end of the day they can all do the same things. The difference is how they are built will determine how quickly they can do a specific task. The Wii U is unsuitable for running switch software in any playable state. (Though certain smallar simpler games theoretically could be recompiled to run on a Wii U, because their technical requirements are met by the Wii U, but at that point it's more a port than emulation.)

As for the example game you mentioned, Animal Crossing couldn't even be ported without MAJOR modifications to the game to run on the inferior Wii U hardware.

If you want the experience of "running" switch software on a Wii U, use some remote gaming utility like Moonlight on your Wii U, and emulate the Switch on a powerful enough PC.

not even a swap file would help. the wii U has 2gb of ram. if a game needs 3 gb of data loaded into ram at all times then it wont work as you cant swap out blocks of memory fast enough when it has to be present in that ram space 100% if the time because its in use. Even of you managed to memory map it elsewhere it would be so slow that it would kill any flash chip rather fast. Early Wii software was running on the gamecube dev units

 

[Flame]

Don't create such a dumb thread again.