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In a competitive scene with softmods, modchips, homebrew, and other assorted upcoming releases, the team behind Yuzu, the Nintendo Switch emulator, has also made some significant progress, as well. A video was uploaded by the Yuzu devs on YouTube, showcasing Cave Story booting up, and even getting past the title screen. After the cutscene plays, the emulation hangs and does not go further. After that, they show The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+, which actually manages to boot into a playable segment, which can crash at random. Puyo Puyo Tetris manages to emulate the SEGA logo, but crashes shortly thereafter. All of these games have major graphical issues, but they actually boot, and even run, albeit at very slow speeds.

The Challenge Behind Booting Switch Games
Getting to this point hasn’t been easy, and has been a massive reverse-engineering challenge. Led by bunnei and Subv with contributions from ogniK and jroweboy the team slowly chipped away at stopping point after stopping point to finally get us to this milestone. Special thanks to gdkchan and Ryujinx, as without collaboration, this wouldn’t have been possible.

Also, huge thanks to Lioncash and MerryMage, who have been tirelessly working on the ARMv8 JIT that yuzu uses! Without it, we’d still be in the dark ages of interpreted CPU emulation.

While yuzu is built on top of Citra’s kernel infrastructure, a lot of modification had to be done in order to move things over to the Switch’s services. But the main issues all had to do with the Switch’s GPU.

Because it’s a NVIDIA product, some information was able to be gleamed by sifting through the Nouveau source. Some of the more particularly difficult stopping points were Kernel Synchronization Primitives and Shader Decompilation, but there were many more smaller bumps along the way. On top of that, the rest of the emulator had to be brought up to snuff in order to get games to the point where they would boot.

In the end, this is a small first step toward proper emulation of Nintendo’s exciting console/handheld hybrid. None of the games booting are especially stable and emulation is in a very, very early state.

What does yuzu Require?
Right now, most games won’t run, and the games that do run will run incredibly slow and only get so far before encountering issues. We recommend you have as fast of a processor as possible and a GPU that supports OpenGL 4.3 or newer.

The development team states that with this milestone achieved, they plan to get more games booting on the emulator, while also attempting to emulate the Switch's GPU. You can check out their official post on their site, linked in the source below. The Switch scene gets excited with every day that passes! What are your thoughts on this emulator and its progress?

Source

 

[GameSystem]

@the_randomizer I think you may have read it negatively by accident.

A little surprised at how fast this scene is maturing, but then again, it IS one of the most successful gaming systems in history...

DS and WII are the most successful consoles in history, no one will ever replace them

*DS is the most successful PORTABLE console in history
* Wii is the second best selling home console in history.

PS2 is actually the best selling home console ever. Switch is the fastest selling console in the US to date.

It's just a quick fact correction.

 

[the_randomizer]

@the_randomizer I think you may have read it negatively by accident.







It's just a quick fact correction.

I'm sleep deprived and I feel pretty crappy today, my apologies.

 

[GameSystem]

I'm sleep deprived and I feel pretty crappy today, my apologies.

I'm not the one who said those things, but I'll forgive you on behalf of them.

 

[Deleted User]

Nintendo's tendency to release shitty outdated hardware means that it is far more realistic to emulate. Imagine what kind of specs a PC needs to emulate the PS4 at a playable speed. Its also sad that by the end of the Switch's lifetime we'll be emulating it's games in 4k resolution while an actual Switch struggles to output 1080p.

 

[Kazalber]

$50K actually.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Also amounts to around 600,000 a year which is fucking insane even for a team.

Wait, really? How do they do that? Who pays them? The patreons?

Not like RyujiNX could do it, and more games before yuzu publically could or anything.

Ooh, I didn't know there was more than one emulator in the works. Cool!

 

[anhminh]

Oh cool, how can I run botw on it at 60fps on my laptop? /s

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Imagine what kind of specs a PC needs to emulate the PS4 at a playable speed.

Not nearly as bad as you seem to think, given that it already operates on an x86 architecture. It's just a matter of emulating function calls rather than emulating hardware in that case

 

[x65943]

Not nearly as bad as you seem to think, given that it already operates on an x86 architecture. It's just a matter of emulating function calls rather than emulating hardware in that case

The fact that the ps4 and xbone are just literally shitty pcs does not bode well for the continued existence of dedicated consoles imo.

Back in the day the 64 and PS were offering experiences only possible on their platform. The exclusives seem to dwindle more each gen now. Looks like ninty is the only one who still has a large collection of meaningful IP.

Can't help but think they're all going the way of sega soon™ tho.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

The fact that the ps4 and xbone are just literally shitty pcs does not bode well for the continued existence of dedicated consoles imo.

Back in the day the 64 and PS were offering experiences only possible on their platform. The exclusives seem to dwindle more each gen now. Looks like ninty is the only one who still has a large collection of meaningful IP.

Can't help but think they're all going the way of sega soon™ tho.

The architecture isn't that much of a problem, it's the fact that they're just black boxes that house what's not much more than powerful laptop components; in the long run, since it's so easy for devs to do a simultaneous release without even requiring a change in controller layout, most of the time you lose virtually nothing by just owning a PC and buying the same games there

 

[x65943]

The architecture isn't that much of a problem, it's the fact that they're just black boxes that house what's not much more than powerful laptop components; in the long run, since it's so easy for devs to do a simultaneous release without even requiring a change in controller layout, most of the time you lose virtually nothing by just owning a PC and buying the same games there

I agree. There are some really cool games this gen that didn't come out for pc, but if you're not a weeb you won't notice for the most part.

(But being a weeb) I wish games like persona or dragon quest came to PC.

 

[Chary]

Either way, context can be a bitch. But it will still fool people.
I guess I will stop, there's no sense in arguing over simple contextual issues.

The current title and article make it clear that it's this emulator's first time booting a game. The title isn't my own however, and was changed a few hours after it was written.

To be fair, I can see where the issue is. I don't ever recall any front page threads mentioning Ryujinx. I can only find https://gbatemp.net/threads/experimental-switch-emulator-in-c.495982/ and https://gbatemp.net/threads/ryujinx-boots-cave-story.500417/

I think by the time I'd seen the emulator and its news of it booting a game, it had gotten too late to be able to post a relevant article on it. That, and I think I might have written about it in one of my news roundup threads instead of giving it it's own post.

 

[moneychild]

In a few months, I can finally test games without demos before I buy them.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

In a few months, I can finally test games without demos before I buy them.

At 10fps with stutter and visual corruptions, maybe

 

[x65943]

At 10fps with stutter and visual corruptions, maybe

Yeah I think the timeframe he's looking at is closer to 2 years.

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Yeah I think the timeframe he's looking at is closer to 2 years.

I'd give it a year and a handful of months

 

[Jayro]

This declares war for Nintendo, lol.

 

[Deleted User]

we want ryujinx

 

[TotalInsanity4]

Yuzu my ass @gdkchan s Ryujinx was first and nobody is reporting it

You should read the last page my guy

 

[Captain_N]

O Snap Son!! Thats fast.

 

[tranceology3]

This is incredible! I mean, emulators usually need hardware about 3-5+ years to start emulating a next gen console right away. I can't believe a console that just released in 2017 is partially emulated in just one year, oh wait...I forgot it's just Switch hardware.