Wii U emulators
The Wii U is an eighth-generation console released by Nintendo in 2012. It is the first console by Nintendo to output to high definition (HD) resolutions, such as 720p and 1080p. It includes a tablet-like controller, known as the Wii U GamePad, to provide certain additional gameplay. Notably, it can play all Wii games as well as support the Wii Remote controllers for native Wii U games.
Emulators
Name | Operating System(s) | Latest Version | Compatibility | Active | Open-Source | Recommended |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cemu | Windows | 2.0-80 | Medium | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
Decaf | Windows, Linux | GitHub | Low | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
Comparisons
- Cemu
- Can launch and play most major commercial games (such as WW:HD/MK8/SM3DW/BOTW) with minor glitches (such as audio glitches in WW:HD) or major glitches (such as Bokoblin eyes on AMD being broken in BOTW).
- Decaf
- A research project for Wii U emulation. It's able to boot some commercial games.
Dolphin
You might have read about an unofficial branch of Dolphin with Wii U support — but don't get your hopes up. While the PowerPC architecture family in the Wii U is the same as the Wii and GameCube (this fact alone was the reason why Wii emulation was added to Dolphin, originally GameCube-only), this support is nothing more than the file viewer features (region, internal name, various info, list of files and folders inside ISO and a way to extract them) being expanded to Wii U disc images. Nothing has been done on the actual emulation front as far as Dolphin is concerned, and the Dolphin developers have said that they're not going to add Wii U support to Dolphin.