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 labelled itself as research project to determine its possibility. It is 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 (and this fact alone was the reason why Wii emulation was added to Dolphin, which had been GameCube only up until its open-source release), 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.