Nintendo Switch emulators

Nintendo Switch

The Switch in its two forms, handheld (above) and docked (below).
Developer	Nintendo
Type	Hybrid video game console
Generation	Eighth generation
Release date	March 2017
Predecessor	Wii U (new) 3DS
Emulated	✓

For other emulators that run on Switch hardware, see Emulators on Switch.

The Nintendo Switch is an eighth-generation hybrid gaming console released by Nintendo on March 3, 2017, and retailed for $299.99. During its development, the Switch was known as the NX (short for NeXt or Nintendo "Cross") and was widely speculated upon until its announcement. Aside from specialized components unique to the console, the hardware is more or less off-the-shelf, being built around a semi-custom variant of NVIDIA's Tegra X1 system-on-a-chip, which was also used on a number of Android devices. The Switch contains 4 ARM Cortex-A57 CPUs and 4 ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs running at 1.020 GHz with 4 GBs of RAM and a proprietary NVIDIA GPU codenamed GM20B.

While Nintendo intended to step up the console's security, vulnerabilities were still found early on that allowed tons of system files to be dumped, including dumps of games in the form of romfs.istorage archives, an exefs folder, and license files. These game dumps eventually got shared online by scene groups except for their licenses but were missing essential files to run. Even if they had been completed, there were no custom homebrew apps, let alone solutions to load unofficial game dumps for the system. A number of prominent hacking teams (starting with shuffle2 and fail0verflow in collaboration) all came across a new exploit independently of each other that allowed complete control over the system, later officially recognized by NVIDIA as CVE-2018-6242.

A "debugging emulator" for the Nintendo Switch, CageTheUnicorn (now Mephisto), popped up not long after the first components were dumped. It was designed to emulate sysmodules with "no support for graphics, sound, input, or any kind of even remotely performant processing [...] by design". A couple of months later, members of both the Citra and Dolphin teams announced the release of their own emulator written in C++, which was capable of booting some homebrew applications; within a couple of weeks, yet another emulator named Ryujinx, written in C# by developer gdkchan, was released showing successful booting of commercial Switch games Puyo Puyo Tetris and Sonic Mania.

Emulators

Name	Platform(s)	Latest Version	Hardware features and peripherals	Enhancements	Compatibility	FLOSS	Active	Recommended
PC / x86
Ryujinx		Nightly LDN builds	~	~	83% 3543 out of 4273 reported titles	✓	✓	✓
yuzu		EA ($) Mainline	~	~	54% 1457 out of 2699 reported titles	✓	✓	✓
NSEmu		git	✗	✗	?	✓	✗	✗
Mephisto		git	✗	✗	?	✓	✗	✗
CageTheUnicorn		git	✗	✗	?	✓	✗	✗
Mobile / ARM
yuzu		EA ($) Mainline (Google Play) Mainline (GitHub)	~	~	?*	✓	✓	~
Strato		git	?	?	4% 58 out of 1426 reported titles	✓	✓	~
Sudachi		0.0.1.7]	?	?	?	✓	✓	~
Ryujinx		Unreleased	?	?	?	?	✓	WIP
Skyline		Edge 69	?	?	?	✓	✗*	✗
Egg NS		4.0.5	✗	✗	78% 172 out of 220 reported titles	✗ (stolen yuzu)	✓	✗
DamonSwitch		1.0Preview	✗	✗	N/A	✗ (stolen yuzu)	✗	✗
Horizon Linux		git	✗	✗	?	✓	✗	✗

Ryujinx

An open-source hybrid approach emulator that's programmed in C#. Unlike yuzu, Ryujinx does not offer packaged early-access builds. However, work-in-progress features can still be tested by building locally from unmerged pull requests. Separately, Ryujinx has a closed source LDN-enabled build and there is a feature tracker for this LDN build for upstreaming. As of August 2022, Vulkan API support is available. One of Ryujinx's notable feature is it's focusing compatibility and accuracy but has more shader stutters compared to yuzu. Also it has an alternative approach (alternative to yuzu's NCE) for emulation on ARM systems for improving performance.[1]

yuzu

An open-source HLE approach emulator made by many of Citra's developers. As it's a hard fork of Citra, it shares many of its traits, namely cross-platform support and the use of OpenGL and Vulkan. This emulator currently offers early access builds to $5/month Patreon subscribers, which allows said Patreons to utilize new features prior to their eventual release on the mainline build. One of yuzu's notable feature is its performance and has less shader stutters compared to Ryujinx, so it's ideal for weaker PCs. Yuzu also has free and paid Android versions which greatly improved recently thanks to the support for Native Code Execution (NCE) and other improvements. Recent Device Mapping & SMMU implementation further helps reducing memory footprint, allowing future optimizations and more. Also there are even more optimizations exclusive to the Linux-x86 and Android platforms thanks to the "MADV_REMOVE" but despite all the optimizations and improvements, only high-end devices are recommended for Android platform. The yuzu's January 2024 progress report highlights ongoing work on "multiprocess" and "services". This progress is crucial for emulating applets and enabling emulating system functions like the QLaunch HOME Menu, but further development is required before these features are fully implemented.

Sudachi

An experimental port of Yuzu to iOS/iPadOS by Jarrod Norwell. Requires a paid Apple Developer Account or TrollStore in order to use the com.apple.developer.kernel.increased-memory-limit entitlement.

Skyline

The predecessor to the Strato project. Development of Skyline ceased in May 2023.

Strato

A fork of Skyline that continues from where that project left off. It's an open-source compatibility layer for ARMv8 Android devices. For the sake of convenience, the team bills the app as an emulator, but it functionally works like Wine, running almost all the entire original code on bare metal except for what interfaces with the rest of the system. Some titles can go ingame with poor framerate and minor glitches, but the Skyline team has done great work making 3D games, such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have graphical output, boosting FPS in many titles, and fixing bugs in games.

Egg NS

Similar to DamonPS2, it's a closed-source, payware/malware emulator only for Android. It is NOT recommended to use this emulator because there is significant controversy surrounding this emulator for the following reasons: touch controls require an expensive monthly membership to use, it expects to run on a high-end/flagship device within the ballpark of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8xx and 8 Gen 1, and it was discovered to have violated GPLv2 licensing requirements by illegally stealing code from yuzu and Skyline. Happy Chick is also a code-stolen emulator by this company. Its icon is edited from Happy Chick with Adobe Photoshop. Its real headquarters location is in mainland China.

DamonSwitch

Developed by DamonPS2 team. Closed-source, payware/malware emulator for Android only, known to steal code from other emulators. Even worse compatibility than Egg NS, it can barely run anything. It is NOT recommended to use this emulator. Damon company edited the yuzu icon with Adobe Photoshop for its own use. Its real headquarters location is in mainland China.

Horizon Linux

Horizon Linux is an open-source ARM64 Linux modified to run Nintendo Switch applications with hypervised CPU & IO, but still mostly relying on yuzu code in its Mizu shim to emulate functions such as the GPU. Puyo Puyo Tetris is semi-playable with audio output, and the emulator can also run several homebrew applications.

Hardware features and peripherals

Name		Ryujinx	Yuzu	Strato
Switch HOME Menu		✗*	WIP	✗
Mii Editor		✓	✓*	✗
NSO emulators		✓	~	?
Connectivity	Nintendo Switch Online	✗	✗	✗
	Local Wireless Play / LDN	~	~	✗
	LAN Play	✓	✓	✗
Controllers	Native Dual Joy-Con Support	~*	✓*	?
	Ring-con	✗*	✓*	?
	Keyboard and mouse	~*	?	?
Inputs	IR Motion Camera	✗	✓*	✗
	HD Rumble	✗*	✗*
	Motion Controls (Gyro)	✓*	✓*
	Touchscreen	✓*	✓*	?
Amiibo		✓	✓	✗

Connectivity

Local Wireless Play/LDN

Only works with other users of Ryujinx's LDN builds or yuzu users, NOT with native Switch players. However, Ryujinx also allows for connecting to CFW Switch devices that are using the ldn_mitm submodule. Also, there is a feature tracker for Ryujinx LDN upstreaming.

LAN Play

Not to be confused with Local Wireless Play. This one is similar to XBOX systems System Link feature or PlayStation systems LAN tunneling feature. Please see XLink Kai's setup guides for Ryujinx and yuzu

Nintendo Switch Online

Main article: Nintendo Switch Online

• yuzu: compatibility list for connectivity
• Ryujinx: LDN compatibility list and LAN Play compatibility list. Also, you can play Super Mario Bros. 35 multiplayer using special Ryujinx LDN build and smb35 revivial private server.
• For more information about other revive projects see Preservation projects page.

NSO emulators

• Official emulators
• Nintendo Switch Online#List of emulators
• Wikipedia:List_of_Nintendo_Switch_Online_games

For the Nintendo Switch family of systems, Nintendo distributes retro games to subscribers of their Nintendo Switch Online service. Subscribers have access to games for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Game Boy (GB) and Game Boy Color (GBC). At the more expensive subscription tier, titled "Expansion Pack", players can also access Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy Advance (GBA) games.

• Ryujinx compatibility for NSO emulators: NSO N64, NSO NES, NSO SNES, NSO Genesis, NSO GameBoy, NSO GameBoy Advance. This PR change allows the JIT service, required by the NSO N64 emulator and Super Mario 3D All Stars (for Super Mario 64) to run.
• yuzu compatibility for NSO emulators: NSO N64, NSO NES, NSO SNES, NSO Genesis.

Enhancements

Name		Ryujinx	yuzu	Strato
Graphics	Resizable Internal Resolution	✓	✓	✗
	Ultrawide hack Widescreen already supported on Nintendo Switch system. But there is no support by system for render games in other ratios such as ultrawide 21:9 or super ultrawide 32:9.	✓	✓	?
	Texture Replacement	~	~*	✗
	Ray-tracing	Implementing ray-tracing in an emulator is unfortunately quite challenging and unlikely to be feasible in the near future. However you can try "Screen-Space Ray Traced Global Illumination" shader using ReShade. (Demonstration)
	Pre-rendering AA (MSAA, SSAA)	✗	✗	✗
	Super-resolution techniques (DLSS, XeSS and FSR 2+)	Requires access to the depth buffer and temporal data like motion-vectors so it's quite challenging and unlikely to be feasible in the near future. Enhancement request for yuzu.
Performance	Internal Framerate Hack	✓	✓	?
	Frame generation technologies (LSFG, DLSS-G, ExtraSS and AFMF)	Implementing frame generation technology in an emulator is unfortunately quite challenging and unlikely to be feasible in the near future, however post-processing techniques such as motion interpolation is quite possible. Input latency will be a crucial factor, but its impact likely varies depending on the specific technique employed, it's recommended to use after applying the "Internal Framerate Hack". While AFMF or LSFG can be used with yuzu or Ryujinx, please be aware that some visual glitches and artifacts may occur at this time.
	Overclock	✗	✗	✗
	Preload optical disc image to RAM For users with sluggish multi-platter HDDs or plagued by horrible seek times, this enhancement might offer smoother experience, potentially reduced power consumption; it also shines when disc images reside on a network drive. Although keep in mind that preloading image would take some time, and it will require additional amount of RAM capacity.	✗	✗	✗
Post-Processing	Post-rendering AA (FXAA, TXAA and MLAA/SMAA)	✓	✓	?
	Post-rendering scaling (Sharp bilinear, Lanczos and FSR 1)	✓	✓	?
	Filters NTSC filters, HDR tonemapping etc.	✗	✗	✗
	Shader Chain	✗	✗*	✗
TAS features	Macros/Scripts/Lua	✗	✓*	✗
	Rewind	✗	✗	✗
	Fast-Forward/Turbo Speed	✗	✗	✗
	Savestates	✗	✗*	✗
	Movie recording/playback	✗	✗	✗
Quality of life	Built-in Graphics mod editor/manager	✓*	✗	✗
	Built-in Cheat Manager	✓	✗*	✗
	Built-in Custom resolution/CRTSwitchRes For using this on Windows OS you need CRT Emudriver. Another option is using EDID editor tool such as "Custom Resolution Utility".	N/A Eighth gen home consoles and beyond only have digital video output anyway.
	Streamable compression format	✗	✗	✗
	Per-Game Profiles	✓*	✓*	?
	Command Line Options	✓*	✓*	?
	On-Screen Display Showcases messages, controller input state which is useful for speedrunners, performance data, active settings, and various notifications.	✗	✗*	?
	Big Picture Mode	✗*	✗	?
Controls	Mouse Injector Compatible	~*	✗	✗
	Input lag-mitigating technique	✗	✗	✗
Misc	RetroAchievements	✗	✗	✗
	Free Look Free Look is a enhancement feature that allows manipulation of the in-game camera.	~	~	?
	Debug Features	✗*	✗	✗

Emulation issues

For more information about Nintendo Switch hardware and reverse engineering;

• MVG: How the Nintendo Switch Security was defeated
• Ryujinx: Blog, Discord
• Yuzu: Blog, Discord
• SwitchBrew
• dekuNukem - Nintendo Switch reverse engineering attempts
• ReSwitched - Awesome Switch: resources