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 supporting the Wii Remote controllers for native Wii U games.
Emulators
| Name | Operating System(s) | Latest Version | Active | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cemu | Windows | v1.5.1 | ✓ | ✗ |
| Decaf | Windows | N/A | ✓ | ✗ |
Comparisons
- Cemu can launch and play commercial titles, but is at an early stage of development, having little performance optimization, very basic audio emulation, and numerous bugs. But, it can run some games full-speed. It is currently closed source.
- Decaf is a research project for Wii U emulation. It is able to boot only one commercial game and only has basic rendering and some texture implementation. Decaf is open source.
Emulation Issues
The disc dump format needs to be uncompressed for current builds. However the method to make these dumps hasn't been made public yet outside of a few developer circles.
Dolphin
You might have read about an unofficial branch of Dolphin with Wii U support - don't get your hopes up. While the PowerPC architecture family in the WiiU is the same as the Wii and GC (this fact alone was the reason why Wii emulation was added to Dolphin, originally GC-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.
