The State of Switch Emulation right now is objectively hilarious

26 Oct, 2025

Quick primer on Emulation

For anyone stumbling here who has never heard of emulation in the terms of video games, it's simply this; games are often developed for specific hardware and 'emulators' exist as software that runs on your computer that 'trick' the computer into thinking it's that video game hardware. (Virtual machines, for you software devs out there)

For example - let's look at Squaresoft's 1996 tactical RPG Bahamut Lagoon - released only for the Super Famicom in Japan. In order to play this game in the states, you'd need to:

1. Import a Super Famicom (the Japanese version of the Super Nintendo) and the game cartridge
2. Speak (or at least be able to read) Japanese

Since the game is beyond out of print, a way to be able to still play this game 20 years later is via Emulating it - running a program that can read a Super Famicom (or Super Nintendo) file and allow you to play it on your machine.

That doesn't solve the language problem which is where romhacks come in.

A romhack is when someone takes the data from a cartridge and manually replaces code - this can range from 'mods' to a game to change difficulty, characters, entire new stories - OR the language. With emulation, you can grab a copy of this out of print game, download a translation romhack for it and play it in English in 2025 ¹

While it IS possible to then port that hack back into a cart and play on actual hardware, romhacks tend to live in the emulation space.

Probably one of the most infamous examples is the Mother 3 fan translation; EarthBound (Mother 2 in Japan) was one of the most influential cult classic SNES games of the 90's. Undertale / Delatarune creator Toby Fox 'got his start' making EarthBound Romhacks for example - and the fact that it got a Japan-only sequel that, to this day, is still only playable in English via a monumental romhack effort is wild! (It's also a very good translation)

To cover bases, you can also end up in situations where games are no longer available because they existed on time-limited platforms - WiiWare for example shut down in 2018 - any game released exclusively on WiiWare is now only available to play on a Wii or WiiU that still has that game installed...OR via an emulator. RIP to anyone who was a fan of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles "My life as a King / Darklord" spinoffs.

The legality of all of this has existed in grey areas where some jurisdictions have passed rulings that provided you are ripping your own games you are in the clear, but that's not across the board and often hard to prove.

Now - the above is predominantly talking about emulating older games, out of print stuff, untranslated stuff - but the Emulation mindset exists as a living, breathing thing. New consoles are released and people immediately begin working on backwards engineering them for the future, usually lagging a about one console generation behind given the hardware demands. The PlayStation 3's emulators didn't really see stability until the PS4 was well into its life, for example.

As you can imagine, it takes a pretty hefty PC to be able to do PC things and ALSO pretend to be, for example, a PlayStation 3. CPU, GPU and RAM demands for this are incredibly high and the more modern a system, the more the demand makes it somewhat impractical for older hardware.

The Switch was...different

One of the most common criticisms levied at the Switch is that it's under-powered - or rather, outperformed by every other console of its generation - and this makes sense given how it both doubles as a handheld AND Nintendo has such a monopoly on their first-party (read: Nintendo branded) titles that people will overlook that. 'If you want Mario, you get a Switch' etc.

The less-than-powerful hardware meant that the Switch had an emulator announced within 10 months of release and a relatively fully-functional version online within 2 years; still very well into the console's lifecycle.

Now, the above conversation about preservation for older stuff is one thing...but seeing the emulation scramble live with a current console generation, holy shit there truly is nothing quite like watching it act as a case study for why console certification during game development (the sometimes rigid and annoying process for devs to make sure their games don't crash or fall short of expectations on a given system) makes sense, and how QA-ing for PC games is infinitely harder given the vast array of hardware variables.

Switch emulation is (at best) the wild fucking west right now

I'd do the 'final hours of Yuzu' explanation a disservice but the short version is there were two incredibly well known and incredibly functional Switch Emulators (Yuzu and Ryujinx) until the chaos of 'Holy shit you can play Tears of the Kingdom a week before launch day in 4k using these' hit, wherein Nintendo stepped in and nuked the whole thing from orbit.

There's a LOT of misinformation about what actually went down and I tried to cover some of the issues I had with it in a chost when it was happening, feel free to read that. There's some good bits about Belarus.

But anyway, as we (people on the internet) all know, attempting to destroy something online is a Lernaean Hydra-like task for the legends. Yuzu's site and Patreon were closed, the team disbanded, source code 'destroyed' and yet in the wake of Yuzu's end, there are now so many Switch emulators available for download.

If you scratch the paint the tiniest bit on these (read: breathe on them) you’ll see it’s forks of yuzu or ryujinx code aaaallllll the way down. To the point where some of them even import Yuzu settings if you still had that installed or outright use Yuzu's appdata folders. For example, this is a screenshot of one of the Torzu emulator's distro folders:

Anyway what's the point of all of this

A new (apparently divisive) Pokemon game has released and lots of people are interested in emulating it!

Myself included, because while I own a copy, my Switch has some, shall we say technical issues; not to sidetrack too much but the video-out is busted which means I can't play it on a TV (I've gone through numerous docks, cables, screens etc; it's an issue isolated to switch itself) and my left joycon slot will not allow a docked joycon to stay paired (charges fine though) which makes playing handheld annoying, leaving me with "Switch on a table and play with controller or disconnected joycons on the small screen" - sub-optimal at best. While I wait for the budget gods to align on a Switch 2, I'm glad that I have the 'emulate games I own on my relatively beefy audio production computer that connects to my TV' option.

If anyone has a problem with that I don't know what to tell them other than 'why are you like this'

I won't be naive though - lots of people's goals with the new Pokemon and Switch Emulation as a whole is not paying for it - reasons ranging from 'it’s too expensive', 'fuck Nintendo', etc etc etc. It also doesn't help that, like Tears of the Kingdom, the rom file for the game leaked almost a week early and therefore it was potentially playable using emulation before street date.

For context - this was one of the major sticking points in Nintendo's Yuzu lawsuit; current hardware generation being emulated near flawlessly allowing for games to leak early and be playable before they are even purchasable.

Anyway - I picked up the game on release date and as I've been through the emulation rodeo before (my Switch's as described above has been in that state and getting worse for a few years) I dumped my files ² and took a cursory look at what's going on with Pokemon Z-A in the emulation sphere and well, it's borderline hilarious.

A current sampling

1. "Use these settings, you'll get 60fps every time" from a user who doesn't post their hardware specs: people with intel graphic cards respond in outrage asking why they don't get more than 10fps.

2. Angry megathreads from Android users who followed Windows instructions and are surprised things didn't work

3. Steam deck users existing (much to the chagrin of everyone in the comments)

4. Mods of these forums banning anyone hinting at words that could be construed as 'contributing to piracy' and sockpuppet accounts spamming piracy links in the middle of the night in 'retaliation'

5. People having issues trying to get a certain thing to work in one specific emulator for a stated reason of using that specific emulator only to have replies full of 'use the other emulator'

6. Long running threads of people sharing loudly and confidently how to achieve performance "better than the Switch 2!" without any concept that their experience will be unique to their hardware / software setup and they are now going to be on the hook for tech support for everyone they mislead

7. "I fixed X known bug" threads that require complicated third party software and re-shading configurations that only work with some graphics cards

8. "Start the game in X emulator with Y settings; get past Z cutscene. Copy your save to B emulator and proceed there until C story point. Save before continuing, copy save file back to original emulator with D settings change"

9. Post-after-post of people asking if they can access Nintendo online services using an emulator (no, obviously not, c'mon man)

10. "My game crashes" help requests with no additional context. No hardware specs, where they were, what their emulator settings were - and then getting mad when people who are actually trying to help them ask for log files

The whole thing is fucking bonkers and really makes me think about how magical it is that PC games ever work in the first place given how unpredictable the end result is, even if you are up-front about hardware requirements.

I get that most modern games are made with like 4 pre-built engines and that does a lot of heavy lifting for individualized requirements but the more I watch this Pokemon discourse from afar (it ran out of the box for me on both recommended emulators, but again - I have a beefy machine) the more I'm happy to not be a software developer.

Again, despite all of the above I absolutely love emulation and how weird it is. It's vital for game preservation and as I've said before I think steps taken against emulation are a net negative, but the whole thing is a wild ride - especially when dealing with a current console generation and a company that has been...shall we say actively hostile towards its fans and content creators.

And let's be honest, lots of people who will pirate this and other Nintendo games would have never actually bought them in the first place and I don't believe the 'lost sales' argument, but that's semantics I don't have interest in arguing.

Looking forward to going through all of this again with the Switch 2 when a functional "Yuz2" emulator shows up.

Anyway, Pokemon Legends Z-A is good. Probably one of my favorite Pokemon games since Sun and Moon? I get that it's not for everyone but I'm having a blast.

#MSD plays games #emulation #nintendo switch #pokemon za #video games