As technology marches on and game consoles become obsolete, amateur programmers work on reverse engineering consoles to play their games on computers. We’ve seen it happen for handhelds like the PSP and Dolphin is one of the more well-known emulators that enables Wii games to be played on the PC. Now it looks like a group of programmers are working hard to create an emulator for the Wii U.
That’s something that’ll be hard to do given how integral the Wii U GamePad is to how the Wii U functions, but the video above is proof that the project has given rise to something that works. The creators have dubbed the project Cemu despite its infancy. According to those who have tried the emulator with dumps of retail games, there are still loads of crashes and multiple problems, some related to the GPU in the computer the emulator is running on. Here’s what the team says the emulator is capable of doing right now.
- Can run encrypted Wii U images (WUD) and RPX/RPL files
- Internal resolution is 1920×1080 (if supported by game)
- Contains basically no optimizations. Expect slow framerates and long load times
- Windows x64 only (other platforms may be supported later)
- Requires OpenGL 3.3
- Tested on NVIDIA: Runs fine on most recent driver
- Tested on Intel: Garbled output but runs if OpenGL version is supportedUntested on AMD
It’s unlikely that this project will last long once Nintendo gets a whiff of it, given how long emulators take to get into a usable state for the general public.
