Nintendo has been absolutely relentless when it comes to Switch emulators, and for good reason: the company recently confirmed that the Switch 2 will be backwards compatible with the vast majority of Switch titles, so naturally, it doesn’t want folks accessing said games in other ways.
As such, emulation projects like Yuzu and Ryujinx have been shut down following legal pursuits from Nintendo, but now, a third project called NxEmu is back after a three-year hiatus (thanks, RetroHandhelds). What’s more, developer ‘N3xoX1’ is approaching its revival with a firm view of avoiding a Nintendo takedown.
In a blog post, the developer states “I’ve considered leveraging what I’ve learned and understood from my experience by modularising the safe and legal components from Yuzu, such as the CPU, OS, and video.” In addition, N3xoX1 states that the issue with other emulators was that they didn’t include any kind of decryption; something they hope to avoid with NxEmu.
The blog post also notes that because of the nature of its development via modularisation, it will likely take some time before NxEmu achieves feature-parity with Yuzu at the time of its discontinuation.
It’s a bold endeavour, but we know what Nintendo is like. If it feels like NxEmu might prove even a remote threat to its copyright, chances are it will take prompt action to halt its development. Especially with the launch of the Switch 2 on the horizon.
Whatever happens, we’ll be sure to keep you up to date.
