The Nintendo Switch is home to a ton of amazing exclusive games, but people are always looking for ways to emulate these titles on other devices, such as their PCs. Although Nintendo has been shutting down major emulators, some are still active. 🔍💻

Reasons to Use a Nintendo Switch Emulator

The Nintendo Switch is, without a doubt, one of the best consoles ever made. Although it is relatively old compared to the Sony and Microsoft updates, still competes in popularity and sales. However, the Nintendo Switch is reaching a point where it can't keep up with modern consoles due to its aging hardware. ⏳

Many games are limited to 720p resolution at 30 FPS, or worse. Fortunately, there are Nintendo Switch emulators that make it possible to play titles like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in 4K at 60 FPS. However, you'll need a powerful gaming PC to emulate these games, so be sure to check out the recommended specs below to see if your computer can properly emulate Nintendo Switch games. 🖥️💪

Emulators also allow you to download mods to completely change the way you play a game. These mods can be downloaded through third-party sites and may require some practice to set up properly. 🔧🎉

The Current State of Nintendo Switch Emulators

In recent years, Nintendo has sued or threatened legal action against several Nintendo console emulators, with the most prominent case involving Yuzu. While the emulators are legal, Nintendo argued in its demand against Tropic Haze LLC (the developers behind Yuzu) that the emulator facilitates large-scale piracy. ⚡

Ryujinx was also discontinued after reaching a private agreement with Nintendo. When other emulator developers saw what was happening, they realized they couldn't afford a legal battle against Nintendo and decided to voluntarily close their projects. 🙁

We previously recommended Yuzu and Ryujinx as the best options, but both official websites have been shut down and the emulators are no longer in development. Third-party sites have popped up in their absence, offering the latest version of each emulator for “preservation” purposes. Some claim to be “hard forks,” meaning they are modified versions built from the original code. 🔍

That being said, below are some notable third-party sites and forks that are still accessible as of the date of this article's publication. 📅

The Three Best Nintendo Switch Emulators for Windows

These are currently the best Nintendo Switch emulators still out there. ⭐

1. Ryujinx Forks

Ryujinx
The original Ryujinx was a free Nintendo Switch emulator that could run on Windows, Linux, and macOS. After its voluntary closure, several hard forks and third-party sites appeared. You can try the most popular hard fork or one Modified version by GreemDev.

Ryujinx was written in C#, which helped the emulator achieve better gaming performance and excellent support. For this reason, Ryujinx has a huge library of over 4,300 games, of which 82% are playable. 🏆

Why the discrepancy? In the realm of emulation, there is a difference between the ability to load a game and the ability to play it perfectly as the emulated hardware. “Playable” is a term used to refer to whether the game is emulated well enough that you can forget you’re using an emulator. In general, if you want to run a Nintendo Switch game in 4K 60 FPS, Ryujinx is the best option. 💡🚀

According to online tests and our personal tests, the original Ryujinx emulator only falls slightly behind Yuzu in some games. However, the drops in performance performance are insignificant in most cases. 🌟 It is also quite easy to update, since the application reviews and notifies users about a new version. Unfortunately, Ryujinx's graphical configuration options are limited compared to some other emulators. 📉

2. Yuzu Forks

The Yuzu emulator was the first of its kind to properly emulate Nintendo Switch games on a Windows PC. It was an open source emulator created by the developers of Citra, one of the best Nintendo 3DS emulators. The Yuzu emulator was quite stable and could even save different configuration profiles for each game. There are hard forks like Sudachi, Suyu and Torzu, to name a few. 🔗

Despite its stability, the emulator cannot run as many games as the Ryujinx emulator. Since the Yuzu emulator was written in C++, it could run on different platforms as a high-performance application. However, this also limited the number of Switch games that can be run without performance issues. Be sure to check out Yuzu game compatibility list before downloading the emulator. Any game that is rated Perfect or Excellent will run on most PCs without any issues. ✅

Since Yuzu's closure, numerous forks have emerged throughout 2024, but unfortunately, many have been removed as quickly as they appeared. 😔

3. Cemu

Technically, Cemu is a Wii U and GameCube emulator, not a Nintendo Switch emulator. However, it can run games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Bayonetta 2 and more. The main problem here is that you can only run a few few switch games which were also available on the Wii U console. 🚫

Luckily, the team behind the emulator has added a ton of graphical improvements throughout its lifecycle. Thanks to this, the emulator can run some games at almost double the frame rate of emulators based on Ryujinx or Yuzu. 💨

Additionally, mods and packs can be added graphics to any game directly from the Cemu library. The emulator is also quite lenient when it comes to PC requirements. It only needs 4GB of RAM and can run properly even on older CPUs and GPUs. If you have a PC gamer old but you want to play Breath of the WildCemu is the best option. 🏞️ Also, the emulator became open source in 2022 and started developing support for Linux and macOS.

Recommended PC Specs for Nintendo Switch Emulators (Yuzu & Ryujinx)

Although the Switch is not as powerful as console, emulators still require hardware of a reasonably modern generation to run properly. A powerful PC will help load the game and run at or near native speed. ⚙️

We recommend using a PC that has at least a processor Intel Core i3 6th generation or Ryzen 3 and a minimum of 8GB of RAM. Although 8GB of RAM is more than enough, we recommend having 16GB RAM or more for best performanceIn terms of graphics cards, you need an NVIDIA GPU GeForce GTX 1060 or an AMD Radeon RX 550. 💻

Yuzu has clearly stated the minimum PC requirements to properly run Nintendo Switch games:

CPU

• Minimum: Intel Core i5-4430 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200
• Recommended: Intel Core i5-11400 / AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• Optimum: Intel Core i9-13900K / AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D

GPU

Your PC must have a GPU that supports OpenGL 4.6 or Vulkan 1.1. According to Yuzu, support for Half-float and VP9 decoding is also recommended. Unless you have a Ryzen CPU Modern “G”, we do not suggest using a PC with integrated graphics due to their low performance. Dedicated GPUs from NVIDIA and AMD will offer much better results in emulation. 🔥

• Minimum: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 4GB / AMD Radeon RX 550 4GB
• Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 6GB / AMD Radeon RX 5500 8GB (with “Force Max Frequencies” enabled) / Adreno
• Optimum: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB / AMD Radeon RX 6700 10GB (with “Force Max Frequencies” enabled)
• Integrated Graphics (Minimum): Intel UHD Graphics 730 / AMD Radeon Vega 3
• Integrated Graphics (Recommended): Intel Iris Xe Graphics / AMD Radeon 680M / Qualcomm Adreno 740 / ARM Mali G720

RAM

If you are using an integrated graphics card, the requirement memory is much higher since the GPU uses the system RAM as its video memory (VRAM). 🧠

• Minimum: 8GB
• Recommended: 16 GB
• Optimum: 32GB
• Minimum with integrated graphics: 12GB

Despite the recent setbacks facing Nintendo Switch emulators, the community remains resilient. With numerous forks of beloved Switch emulators still available, we're unlikely to see progress stop anytime soon. 💪

Still, with constant pressure from Nintendo, it's clear that Switch emulation will continue to be in flux. 🔄