Ryujinx Has Fallen 1 October, 2024
It’s been a while since I wrote about games, but it comes with some more bitter news. Citra and Yuzu were struck down by Nintendo earlier this year, and thus for seven months, Ryujinx was the only updated Nintendo Switch emulator. They were far more discreet than the Yuzu development team, and were also not based in the US, so it was expected that the Ryujinx team would hold out from Nintendo’s legal team, especially in the grey area that is video game emulation. But alas, it was not to be. While there was no lawsuit, the lead developer had arranged with Nintendo to shut down the project, sparing them any headaches.
And so, as of October 2024, there is no actively maintained Nintendo Switch emulator. Switch emulation still works of course, and there’s no doubt that someone will take up the mantle despite the legal troubles, but it’s still troublesome. Nintendo has announced that a successor to the Switch (right now simply referred to as ‘Switch 2’) will be announced in Q1 2025, so one would think that Nintendo would keep their hands off for just a little while more. If I had to pin-point the reasoning for this shutdown, it would be because of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. The game was leaked over a week before its official release, and many PC users were playing it via Switch emulation before the game could even be purchased and played on Nintendo’s hardware. That must have angered some suits (although funnily enough, Echoes of Wisdom was very buggy on my setup - I had to use the seven-month old Yuzu release to play it).
There’s plenty of other bad video game news I could talk about - fuck those layoffs - but the complete elimination of a sector of hardware emulation is unprecedented. I’ve been in the scene since the days of ZSNES, and I’ve never seen anything like this. Of course, angry users will blame Nintendo’s reluctance on such dated hardware for the widespread popularity of Switch emulation, but one must remember that Dolphin - the Nintendo GameCube / Wii emulator - flourished even around 2010/2011, and was able to successfully launch and play Nintendo Wii games during its lifespan. I specifically remember playing Kirby’s Return to Dream Land on my PC at full speed despite not having a Wii at the time. It’s possible that Nintendo has simply become more bullish with its intellectual property over time.
What is next for the dedicated emulation scene?
UPDATE: This excellent video from Nerrel has a better, easily understandable explanation of the situation better than I can ever comment: