Cemu, the Wii U emulator, went open source more than a year ago, and is now getting regular updates on github. The latest version, 2.0.91, was released this week, and is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. It’s good to see emulators such as Cemu are apparently spared from Nintendo’s wrath, and that they don’t all have to follow Switch emulator yuzu’s fate.
Exzap, the main developer behind Cemu, and the other folks behind the project, don’t share official changelogs, so we have to dig into the commit messages to see what’s new in every build. In the past few months, we’ve seen improvements for Vulkan, support for Homebrew file format WUHB, and work being done to emulate the physcial “portal” devices in games such as Skylanders and Disney Infinity. Since 2.0 was released, Linux support (and SteamDeck) has also seen some significant improvements.
Notably, the compatibility list now has roughly 80% games reported as either perfect, playable, or “runs”, up from 70% a few months ago.
What is Cemu
Cemu is a Wii U emulator that’s been around for quite some time allowing you to play the console’s titles on your PC. While the Wii U was a commercial flop, it is worth saying that many popular Switch titles are direct ports of its games with such titles including Mario Kart 8, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and New Super Mario Bros U. This presents the opportunity of emulating these titles on PC, often with graphics packs/mods that provide a much nicer experience, without the pretty high requirements of Switch emulators such as Ryujinx and Yuzu. Thanks to this, the emulator earned a good deal of popularity over the years as even a low-range gaming PC equipped with older cards like the GTX 960 suffices for Mario Kart 8 and many other titles.
According to their official compatibility list, Cemu runs more than half of the Wii U’s library without problems, an an additional 25% might run ok with some glitches. Meaning that overall your experience should be ok for more than 80% of the console’s games.
Cemu 2.0.91 – What’s new
There is no official changelog for Cemu since it went open source in 2022. Looking at the commits over the past months, here’s what we can see at a glance:
- Adds Homebrew format (WUHB) support
- Video playback improvements (h264 decoding)
- Additional support towards emulating portals in Disney Infinity / Skylanders / Lego Dimension
- Improvements in Network functionality
- Improvements in Vulkan support
- Lots of bug fixes and code cleanup
Download Cemu 2.0.91
Source code: