Wii-U Emulator Cemu Gets New Update 1.8.0b

Cemu, the popular Wii-U emulator, has just received a new update.  The Cemu 1.8.0b update promises, even more, improvement with a particular emphasis on driving up frame rates. The crowd-funded emulator tool has a growing and enthusiastic fan base.

A Wii-U emulator?

Yes. There is a working Wii-U emulator available for the PC. The project has taken off in the last 6 months with particular attention being paid to running Zelda – Breath of the Wild. Some of you who have not heard of this might be wondering how a console which utilised touch screen technology could work on the PC. It is a fair question. The short answer is that it pretty much ignores all of the heavier touch screen aspect games. Concentrating on more familiar titles such as Mario Kart 8, Zelda and Bayonetta.

The emulation however also allows the modding community to create some pretty amazing graphical packs. This is for games initially designed to run at 720. Mario Kart in 4k does look pretty sweet and is ironically a feat even the Switch is nowhere near achieving.

Is it any good? Has the update made any improvements?

Initial reports suggest yes. There are a growing number of videos turning up on YouTube clearly showing a stark improvement. Cemu has always had frame rate as a central issue. Due to its design you basically require a top spec PC to get a half decent output. Running Cemu with an AMD 8350 with an AMD 480rx will work, but don’t expect great things.

We recently reported that they had finally been able to get Zelda to work on Cemu and since then this program has been the ‘benchmarking’ test for improvements in the program.

Each new version of Cemu is seeing better performances and some even report a reasonably solid output with very little frame drop.

While this all sounds great, is this Wii-U Emulator legal?

Firstly I need to place the caveat that eTeknix does not endorse video game piracy and emulators tread a very thin line when it comes to this. Secondly, I need to make it clear that we are not legal experts when it comes to copyright law. That being said while there are question marks over the legality of Cemu as a product, that is an issue for the creators to take up with Nintendo. Similar to Kodi, the program itself isn’t too nefarious from a legal standpoint. However downloading games is clearly illegal. This is particularly so when a recent change in UK law closed a loophole which allowed you to digitally hold a data file as long as you also owned the physical entity. We, therefore, frankly don’t know if Cemu is legal, but we do consider it of the public interest to report upon it and legalities aside, the project itself is pretty neat.

So, in brief, playing games on Cemu is treading some very thin ground legally.

That being said, the spirit of the project is more to promote a working emulator on the PC, so in so far as the difficulties that pose from a programming standpoint. Some kudos has to be given. For the vast majority of those reading this far, Cemu will still run like a bag of spanners. You’ll have very nice 30-40fps, then all of a sudden you will dump down to a cringing 2-3fps. It’s a work in progress. If you want to play Wii-U games, I still think that just getting a Wii-U is the better option, but Cemu does give you an alternative if somewhat dubious legalities as well.