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Ryujinx is a discontinued
free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...
emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...
of the
Nintendo Switch The is a video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. Released in the middle of the Eighth generation of video game consoles, eighth generation of home consoles, the Switch succeeded the ...
. It was first released on February 5, 2018 and supported more than 3,000 games by 2024. On October 1, 2024, Ryujinx pulled its source code from
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, and the project was shut down after a request from
Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...
.


Features

Ryujinx features an accurate recreation of the Nintendo Switch's
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GPU. It supports the Nintendo Switch's docked and handheld modes in addition to resolution scaling beyond those supported by the original hardware. Ryujinx supports multiplayer through its LDN network, allowing games to be played between multiple users of the emulator. As of the release of LDN3 players with a modded physical Nintendo Switch can play with others on the LDN network. According to the developers in May 2024, more than 3,550 games were playable on Ryujinx out of 4,300 titles tested, with 4,100 being able to boot past menus and into gameplay.


Development

Ryujinx Initially starting out as an
ARM64 AArch64, also known as ARM64, is a 64-bit version of the ARM architecture family, a widely used set of computer processor designs. It was introduced in 2011 with the ARMv8 architecture and later became part of the ARMv9 series. AArch64 allows ...
emulator in October of 2017, Ryujinx development began in December of 2017. Written in C#, it was the first Switch emulator to boot commercial games. In April 2018, it was reported that it was initially able to play part of ''
Cave Story ''Cave Story'' is a 2004 Metroidvania game for Microsoft Windows. It was developed over five years by Japanese independent developer Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya in his free time. ''Cave Story'' features 2D platform mechanics and is reminiscent of the ...
'' and '' Puyo Puyo Tetris''. According to the creator, gdkchan, Ryujinx had a focus on correctness, rather than adding game-specific hacks as is practiced by some console emulators. Development of Ryujinx was funded via
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, with 800 members contributing $1,661 a month as of October 1, 2024. On July 31, 2022, Ryujinx announced a new backend for the
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graphics API, resulting in significant performance improvements of up to 413% in some titles, over the original
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backend. On November 26, 2022, Ryujinx announced a macOS port, becoming the first Nintendo Switch emulator to arrive on the platform. The port takes advantage of the
hypervisor A hypervisor, also known as a virtual machine monitor (VMM) or virtualizer, is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...
present on
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hardware to run the
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code of the Nintendo Switch natively, unlocking significant performance benefits, as compared to standard emulation. On March 2, 2024, Ryujinx made the transition from a
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based GUI to one made in the C# native framework,
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. In the post announcing the project's end on October 1, 2024, developers revealed internal projects to bring Ryujinx to
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and Android. These projects were not publicly released.


Discontinuation

On October 1, 2024 Ryujinx's GitHub page was taken down. A moderator of Ryujinx's Discord server wrote that "Yesterday, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo and offered an agreement to stop working on the project, remove the organization and all related assets he's in control of. While awaiting confirmation on whether he would take this agreement, the organization has been removed, so I think it's safe to say what the outcome is." It was not clear if the agreement offered by Nintendo included monetary compensation, with ''
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'' noting that it was unlikely.


Reception

On April 25, 2023, Ryujinx was featured in ''
PC Gamer ''PC Gamer'' is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games m ...
'' alongside now-discontinued open-source emulator
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ahead of the release of '' The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom''. Following the release of the game, ''PC Gamer'' released a follow-up article on a number of fixes implemented to improve emulation. Following the release of '' The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom'' on September 26, 2024, Ryujinx was noted by multiple outlets as being capable of running the title at a high
frame rate Frame rate, most commonly expressed in frame/s, or FPS, is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (Film frame, frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and moti ...
.


See also

* Nintendo Switch emulation


References

{{Portal bar, Free and open-source software, Video games 2018 software Nintendo emulators Nintendo Switch Windows emulation software Linux emulation software MacOS emulation software Free video game console emulators Free and open-source software Software using the MIT license