The Nintendo Switch is by far one of the best handheld consoles in recent times. The console packs some pretty powerful hardware and with its ever-expanding library of games, it has emerged as a device with real potential.
However, not everyone has the money to shell out on another gaming device, especially when most have a laptop and a smartphone lying around. In this article, we’re going over the top three Nintendo Switch emulators that you can run on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Also read: Top 7 Nintendo DS Emulators for PC
Yuzu
Developer: Yuzu Emulator Team | Works on: Windows/Linux | Price: Free
Yuzu is one of the most popular Switch emulators out there with support for Windows as well as Linux. The emulator comes as an experiment from the creators of Citra and is written in C++ with portability in mind.
The emulator supports a plethora of games, and the download site gives you detailed information on which games work to what extent with the emulator. It’s open-source as well so you can play around with the source code as well should you want.
Pros
- Great community support.
- Great game compatibility.
- Receives frequent updates
Cons
- Setting up can be a bit of a hassle.
- GPU must support OpenGL 4.6 & OpenGL Compatibility profile, or Vulkan 1.1 (or higher).
You can download Yuzu here
NSEmu
Developer: RKX1209 | Works on: Windows | Price: Free
Another free and open-source emulator for Windows that’s quite popular among emulator enthusiasts. There’s support for high definition graphics and offers a rather fluid-experience.
This lag-free gaming experience that NSEmu provides contributes to getting that console-like feeling everyone wants to emulate.
Pros
- Good performance
- Homebrew support
Cons
- Not a lot of active community support.
- Compatibility can be sketchy.
You can download NSEmu here
Ryujinx
Developer: gdkchan | Works on: Windows, Linux, macOS | Price: Free
Ryujinx is an open-source Switch Emulator written in C# which aims ar providing excellent accuracy, performance, a user-friendly interface and consistent build updates.
As of January 2021, the emulator has been tested on over 3.000 commercial titles with roughly 2,300 of them making it past boot menus and into gameplay and around 1,500 being considered playable.
The emulator works across platforms on Windows, macOS and Linux and is available on GitHub under the MIT license.
Pros
- Supports a huge number of games.
- Frequent updates
- Great community support
- Extremely user friendly.
Cons
- Resource intensive,
You can download Ryujinx here
Also read: Top 7 GBA emulators for Windows 10
