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Yuzu – Nintendo Switch Emulator

466 points by hising 9y ago

Jack5500 9y ago
Even if you don't believe in emulation due to piracy, having an emulator around for the sake of archiving is good for the future, I think.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  I'm inclined to agree, but it's a debatable grey area. Archive.org has emulators for some older systems, so that's great. I've also heard of the big console manufacturers actually using community-built / open-source emulators themselves to allow for re-releasing their own games on newer systems. I think every console manufacturer should release their own legal emulators; companies like Nintendo could make a lot of money off of a NES or GB(A) emulator on smartphones, they can keep selling their classics for $1-$5 apiece.
  - davweb 9y ago
    Nintendo have been doing exactly this for years [1], albeit only on their own hardware and not on smartphones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console
  - dtech 9y ago
    Even with Virtual Console and backward-compatibility around emulators are still a good thing. Backwards-compatibility is usually only 1 generation, so it just pushes the bitrot forward 5-10 years. Relying on original manufacturers to re-release old games depends fully on that manufacturer's ability and willingness, and up to now the only manufacturer doing it, Nintendo, has been very selective in which games they re-release. And it's a separate release per console so again only pushes the rot for that game forward to that console's lifespan. Thanks to emulators I'm willing to bet that in 100 years you will be able to play currently-emulatable games since I expect a good Windows/PC emulator to exist at that time.
    - Brockenstein 9y ago
      Sure, but how many people run a CDC 6000 emulator today? Sure, there's a niche, albeit it a very small one. Certainly not enough to warrant the fuss that people tend to raise. Why would someone in a 100 years be using an emulator from today (say SNES) inside a Windows emulator? Seems like if there was any interest at all some folks would write a native SNES emulator in the native hard/OS of the time. There's nothing about Windows that makes is especially ideal for emulating consoles for the last 40 years.
- syaz1 9y ago
  I don't think you need an excuse, really. Could be educational, or other honorable things (or not), so long as they're open source for others to hack on top of or learn from.
- ben-schaaf 9y ago
  Emulators are also great for the speedrunning community. They especially help in developing TAS's (Tool Assisted Speedruns), which contribute strats back to the human runners and push the boundaries of how fast games can be beaten.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    The kind of insight offered by TAS experimentation and reverse engineering enables some really impressive stuff, like manual arbitrary code execution. There are multiple ACE exploits in Super Mario World, which have been used for credit warp runs and even poking code into RAM to turn the game into a Flappy Bird clone.
- laumars 9y ago
  I completely agree. In that regard reading the replies to the Twitter announcement[1] was an exercise in frustration [1] https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721 https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721
  - reificator 9y ago
    I shouldn't have clicked that link, it was very frustrating. It's like when watching AVGN, any time they bring up emulators it's always in a negative way. "Yeah, this is where people on emulators would cheat and make a save state" etc... I've got a Switch, I buy all the games that I play, and I am extremely excited for this emulator to come out. In my Steam library I have several games that are DOSBox wrappers around the original title. They're emulators, and I paid money for them, and they're perfectly legal. Digital archival is a growing problem, so much of our culture is going to be lost without efforts like these. On a side note: When I talk to fellow gamers about my history of modding games, there's generally two groups. The ones who play on PC ask what I added, new levels, skins, etc.... And the ones who play only on consoles typically get upset because they think it means I made cheats for online play. (For the record it was usually new features in code)
    - bsimpson 9y ago
      When I was in film school (2004-8), there was a huge concern about what the growth of digital formats would mean for archiving. Film from the 1800s can still be projected (so long as it's in physically-good condition), but tape formats (at least at the time) went obsolete every few years.
      - kaoD 9y ago
        This is why open standards are so important. DRM and proprietary drivers/blobs/formats are enemy to humanity. This is also why it should be (and in some places is) 100% legal to circumvent such measures, including via reverse engineering. But it shouldn't be that way! I'd say society should go a step further and grant copyright on works only if the specification of the underlying formats is fully released, just like patents exist(ed?) to grant legal protection in exchange for disclosure.
- dtech 9y ago
  Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at the time emulators are good enough to enable piracy the impact is significantly less because you can't buy the original console and games anymore.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.
    - pizza234 9y ago
      Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
    - delroth 9y ago
      Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
      - MBCook 9y ago
        Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
        delroth 9y ago
        Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.
- OptionX 9y ago
  I operate under this as a guideline. If the game can't be bought anymore in a way where money gets to the devs then (you can always get random box copy's from eBay or some such) then it's OK to use an emulator.
  - astura 9y ago
    You're confusing (pirated) ROMs with "emulators." There are emulator products that you can only play with original games (such as bleem!) and/or ROMs provided by the publisher (such as Nintendo's eStore) The devs at mainstream game studios are salaried, they've already been paid for their work performed no matter if the game sells or not. If the game is never released (which happens) they still get a paycheck.
    - throwawayaway12 9y ago
      While this is true, I would imagine that sales figures affect the future of devs at the game studios (layoffs, new projects, etc).
    - OptionX 9y ago
      I know the difference, just stating my stance in this matter. Besides Yuzu can't even be used like that in it's current state, and like has been said if a game doesn't sell during its shelf life it doesn't bode well to any of the makers. It's enough to kill medium/small studios and entire IP's.
- frik 9y ago
  Exactly, emulator are good for archiving. It allows on to play decades old games. Even some museums use emulators. Yuzu Switch emulator is made by devs of a 3DS emulator Crita: https://citra-emu.org https://citra-emu.org 3DS is unique with its 3D display that doesn't need a 3D glass. The "New 3DS XL" is especially great, as it has a stable 3D effect because of infrared eye-tracking. While most gamer got a bad impression from the first gen 3DS 3D effect without eye-tracking. I would pay premium for such a 3D PC monitor. Unfortunately Nintendo Switch doesn't feature such a 3D display nor does any other device available.
- snausages 9y ago
  True, but lets not forget when a fully playable version of Breath of the Wild became available on Wii-U emulators last year just after release. It's a tricky area.
  - cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
    The WiiU has been dead since the Switch released. Nintendo put out BotW on the WiiU because they hadn't put out a Zelda game on it yet and Switch supplies were short. I wouldn't say that it's hurt sales for the game for the Switch - BotW had an above 100% attach rate at launch on the Switch.
    - astura 9y ago
      It's not entirely true they didn't put out any Zelda games for the WiiU, just not any "flagship titles that were WiiU exclusives." They rereleased The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Hyrule Warriors was a WiiU Zelda title but it wasn't a flagship action RPG title, it was a hack and slash. (I also believe that Breath of the Wild was originally developed for the WiiU)
    - excalibur 9y ago
      BotW was developed for the Wii U. They've been promoting it to fans almost since the console's debut. Releasing it on that system was them living up to their promise. It's just a shame that it turned out to be the console's final major release.
      - Nexxxeh 9y ago
        In fairness though, talk about going out on a high! Twilight Princess was released on the Gamecube and Wii, as well.
  - dtech 9y ago
    It doesn't seem to have hurt sales, it's outpacing Zelda: Twilight Princess in terms of sales and that's currently holding the record.
- rplnt 9y ago
  Emulators don't make piracy legal. So it would be the same argument as for DRM-enabled videos or music. And that is a pretty bad argument.
  - astura 9y ago
    And there's great legal uses for emulation: https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ (it was pointed out to me they violate open source licenses, so forget this one.) every game system's "virtual store" wrapping old games around an emulator to make them (seamlessly) compatible with current computers. Allows the publisher to continue to sell decades old games with vert minimal effort. I don't know how much rereleases of games use emulation vs rewrites, but I assume at least some use emulation. I believe I heard that the xbox360 contains an Xbox emulator for backwards compatibility. If it wasn't the Xbox360 it was some other console. Then there's the failed bleem! commercial emulator.
    - jsheard 9y ago
      Funnily enough the Retron5 is illegal. Not because it emulates games, but because the emulators it uses are stolen from open source projects that forbid commercial use. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalists-about-retro-bit-and-about-the-new-retro-emulation-industry-in-general/ https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalist...
      - astura 9y ago
        Wow, I didn't know that. I don't know much about the product other than it's pretty mainstream so I assumed they played by the rules.
      - Karunamon 9y ago
        Aren’t open source licenses that forbid commercial use kind of rare? All of the big name ones I can think of have no such provisions.
        9y ago
- iClaudiusX 9y ago
  History is full of examples where a developer/publisher decided to port or remaster a game from its back catalog only to realize they have lost the source code and need to rely on an emulator ROM. Sega, Nintendo, and Capcom I think are the most infamous examples. Of course the hypocrisy is lost on these same companies who for decades have used piracy as the boogeyman to vilify archival work and fair use.
- heywire 9y ago
  Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in your browser. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
  - distantsounds 9y ago
    bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!
    - comex 9y ago
      The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law
- chrisper 9y ago
  Emulators are not illegal. Sony even lost a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit
  - slg 9y ago
    This the equivalent of "this pipe is for tobacco use only" or "BitTorrent is used to share Linux distros". Yes, emulators are legal. But we all know that the overwhelming use of them is in illegal situations. EDIT: Since this comment is currently sitting at -2 points, I figured I would expand on my rather glib comment. From Nintendo's website: >whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.[1] What percentage of emulators are only used to play homebrewed games or commercial games that an individual has personally backed up? Almost all other uses are illegal. [1] - https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
    - 15charlimit 9y ago
      They can claim something is illegal all they want, but that has no impact whatsoever on the actual legality of it. Anti-consumer EULA/TOS items haven't held up in court for a while now.
      - slg 9y ago
        That isn't a EULA/TOS rule, it is a summary of the law. Can you find any reputable source to disprove what Nintendo says? Here is an independent summary from Tech Radar that agrees with Nintendo. [1] [1] - http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-legal-1329264 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-lega...
        ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
        Depends on jurisdiction a lot, quite honestly. Nintendo can say it's illegal all it wants, but if I own a physical copy of a game, and make a digital backup of such, then I'm in the clear as far as Canadian law (see our copyright bill C-11) goes. A ROM made from an official copy vs. downloaded from the internet are pretty hard to tell apart, but regardless you are allowed to own and retain such copies if you own the original. That being said, if there's DRM and you break it, then you have a different issue entirely. Owning the ROM wouldn't be illegal, but breaking the DRM certainly would be. Even if in the process of legally backing up your data off of the disc you break the DRM, you're still in legal hot waters. Quite frankly I'm convinced Nintendo can say all it wants, it's a scare tactic and for the most part they're full of shit unless you take into account a specific part of US or Japanese law in a specific state or jurisdiction. I would not assume that they know exactly what they're talking about globally.
- balls187 9y ago
  I bought my Switch after playing BotW via CEMU. I have a WiiU, but trying out BotW at 1600p was intriguing.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  I've been told that even some authorized arcade emulator releases actually use bootleg MAME sets because they lost the original code that ran in the "protection MCU". If you don't know what that is: to delay bootleg production, arcade vendors used to put some bit of important code inside a microcontroller, so that just copying the ROM chips produced a broken game and bootleg vendors would have to reverse engineer it and reproduce it in the main CPU program, sometimes leading to gameplay differences (IIRC, the generation of the "EXTEND" bubbles in Bubble Bobble was an example noticeable to expert players).
- Sephr 9y ago
  Not just for archiving, but also for playing at higher framerates and resolutions. 30fps games give me headaches but the same game running at 120fps can make a huge difference.
degenerate 9y ago
"At this time, yuzu does not run any commercial Switch games. yuzu can boot some games, to varying degrees of success, but does not implement any of the necessary GPU features to render 3D graphics" In case anyone thought it was a full-blown emulator
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  There's already an "emulator" that's used to make Homebrew. It has zero graphics support, only enough to debug basic homebrew tools. This is the first one that is "marketed" as an emulator.
- speps 9y ago
  Actually, it can render some graphics now: https://twitter.com/notfunnei/status/952460754996944896 https://twitter.com/notfunnei/status/952460754996944896 I guess they didn't update the website.
  - elliottcarlson 9y ago
    The README specifically says 3D graphics, which still seems to be lacking.
jpmoyn 9y ago
Hopefully this gets developed more and is actually able to run games
Fej 9y ago
Glad that the first major Switch emulator is open-source, it sets the standard.
- kakarot 9y ago
  Agreed! Cemu is a great piece of software, but coming after Dolphin, the premiere open source console emulation project, it was pretty lame that they opted for closed source. In the case of Cemu, I understand that closed source = $20k/mo in Patreon subscriptions which enabled a blistering pace of development in 2017. It's my hope that the developers eventually open up the source after the subscriptions dry up. For long-term support, something that is extremely important when you're dealing with games that will eventually be decades old, open source is critical.
  - dtech 9y ago
    Does it have to be closed source for the Patreon? A significant amount of open source developers have their own successful Patreon. And it's freely downloadable so it's not like that is the Patreon incentive.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      I imagine they made that choice with the intention of preventing others from wrestling control from the devs with a libre fork at the early stages of development when they weren't sure just how much money they would make through Patreon. The release cycle favors Patreon subscribers by a week or two. As compatibility rounds out, this will be less of a draw. It's a little similar to how PJ64 did things for a while with their donor system, except AFAIK PJ64 is still closed source.
      - Fej 9y ago
        Project 64 is open-source now.
        kakarot 9y ago
hellbanner 9y ago
"It's just Emulation!" - The Challenge of Selling old Games https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16151538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16151538
- drngdds 9y ago
  That's an hour long video, can you summarize its arguments?
  - jamie_ca 9y ago
    TLDR summary slide near the end: - There is an audience for old games - Out of print games are lost revenue - Emulation is cheap - Emulation is accurate - _Embrace the emulator_ The speaker works as a game developer, worked on the Mega Man Legacy Collection (the 6 NES games, packaged together with a bunch of value-adds). He posits that it's really easy these days to bundle up a "classic" game ROM with an open-source emulator that is commercial-permissive (DOSBox has been so for years, MAME/MESS became open source in 2016 and covers a large number of arcade and home consoles), and is a missed opportunity for long-tail revenue. If the film industry can do it, why not the games industry? [Nintendo's been doing it successfully with the Virtual Console on Wii U and 3DS, why aren't 3rd-party publishers going all out?]
- vlunkr 9y ago
  While I think that video is great, the games on the Switch are the opposite of old.
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    Yes, but in 5, 10 years they will be just like the games discussed in the presentation.
ry_ry 9y ago
Much of the Switch's appeal for me was the interesting hardware configuration, I wonder if Nintendo focused less on obfuscating its inner workings compared to other current-gen consoles based on that? Edit: urgh, was supposed to be a reply to another comment. I guess the point still stands though.
- amaranth 9y ago
  It's an almost stock Tegra X1 reference system. The hacks that got access to the system recently started with a Tegra backdoor/debug option Nvidia and Nintendo apparently forgot about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec4NgWRE8ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec4NgWRE8ik
  - ReverseCold 9y ago
    Video TL;DW: - Launch hidden web browser through WiFi Web Auth or the Japanese version of PuyoPuyo Tetris. - Connect to MITM'd WiFi hotspot that has a webkit exploit. - Gain userspace access. - Exploit preload (pl:u) service, it has an array out of bounds read. - Exploit SM service by forgetting to initialize it with your PID, therefore it thinks you are PID 0. - The whole Kernel is mapped into userspace for some reason, can be used as ASLR bypass. - Search Tegra manual for "bypass SMMU" - follow instructions, bypass kernel using the GPU. (35:00, oversimplified here) - Change certain parts of DRAM, PMC, etc, and during wakeup TrustZone will execute whatever. This is fixed past v1.0.0.
    - roblabla 9y ago
      The Kernel being mapped in userspace isn't actually used in any of the current hacks though. ROhan, the only implemented and public way to get userland Arbitrary Code Execution, uses ASLR leaks in both Webkit and SDB. Kernel being mapped in userspace is interesting for save hacks though, which would allow us to escape out of the webkit process (webkit is limited to 700MB of ram, so escaping into a game process is very much interesting). The SMMU bypass is not usable outside of 1.0.0 for Kernel ACE. They have a carveout that denies DMA access to builtins and kernel, the problem is that in 1.0.0, the Kernel would allocate some objects outside of that carveout. It does allow ACE in any other process though.
jlebrech 9y ago
the appeal of the switch is portability, if you need a powerful gaming laptop to run it it's defeating the purpose, but for posterity it's a good project to keep an eye on.
- drngdds 9y ago
  This is good for some other reasons too: - There are some good Switch exclusives that are worth playing even non-portably - Eventually, this will probably let us play Switch games in higher resolutions with better textures, post-processing, etc. - In the long-term, emulators let gamers get around eternally renewing copyrights, which are basically just rent-seeking.
  - baby 9y ago
    True. I hope that this doesn't scare game developers away though, the switch is truly one of the best console I've own so far and I'd be sad to see developers running away from it because of emulators and piracy.
rkuska 9y ago
> don't hesitate to join our Discord and talk to bunnei Is that you bunnie? Or someone from Boston who was inspired by bunnie? (bunnie = https://www.bunniestudios.com/ https://www.bunniestudios.com/ reverse engineer too, graduate from MIT)
- Retr0spectrum 9y ago
  bunnei != bunnie
  - senatorobama 9y ago
    hahaha
  - rkuska 9y ago
    I understand that. It's just a bit of coincidence with naming, the area of interest and also boston.
- Relys 9y ago
  haha, yeah I thought that at first too. Separate individuals. Both exceptional.
falcolas 9y ago
<Soapbox> If you want more interesting consoles that break from the "set top box" paradigm, be sure to buy a switch. If you want more games that are awesome and fun to play, buy those games. Only after you've bought them (or can no longer legally buy them), break them apart and create roms and emulators for your own use. </Soapbox> Artists will often create even without pay, but the scale and quality of many of these games is beyond what even a group of artists could create in a decade long side project.
- madshiva 9y ago
  There's no more "interesting consoles" the market is over. I would totally pay for switch game on PC, but I will not more pay for the hardware that is obsolete after 2-4years. I want owning the right to play, I choose the hardware. Forza 7 did this on PC, I directly purchased the full VIP package of 100$. You want that people purchase your game, make it available or be pirated.
thinkpad20 9y ago
Some of the time stamps I’m seeing on the code are on the order of two years old. How is that possible, considering how long the switch has been out? I guess they were able to reuse a lot of code?
- AlexAltea 9y ago
  Yuzu is fork from an existing emulator for the Nintendo 3DS written by essentially the same developers: https://citra-emu.org/ https://citra-emu.org/
zdw 9y ago
Interesting that they didn't try to make it run on the nVidia Shield, which has the same hardware as the Switch, but clocked higher.

466 points by hising 9y ago

Even if you don't believe in emulation due to piracy, having an emulator around for the sake of archiving is good for the future, I think.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
I'm inclined to agree, but it's a debatable grey area. Archive.org has emulators for some older systems, so that's great. I've also heard of the big console manufacturers actually using community-built / open-source emulators themselves to allow for re-releasing their own games on newer systems. I think every console manufacturer should release their own legal emulators; companies like Nintendo could make a lot of money off of a NES or GB(A) emulator on smartphones, they can keep selling their classics for $1-$5 apiece.
- davweb 9y ago
  Nintendo have been doing exactly this for years [1], albeit only on their own hardware and not on smartphones. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console
- dtech 9y ago
  Even with Virtual Console and backward-compatibility around emulators are still a good thing. Backwards-compatibility is usually only 1 generation, so it just pushes the bitrot forward 5-10 years. Relying on original manufacturers to re-release old games depends fully on that manufacturer's ability and willingness, and up to now the only manufacturer doing it, Nintendo, has been very selective in which games they re-release. And it's a separate release per console so again only pushes the rot for that game forward to that console's lifespan. Thanks to emulators I'm willing to bet that in 100 years you will be able to play currently-emulatable games since I expect a good Windows/PC emulator to exist at that time.
  - Brockenstein 9y ago
    Sure, but how many people run a CDC 6000 emulator today? Sure, there's a niche, albeit it a very small one. Certainly not enough to warrant the fuss that people tend to raise. Why would someone in a 100 years be using an emulator from today (say SNES) inside a Windows emulator? Seems like if there was any interest at all some folks would write a native SNES emulator in the native hard/OS of the time. There's nothing about Windows that makes is especially ideal for emulating consoles for the last 40 years.
syaz1 9y ago
I don't think you need an excuse, really. Could be educational, or other honorable things (or not), so long as they're open source for others to hack on top of or learn from.
ben-schaaf 9y ago
Emulators are also great for the speedrunning community. They especially help in developing TAS's (Tool Assisted Speedruns), which contribute strats back to the human runners and push the boundaries of how fast games can be beaten.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  The kind of insight offered by TAS experimentation and reverse engineering enables some really impressive stuff, like manual arbitrary code execution. There are multiple ACE exploits in Super Mario World, which have been used for credit warp runs and even poking code into RAM to turn the game into a Flappy Bird clone.
laumars 9y ago
I completely agree. In that regard reading the replies to the Twitter announcement[1] was an exercise in frustration [1] https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721 https://twitter.com/yuzuemu/status/952461671368478721
- reificator 9y ago
  I shouldn't have clicked that link, it was very frustrating. It's like when watching AVGN, any time they bring up emulators it's always in a negative way. "Yeah, this is where people on emulators would cheat and make a save state" etc... I've got a Switch, I buy all the games that I play, and I am extremely excited for this emulator to come out. In my Steam library I have several games that are DOSBox wrappers around the original title. They're emulators, and I paid money for them, and they're perfectly legal. Digital archival is a growing problem, so much of our culture is going to be lost without efforts like these. On a side note: When I talk to fellow gamers about my history of modding games, there's generally two groups. The ones who play on PC ask what I added, new levels, skins, etc.... And the ones who play only on consoles typically get upset because they think it means I made cheats for online play. (For the record it was usually new features in code)
  - bsimpson 9y ago
    When I was in film school (2004-8), there was a huge concern about what the growth of digital formats would mean for archiving. Film from the 1800s can still be projected (so long as it's in physically-good condition), but tape formats (at least at the time) went obsolete every few years.
    - kaoD 9y ago
      This is why open standards are so important. DRM and proprietary drivers/blobs/formats are enemy to humanity. This is also why it should be (and in some places is) 100% legal to circumvent such measures, including via reverse engineering. But it shouldn't be that way! I'd say society should go a step further and grant copyright on works only if the specification of the underlying formats is fully released, just like patents exist(ed?) to grant legal protection in exchange for disclosure.
dtech 9y ago
Also historically emulation only gets into a state usable for pirates after the end of the console's lifetime, or at the least near the tail end. So right at the time emulators are good enough to enable piracy the impact is significantly less because you can't buy the original console and games anymore.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Since the Switch is similar to the 3DS and it uses a well documented chip (Nvidia Tegra) development should be faster.
  - pizza234 9y ago
    Hopefully it will be comparatively easy. But (presumed) similarity is not a guarantee - see the XBox emulation: http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#Emulation_issues http://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Xbox_emulators#E...
  - delroth 9y ago
    Recent consoles are well abstracted from the hardware. The only case where this is usually not true is the GPU, and it's rare to have something completely custom there nowadays (the 3DS and its weird PICA chip is very much the exception). Most of the difficulty is in properly emulating the operating system, and this is not helped by having SoC datasheets.
    - MBCook 9y ago
      Plus timing issues, bugs & errata, etc.
      - delroth 9y ago
        Meh. Timing issues become almost irrelevant in a world where consoles have dynamic clock scaling, deep sleep modes, etc. Games are usually not written around specific timings anymore. Bugs and errata can be a concern (I think I remember some issues regarding PowerPC atomic instructions misbehaving on the Wii U for example) but I would expect them to be fairly minor compared to the whole work of REing a custom microkernel and its associated services.
OptionX 9y ago
I operate under this as a guideline. If the game can't be bought anymore in a way where money gets to the devs then (you can always get random box copy's from eBay or some such) then it's OK to use an emulator.
- astura 9y ago
  You're confusing (pirated) ROMs with "emulators." There are emulator products that you can only play with original games (such as bleem!) and/or ROMs provided by the publisher (such as Nintendo's eStore) The devs at mainstream game studios are salaried, they've already been paid for their work performed no matter if the game sells or not. If the game is never released (which happens) they still get a paycheck.
  - throwawayaway12 9y ago
    While this is true, I would imagine that sales figures affect the future of devs at the game studios (layoffs, new projects, etc).
  - OptionX 9y ago
    I know the difference, just stating my stance in this matter. Besides Yuzu can't even be used like that in it's current state, and like has been said if a game doesn't sell during its shelf life it doesn't bode well to any of the makers. It's enough to kill medium/small studios and entire IP's.
frik 9y ago
Exactly, emulator are good for archiving. It allows on to play decades old games. Even some museums use emulators. Yuzu Switch emulator is made by devs of a 3DS emulator Crita: https://citra-emu.org https://citra-emu.org 3DS is unique with its 3D display that doesn't need a 3D glass. The "New 3DS XL" is especially great, as it has a stable 3D effect because of infrared eye-tracking. While most gamer got a bad impression from the first gen 3DS 3D effect without eye-tracking. I would pay premium for such a 3D PC monitor. Unfortunately Nintendo Switch doesn't feature such a 3D display nor does any other device available.
snausages 9y ago
True, but lets not forget when a fully playable version of Breath of the Wild became available on Wii-U emulators last year just after release. It's a tricky area.
- cuckcuckspruce 9y ago
  The WiiU has been dead since the Switch released. Nintendo put out BotW on the WiiU because they hadn't put out a Zelda game on it yet and Switch supplies were short. I wouldn't say that it's hurt sales for the game for the Switch - BotW had an above 100% attach rate at launch on the Switch.
  - astura 9y ago
    It's not entirely true they didn't put out any Zelda games for the WiiU, just not any "flagship titles that were WiiU exclusives." They rereleased The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. Hyrule Warriors was a WiiU Zelda title but it wasn't a flagship action RPG title, it was a hack and slash. (I also believe that Breath of the Wild was originally developed for the WiiU)
  - excalibur 9y ago
    BotW was developed for the Wii U. They've been promoting it to fans almost since the console's debut. Releasing it on that system was them living up to their promise. It's just a shame that it turned out to be the console's final major release.
    - Nexxxeh 9y ago
      In fairness though, talk about going out on a high! Twilight Princess was released on the Gamecube and Wii, as well.
- dtech 9y ago
  It doesn't seem to have hurt sales, it's outpacing Zelda: Twilight Princess in terms of sales and that's currently holding the record.
rplnt 9y ago
Emulators don't make piracy legal. So it would be the same argument as for DRM-enabled videos or music. And that is a pretty bad argument.
- astura 9y ago
  And there's great legal uses for emulation: https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ https://hyperkin.com/Retron5/ (it was pointed out to me they violate open source licenses, so forget this one.) every game system's "virtual store" wrapping old games around an emulator to make them (seamlessly) compatible with current computers. Allows the publisher to continue to sell decades old games with vert minimal effort. I don't know how much rereleases of games use emulation vs rewrites, but I assume at least some use emulation. I believe I heard that the xbox360 contains an Xbox emulator for backwards compatibility. If it wasn't the Xbox360 it was some other console. Then there's the failed bleem! commercial emulator.
  - jsheard 9y ago
    Funnily enough the Retron5 is illegal. Not because it emulates games, but because the emulators it uses are stolen from open source projects that forbid commercial use. https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalists-about-retro-bit-and-about-the-new-retro-emulation-industry-in-general/ https://www.libretro.com/index.php/appeal-to-game-journalist...
    - astura 9y ago
      Wow, I didn't know that. I don't know much about the product other than it's pretty mainstream so I assumed they played by the rules.
    - Karunamon 9y ago
      Aren’t open source licenses that forbid commercial use kind of rare? All of the big name ones I can think of have no such provisions.
      - 9y ago
iClaudiusX 9y ago
History is full of examples where a developer/publisher decided to port or remaster a game from its back catalog only to realize they have lost the source code and need to rely on an emulator ROM. Sega, Nintendo, and Capcom I think are the most infamous examples. Of course the hypocrisy is lost on these same companies who for decades have used piracy as the boogeyman to vilify archival work and fair use.
heywire 9y ago
Although most here probably know this already, I'll take this opportunity to point out that the Internet Archive has a great collection of games playable in your browser. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom
- distantsounds 9y ago
  bless the internet archive for having an exception to the DMCA clause!
  - comex 9y ago
    The DMCA isn’t the main issue here. Its anticircumvention clause, which is what the exemptions are for, is specifically about breaking DRM, which isn’t even present in most of the stuff they’re offering for emulation. Rather, the issue would be straight-up copyright infringement: they’re hosting copyrighted ROMs and sending copies to any browser that visits the page. There are various little-known exemptions for copyright infringement, too, written in the statute, but I don’t think any of them are applicable. The Internet Archive would have to claim either copyright abandonment or fair use. Fair use would be a stretch, since they’re sending the entire ROMs, not just parts of them, and they’re offering a replica of the original, intended user experience rather than creating something “transformative”. As for copyright abandonment… I don’t know much about the case law for that, but at least according to Wikipedia[1], it wouldn’t hold much water either, any more than it would for out-of-print (but non-public-domain) books. Heck, they’re even hosting games that are still being sold, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Pac-Man. They’re marked “Stream Only”, but that just means they’re not putting a “save a copy” button in the UI; the game is still being downloaded in full into your browser, in order to run the JavaScript-based emulator. (Though even if they were running the emulator on a server and streaming a video feed, that would still typically be infringing.) My guess is, they know they’re violating copyright, but they expect that the vast majority of copyright owners won’t care (and/or won’t notice), and anyone who does will send a DMCA notice rather than going for a full-blown lawsuit. Alternately, they might have negotiated a license for at least some of the games in the collection, but in that case I’d expect they’d say so. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abandonware#Law
chrisper 9y ago
Emulators are not illegal. Sony even lost a lawsuit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleem!#Sony_lawsuit
- slg 9y ago
  This the equivalent of "this pipe is for tobacco use only" or "BitTorrent is used to share Linux distros". Yes, emulators are legal. But we all know that the overwhelming use of them is in illegal situations. EDIT: Since this comment is currently sitting at -2 points, I figured I would expand on my rather glib comment. From Nintendo's website: >whether you have an authentic game or not, or whether you have possession of a Nintendo ROM for a limited amount of time, i.e. 24 hours, it is illegal to download and play a Nintendo ROM from the Internet.[1] What percentage of emulators are only used to play homebrewed games or commercial games that an individual has personally backed up? Almost all other uses are illegal. [1] - https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator https://www.nintendo.com/corp/legal.jsp#emulator
  - 15charlimit 9y ago
    They can claim something is illegal all they want, but that has no impact whatsoever on the actual legality of it. Anti-consumer EULA/TOS items haven't held up in court for a while now.
    - slg 9y ago
      That isn't a EULA/TOS rule, it is a summary of the law. Can you find any reputable source to disprove what Nintendo says? Here is an independent summary from Tech Radar that agrees with Nintendo. [1] [1] - http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-legal-1329264 http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/are-game-emulators-lega...
      - ThatGeoGuy 9y ago
        Depends on jurisdiction a lot, quite honestly. Nintendo can say it's illegal all it wants, but if I own a physical copy of a game, and make a digital backup of such, then I'm in the clear as far as Canadian law (see our copyright bill C-11) goes. A ROM made from an official copy vs. downloaded from the internet are pretty hard to tell apart, but regardless you are allowed to own and retain such copies if you own the original. That being said, if there's DRM and you break it, then you have a different issue entirely. Owning the ROM wouldn't be illegal, but breaking the DRM certainly would be. Even if in the process of legally backing up your data off of the disc you break the DRM, you're still in legal hot waters. Quite frankly I'm convinced Nintendo can say all it wants, it's a scare tactic and for the most part they're full of shit unless you take into account a specific part of US or Japanese law in a specific state or jurisdiction. I would not assume that they know exactly what they're talking about globally.
balls187 9y ago
I bought my Switch after playing BotW via CEMU. I have a WiiU, but trying out BotW at 1600p was intriguing.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
I've been told that even some authorized arcade emulator releases actually use bootleg MAME sets because they lost the original code that ran in the "protection MCU". If you don't know what that is: to delay bootleg production, arcade vendors used to put some bit of important code inside a microcontroller, so that just copying the ROM chips produced a broken game and bootleg vendors would have to reverse engineer it and reproduce it in the main CPU program, sometimes leading to gameplay differences (IIRC, the generation of the "EXTEND" bubbles in Bubble Bobble was an example noticeable to expert players).
Sephr 9y ago
Not just for archiving, but also for playing at higher framerates and resolutions. 30fps games give me headaches but the same game running at 120fps can make a huge difference.

degenerate 9y ago

"At this time, yuzu does not run any commercial Switch games. yuzu can boot some games, to varying degrees of success, but does not implement any of the necessary GPU features to render 3D graphics" In case anyone thought it was a full-blown emulator

ReverseCold 9y ago
There's already an "emulator" that's used to make Homebrew. It has zero graphics support, only enough to debug basic homebrew tools. This is the first one that is "marketed" as an emulator.
speps 9y ago
Actually, it can render some graphics now: https://twitter.com/notfunnei/status/952460754996944896 https://twitter.com/notfunnei/status/952460754996944896 I guess they didn't update the website.
- elliottcarlson 9y ago
  The README specifically says 3D graphics, which still seems to be lacking.

jpmoyn 9y ago

Hopefully this gets developed more and is actually able to run games

Fej 9y ago

Glad that the first major Switch emulator is open-source, it sets the standard.

kakarot 9y ago
Agreed! Cemu is a great piece of software, but coming after Dolphin, the premiere open source console emulation project, it was pretty lame that they opted for closed source. In the case of Cemu, I understand that closed source = $20k/mo in Patreon subscriptions which enabled a blistering pace of development in 2017. It's my hope that the developers eventually open up the source after the subscriptions dry up. For long-term support, something that is extremely important when you're dealing with games that will eventually be decades old, open source is critical.
- dtech 9y ago
  Does it have to be closed source for the Patreon? A significant amount of open source developers have their own successful Patreon. And it's freely downloadable so it's not like that is the Patreon incentive.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    I imagine they made that choice with the intention of preventing others from wrestling control from the devs with a libre fork at the early stages of development when they weren't sure just how much money they would make through Patreon. The release cycle favors Patreon subscribers by a week or two. As compatibility rounds out, this will be less of a draw. It's a little similar to how PJ64 did things for a while with their donor system, except AFAIK PJ64 is still closed source.
    - Fej 9y ago
      Project 64 is open-source now.
      - kakarot 9y ago

hellbanner 9y ago

"It's just Emulation!" - The Challenge of Selling old Games https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16151538 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16151538

drngdds 9y ago
That's an hour long video, can you summarize its arguments?
- jamie_ca 9y ago
  TLDR summary slide near the end: - There is an audience for old games - Out of print games are lost revenue - Emulation is cheap - Emulation is accurate - _Embrace the emulator_ The speaker works as a game developer, worked on the Mega Man Legacy Collection (the 6 NES games, packaged together with a bunch of value-adds). He posits that it's really easy these days to bundle up a "classic" game ROM with an open-source emulator that is commercial-permissive (DOSBox has been so for years, MAME/MESS became open source in 2016 and covers a large number of arcade and home consoles), and is a missed opportunity for long-tail revenue. If the film industry can do it, why not the games industry? [Nintendo's been doing it successfully with the Virtual Console on Wii U and 3DS, why aren't 3rd-party publishers going all out?]
vlunkr 9y ago
While I think that video is great, the games on the Switch are the opposite of old.
- hellbanner 9y ago
  Yes, but in 5, 10 years they will be just like the games discussed in the presentation.

ry_ry 9y ago

Much of the Switch's appeal for me was the interesting hardware configuration, I wonder if Nintendo focused less on obfuscating its inner workings compared to other current-gen consoles based on that? Edit: urgh, was supposed to be a reply to another comment. I guess the point still stands though.

amaranth 9y ago
It's an almost stock Tegra X1 reference system. The hacks that got access to the system recently started with a Tegra backdoor/debug option Nvidia and Nintendo apparently forgot about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec4NgWRE8ik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec4NgWRE8ik
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  Video TL;DW: - Launch hidden web browser through WiFi Web Auth or the Japanese version of PuyoPuyo Tetris. - Connect to MITM'd WiFi hotspot that has a webkit exploit. - Gain userspace access. - Exploit preload (pl:u) service, it has an array out of bounds read. - Exploit SM service by forgetting to initialize it with your PID, therefore it thinks you are PID 0. - The whole Kernel is mapped into userspace for some reason, can be used as ASLR bypass. - Search Tegra manual for "bypass SMMU" - follow instructions, bypass kernel using the GPU. (35:00, oversimplified here) - Change certain parts of DRAM, PMC, etc, and during wakeup TrustZone will execute whatever. This is fixed past v1.0.0.
  - roblabla 9y ago
    The Kernel being mapped in userspace isn't actually used in any of the current hacks though. ROhan, the only implemented and public way to get userland Arbitrary Code Execution, uses ASLR leaks in both Webkit and SDB. Kernel being mapped in userspace is interesting for save hacks though, which would allow us to escape out of the webkit process (webkit is limited to 700MB of ram, so escaping into a game process is very much interesting). The SMMU bypass is not usable outside of 1.0.0 for Kernel ACE. They have a carveout that denies DMA access to builtins and kernel, the problem is that in 1.0.0, the Kernel would allocate some objects outside of that carveout. It does allow ACE in any other process though.

jlebrech 9y ago

the appeal of the switch is portability, if you need a powerful gaming laptop to run it it's defeating the purpose, but for posterity it's a good project to keep an eye on.

drngdds 9y ago
This is good for some other reasons too: - There are some good Switch exclusives that are worth playing even non-portably - Eventually, this will probably let us play Switch games in higher resolutions with better textures, post-processing, etc. - In the long-term, emulators let gamers get around eternally renewing copyrights, which are basically just rent-seeking.
- baby 9y ago
  True. I hope that this doesn't scare game developers away though, the switch is truly one of the best console I've own so far and I'd be sad to see developers running away from it because of emulators and piracy.

rkuska 9y ago

> don't hesitate to join our Discord and talk to bunnei Is that you bunnie? Or someone from Boston who was inspired by bunnie? (bunnie = https://www.bunniestudios.com/ https://www.bunniestudios.com/ reverse engineer too, graduate from MIT)

Retr0spectrum 9y ago
bunnei != bunnie
- senatorobama 9y ago
  hahaha
- rkuska 9y ago
  I understand that. It's just a bit of coincidence with naming, the area of interest and also boston.
Relys 9y ago
haha, yeah I thought that at first too. Separate individuals. Both exceptional.

falcolas 9y ago

<Soapbox> If you want more interesting consoles that break from the "set top box" paradigm, be sure to buy a switch. If you want more games that are awesome and fun to play, buy those games. Only after you've bought them (or can no longer legally buy them), break them apart and create roms and emulators for your own use. </Soapbox> Artists will often create even without pay, but the scale and quality of many of these games is beyond what even a group of artists could create in a decade long side project.

madshiva 9y ago
There's no more "interesting consoles" the market is over. I would totally pay for switch game on PC, but I will not more pay for the hardware that is obsolete after 2-4years. I want owning the right to play, I choose the hardware. Forza 7 did this on PC, I directly purchased the full VIP package of 100$. You want that people purchase your game, make it available or be pirated.

thinkpad20 9y ago

Some of the time stamps I’m seeing on the code are on the order of two years old. How is that possible, considering how long the switch has been out? I guess they were able to reuse a lot of code?

AlexAltea 9y ago
Yuzu is fork from an existing emulator for the Nintendo 3DS written by essentially the same developers: https://citra-emu.org/ https://citra-emu.org/

zdw 9y ago

Interesting that they didn't try to make it run on the nVidia Shield, which has the same hardware as the Switch, but clocked higher.