If you are in the emulation scene then you are aware of the wild ride for Nintendo Switch emulation over the last year.
To start I debated writing this as it brings attention to system emulation that was all but hunted to extinction a year ago. We have started to see new life with Switch emulation and I would hate to be implicant in slowing that down. That said bringing these emulators to the masses through Google Play access is doing more of that than I ever could.
The Takedown
There has been a relentless attack on anything Switch emulation by the ‘Nintendos Ninjas’ on a global scale the last couple years. Before hardware takedowns by Nintendo we saw a sweeping attack on major emulators in the space.
The first takedown was Skyline. This switch emulator was innovative in its own right and my favorite at the time. It has however had a resurrection in the works with Strato since shortly after its demise, though this project remains out of the public domain.
The next takedown was Yuzu which inadvertently had collateral damage to the popular 3DS emulator Citron. Both were developed by the same teams giving Nintendo a 2 for 1 victory. Yuzu offered PC, Linux and Android emulator builds.
Then there was Ryujinx, a very popular and surprisingly accurate emulator for Nintendo Switch. Ryujinx didn’t offer an Android APK but was a go to for many PC and Linux users.
In the Android Gaming space Yuzu is a popular fork to build off of as it had an existing APK. There has been some attempts at Ryujinx as they were in development of an APK when shut down but had never released it, making it less popular in the Android space currently.
There was thousands of Yuzu forks shut down by Nintendo and in fact we are still seeing those forks get shut down on GutHub today, which is what makes this so interesting. Emulators Sudachi, Citron and Eden seem to be the most advanced Yuzu forks with the most promising results that continue development publicly today.
How
There were a lot of things that got the previous Switch emulators shut down including extensive financial gains through Patron. Yuzu was also offering a Gold option through the Google Play Store which was supposed to give users access to Beta builds of the emulator (though after shutdown many gold members learned it hadn’t been consistently updating making the free GitHub APK a far more recent option).
Nintendo addressed both financial gain and circumventing security measures implemented by Nintendo for the legal bases to shut down. To legally use these applications you need to obtain your firmware, prod and title keys and match them all up. Naturally Nintendo first went after the application which allowed users to extract these licenses from their “owned” Nintendo Switches and Carts.
Without getting any deeper into the past, Nintendo won a lawsuit against Yuzu and its developers in the form of a settlement . The application was immediately removed but not until after thousands of forks flooded GitHub and other open source development platforms.
Eden
A year ago it was thought Switch emulation was dead. Nobody seemed willing to take on the Nintendo Ninjas and it had become too popular to keep it quiet… but now we are seeing a renaissance of sorts.
Eden emulator in particular which started as a Yuzu fork seems to have removed the code from its application that was targeted by Nintendo. Beyond the progress they are making, the team seems comfortable enough to take on scrutiny by making the emulator available to the masses.
It’s one thing to quietly build an emulator on GitHub with limited exposer as most Android users don’t have a clue how to sideload or where to find these applications. When it comes to the emulation hobby insiders become your source on where to find, are they safe and what these applications expectations are. This leaves a lot of mainline consumers blind to this market.
Putting Eden on the Google Play Store opens the app up to the common consumer and puts it front and center of Nintendo. This is a risk many of us thought we wouldn’t see a Switch emulator take on again making this so unexpected. Not just a development team trying to put a Switch emulator on Google Play but also Google allowing the application to be published on their platform.
Get Eden
Even with Eden being on the Google Play Store you can still download it from their GitHub as well. Often you will likely find the newest builds on GitHub due to the upload delays from application reviews to Google Play. If you want Eden you can find it at the links below:
I truly hope Eden is here to stay on the Google Play Store. If it sticks around we will likely see a push from some of these other Nintendo Switch emulators, making the future of this emulation even more exciting.
Do you emulate Nintendo Switch? Would you rather grab your emulator off GitHub or Google Play?
If something changes we’ll let you know, even if that change is some exciting breakthroughs!
GameOn
CellPhish
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