Gameplay is buggy and there is a lot of work left for devs

Mar 6, 2017 14:02 GMT  ·  By

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released three days ago, and it’s already been made to run on a Nintendo Wii emulator, on the PC platform.

The new Legend of Zelda game is the pièce de résistance for the new Nintendo Switch console, but it looks that it’s not going to remain an exclusive for much longer. Traditionally, most Nintendo games tend to remain on their platforms, with some exceptions, but things are changing fast in the modern world.

Console emulators have been around for a long time, but porting the games is a complicated process. From the looks of it, the latest Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is already running on a Wii U emulator. Sure, it’s buggy, and there are still lots of issues, but the simple fact that it’s working is an incredible achievement.

Don’t get your hopes up

If you think that you’re going to play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on your PC anytime soon, you’re probably going to be disappointed. It’s going to be a while until the game is really playable and bug-free.

There is also the issue of legality, which at best rests in a rather gray area. Suffice it to say that it’s most likely illegal, in most countries, to play this game on an emulator, even if you have the original copy.

The game is now sort of working on Cemu, which is a highly experimental Wii U emulator. The developers have explained on Reddit that they are using a regular PC, with an i7-4790K processor, a GTX 780 video card, and 8GB of RAM.

All kinds of problems affect the gameplay, and players can’t leave the tutorial area without the use of a save.

The interesting aspect of this port is not that it exists, but that it arrived so soon after the initial release of the game. The fact that it’s also available for the Wii U console is helpful, but it shows that the line between Nintendo emulators and Nintendo consoles is going away, and soon.