Emulation is not a small community. Various emulators are available for different consoles and choices for the same console too! Yuzu being the most prominent Switch Emulator isn’t the only one that can emulate games and that is clear.
Here we have Cemu, a Wii U and GameCube emulator that is also capable of playing some Switch games but NOT all of them.
It is capable of playing popular titles from what we gather such as Mario Kart 8, Super Smash Bros and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, other non-popular titles do not work and start crashing or glitching. This includes graphics not rendering properly or sound not working at all.
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Yuzu vs Cemu
The below table shows the different features each emulator offers and what sets them apart from each other!
| Yuzu | Cemu |
| Yuzu is fully open source. The code was available to the public to review and check on GitHub. | Cemu is also an open-source emulator. The code is available online and can be viewed by anyone. |
| Supports more than 4000 Switch games out of which around 90% and above work without any issues and errors. | Cemu is originally an emulator for the Wii U and GameCube console and not built to be a Switch emulator. However, it can run a number of Switch titles too the exact number is under 30 which is less than 1% of the games Yuzu can play. Some that are also playable sometimes show bugs and glitches. |
| Saving your progress is automatic and you can also manually trigger a game save whenever you are in a game. | Cemu also supports saving game data automatically. |
| Yuzu allows you to play multiplayer in games, this works locally but not over the public internet. This is achieved using a piece of software called “Boxcat”. | Cemu does not support multiplayer at all. This is a feature it has never offered so far. |
| Yuzu works on all 3 major platforms including Android, Windows and Linux. It does not support macOS. | Cemu works on Windows, Linux and macOS. It does not work on Android. Yuzu works on Android but not on macOS so that is the advantage here. |
| Yuzu is not hard on system requirements. It works with almost all AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. All you need is the appropriate GPU driver installed. | Cemu emulator system requirements are quite straightforward and do not demand resources at all. It requires OpenGL 4.5 and Vulkan 1.2 to work along with a minimum of 4 GB of RAM. |
| Get setup and going within minutes of downloading Yuzu Emulator. You don’t need to do any complex configuration to play Switch games on your platform. | The most helpful part of a Cemu setup is that the whole installation is portable. You can just copy and move the whole folder to another PC. |
| You can transfer your game files from the hardware you own to other platforms such as PC or smartphone. | This is a feature that is not available by default. This has to be done by installing a specialized software that extracts the game save from the current install and allows it to be moved to another installation destination. |
| If you are at a certain point/level on a game and want to continue on another platform you can do so with the help of exporting game saves, this is a feature exclusive to Yuzu. | Game save state exports are not supported in Cemu. You have to use custom Homebrew applications in order to be able to do this. |
| Yuzu also has the ability to upscale the visuals of any Switch game you are emulating, this is possible due to the “Resolution Rescaler” feature. | This is possible in Cemu with the help of “Graphic Packs”. These upscale the visuals and resolutions of the games you are playing. |
| Yuzu also supports third-party controllers that you can connect with your PC or smartphone to play. Controllers such as the Switch Pro, Sony DualSense and Xbox One can all be used and are fully compatible. | Cemu works with most console controllers especially the Switch controllers as it has embedded the SLDController API into it. |
| You can modify games in Yuzu as well. Game modding is supported due to a special framework. The files needed to be added into special directories to work. | This is also working in Cemu and is done by “Graphic Packs”, these are a sort of modification modules which can also install and uninstall game mods. |
| You can emulate controller inputs with a high accuracy in Yuzu as it supports Tool Assisted Speedrun scripts. | You can’t emulate controller inputs in Cemu directly, you have to use custom scripts to be able to do this whereas Yuzu supports TAS scripts natively. |
| Back in May 2020, Yuzu announced support for multi-core emulation and was the first-ever emulator to do so. | Cemu also supports multiple cores for emulation and has support them since May 2020 as well. Ironically this is the same time as when Yuzu announced support for it too. |
Also, check out more Switch emulator comparisons below:
Conclusion
Yuzu and Cemu do not have a direct comparison as Cemu isn’t built for Switch emulation however it supports some of the major titles, we have to give it a major bonus for that! Yuzu was built from the ground up to emulate Switch games hence why it does so much better.
Cemu does excel in some areas though such as having macOS support where Yuzu lacks massively. Another one is default SLDController API support which means the Switch controller works plug-and-play without any configuration changes. It is also portable meaning that you can lift and shift the installation folder to another PC and it will just work, with Yuzu you have to install it from the installer.