Usually, when we hear of console emulation, our mind goes to games that are at least a decade old but the folks over at Yuzu are changing that general assumption as they’ve managed to get a game released earlier today already in-game in their emulator! In this article, we’ll be taking a look at recent developments relating to running TLZ: Link’s Awakening on Yuzu and where it currently stands.

What is The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening?

The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening looks pretty nice although its $60 asking price is a tad too steep considering it’s just a remake

If you’re acquainted with the Zelda series, you might be thinking “Isn’t this a GameBoy game?” and you’d be right but Nintendo has made a remake of the game for the Nintendo Switch which features a 3D environment with updated graphics making it look similar to games like Oceanhorn. Announced in February, the game received favourable reviews (8-10/10) which were mostly published yesterday and today, it got released probably to coincide with the public availability of the Switch Lite.

This title retails for $60, which is a tad too steep for a remake of a 26 year old game in my opinion, and is a Nintendo Switch exclusive with no other ports being announced as of yet but thanks to Yuzu, its exclusivity might get challenged as it may become playable on PC in the foreseeable future!

TLZ: Link’s Awakening booting and getting in-game in Yuzu – Currently not playable but good progress has been made nonetheless

Around 9 hours ago, the Yuzu team tweeted out that they were able to get the game running in the latest Canary (similar to Nightlies) build of their emulator along with some screenshots to back this up.

Right now, it looks as if someone turned off the lights while playing the game but the Yuzu team are currently on it so substantial developments may be coming soon!

Apparently, this was made possible thanks to game dumps from Australian folks due to their timezone and ogniK‘s timely work in getting the game to load.

As of right now, the state of emulation of this newly-released game is as follows:

• The game boots and gets to the title screen although only a black background is shown instead of the title screen’s graphics
• It’s possible to start a new game and get into the game itself
• Audio and input seem to work just fine although no graphics are shown when in-game even though subtitles and button prompts show up just fine
• Currently, there’s an odd blue tint on the top of the screen in some areas meaning that the emulator is trying to render something but failing
• The Yuzu folks are currently working on fixing the lighting issues affecting the game which may be what’s causing the lack of graphics

Following precedent, it’s totally plausible that the game will reach playable state (provided you have PC hardware that’s high-end enough) in the coming weeks as the Yuzu team is skilled enough to get games to semi-playable/playable state in just a few days similar to what happened with Pokemon: Let’s Go Pikachu/Eeeve 10 months ago. However, fixes/improvements leading to making this game playable might first land in Patreon builds so non-supporters might have to wait a bit longer before being able to emulate the game on PC.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, it’s pretty astonishing how far Nintendo Switch emulation has been able to get and this is due to the hard work going into Yuzu, which can be supported by donating on Patreon. On a concluding note, it’s important to note that console emulation is legal but obtaining game ROMs for free is not and if you’re emulating a game for a modern console, it’s of utmost importance to actually buy the game in order to support its creators as not buying it is directly engaging in piracy.

Yuzu’s Twitter Account (Further Updates): https://twitter.com/yuzuemu

Yuzu’s Patreon (for donating and getting access to exclusive Patreon-only builds): https://www.patreon.com/yuzuteam

Yuzu’s Compatibility List: https://yuzu-emu.org/game/

A video by YouTube channel ‘Leafnation’ demonstrating the game being emulated in Yuzu