While not as popular as the Switch, the Wii U had a decent run with some memorable games like Mario Kart 8 still making it to the platform. As a result, interest in emulating it is very much still present and in this article, we’re going to look at the release of Cemu 1.22.0.

What is Cemu?

Fancy some Mario Kart 8 @ 1080p with extra eye candy on your PC? Cemu has got you covered!

As the introduction suggests, Cemu is a Nintendo Wii U emulator for Windows PCs that’s been around for quite a while. Having received constant support from community members on Patreon, this emulator managed to obtain pretty good compatibility with most popular Wii U titles including the ever-popular Mario Kart 8, Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Maker.

However, its merits don’t simply end at good compatibility with most games that matter as Cemu also comes with support for graphics packs and pretty good performance amongst other things. For the uninitiated, graphics packs are fan-made patches applied to Wii U games that can allow for resolution enhancements, improved graphics or even gameplay mods making games look nicer & more enjoyable on PC rather than on actual hardware! Performance-wise, Cemu can provide more than playable experiences in titles like Mario Kart 8 even on mid-range PCs from a few years ago (Quad Sandy Bridge i5+GTX 960) meaning that its requirements are much less than pioneering Switch emulators like Yuzu & Ryujinx.

What does Cemu 1.22.0 bring along?

If there’s a Wii U title that runs decently but not at full speed on your PC, you might wanna give it another go with Cemu 1.22.0 as it could just push it over the edge! (Zelda BotW shown image)

Released last Friday for Patreon backers and due November 20th for the rest of the public, Cemu 1.22.0 packs in a significant deal of punch as it includes:

• A re-working of the PowerPC and Cafe OS threading mechanism
  • The existing single/dual/triple-core CPU modes have been replaced by a Single-core and Multi-core mode with the latter making use of one full CPU thread while dynamically adjusting load on two other threads.
  • Thanks to the reworking, overhead has been reduced resulting in minor performance boosts while some titles like Super Mario 3D World that are not multi-threaded should not be as heavy on the host CPU
• The PM4 Command Processor has been updated with promises of up to a 5% performance boost in games

Combined, the above changes could provide boosts of around 5% or more in the best-case scenario meaning that if there are any titles that almost run well but not quite on your machine, you should give them another go!

Conclusion

To grab Cemu 1.22.0 now, you have to support Team Cemu for €5/monthly on Patreon but if you can muster a bit of patience, a public release is due in 2/3 days’ time on Friday!

Team Cemu’s Patreon (donations and access to new versions a week early): https://www.patreon.com/cemu

Cemu’s Download Link (will be updated with links for 1.22.0 when publicly available): https://cemu.info/#download

Cemu 1.22.0 Change log: https://cemu.info/changelog/cemu_1_22_0.txt