The Cemu Team have released the latest version of their Wii U emulator, Cemu 1.8.2, to their Patreon backers. So those of you supporting them via Patreon can download a copy of the latest version of the emulator right now from the Patreon page. For everyone else, the public download will go live on July 25th, 2017 on the official Cemu website.

The 1.8.2 update makes a number of fixes to the emulators CPU interpreters, condensing and minimizing the overall overhead by shrinking the instruction sets and swapping out bloated sets for more optimized code to improve performance. This shaves off micro-calculations to better bolster the overall read speeds and output of the Cemu when it comes to handling ROM data.

There have also been a number of upgrades to the graphics processing,improving texture caching, fixing shader bugs, and optimizing the overall GPU throughput for performance gains of up to 3%. You can see how this all amounts to in-game performance boosts thanks to a preview view put together by reznoire.

Games like Yakuza 1 and Yakuza 2 for the Wii U have been improved as far as compatibility is concerned. Some of the graphics issues in Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash have been fixed. Star Fox Zero has had its compatibility improved, so it’s almost running about on par to the actual Wii U version… almost.

The day and night bug in Xenoblade Chronicles X has been fixed, along with the performance of The Wonderful 101… for the most part, anyway. The Wii U’s Mii Maker has been fixed as well, so it’s slightly easier to make Miis. The videos for Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and Bayonetta 2 have also been fixed, but Tekken Tag Tournament 2 still has texture caching issues and occasionally crashes.

The saving progress in Nintendo Land have been fixed, along with the videos and compatibility being fixed in Star Fox Guard.

And The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has improved stability, along with a few other minor fixes. You can see how well the game runs in Cemu 1.8.2 thanks to a 40 minute video preview posted up by chriztr, which also includes GPU and CPU usage data, temperatures and overall performance gauging, which is perfect for those who want to see how well the game benchmarks in the latest outing of Cemu.

Additionally, games like The Legend of Kay are now playable, along with DuckTales Remastered, which appears to boot and get into the main menu, but some of the loading menus and splash screens are completely borked. Compatibility obviously still needs to improve, but the base game can be played at close to 60fps.

Sound emulation is still off pretty badly, and there are still some graphical inconsistencies, but for the most part it’s a playable game.

Other titles like Fatal Frame 5 have become unplayable due to crashing, and you can’t see anything in Ninja Gaiden 3 once you get into the actual game.

There’s still some obvious work that needs to be done and Cemu is still quite a ways off from being a 100% functional Wii U replacement, but it’s getting there at a fairly moderate speed.

You can either grab the paid version by chucking $5 toward the Cemu team on the Patreon page, or you can wait and download the free version from the Cemu website starting July 25th.