The Nintendo Switch just came out last year in March for a global audience. Homebrew developers, dumpers, crackers, modders, and emulation enthusiasts have been hard at work on Nintendo’s little Switch, working tirelessly to create an emulator for the system, as well as attempt to get homebrew on the console. Well, while the homebrew scene ran into a few roadblocks with the firmware updates, the emulation side has made some rather amazing advancements in recent times.

GBAtemp’s gdkchan has been hard at work on the RyujiNX emulator, which is a Nintendo Switch emulator built on C# and is currently gaining support and contributions from the community over on the official Github.io page.

I suspect that contributions for the RyujiNX emulator will skyrocket in the same way that the Cemu emulator for the Wii U did last year just after the launch of the Nintendo Switch and the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Anyway, YouTuber McDev posted up a video of The Binding of Isaac Rebirth+ running at 2fps in the RyujiNX emulator. Yes, the emulator is now capable of running Nintendo Swithc games, albeit slowly.

While the official site says that the emulator only supports homebrew at the moment, the truth of the matter is that it actually supports a lot more than that.

You can actually get beyond the main title screen and into the actual game of The Binding of Isaac Rebirth+. Obviously actually playing the game is practically out of the question right now due to how slow it moves, but there’s some really good groundwork at play. The shaders still need tweaking and the brightness and contrast are a little glitchy still, along with the image sometimes flipping and reversing, showcasing that the GPU side of the emulation needs a lot more tender, loving care.

However, the stability is what’s most impressive. No crashing, no dumps, no hard locks, and no resets. That’s some darn good headway if I must say so myself.

Another video from McDev also shows that the RyujiNX isn’t just limited to playing The Binding of Isaac, it can also run Cave Story but it’s also limited to 2fps and the vertical screen emulation is flipped.

However, the imagery still seems to be on point when it comes to the colors and pixel stability. It’s not like it has artifacts all over the place like a lot of the early N64 and PSX emulators such as the UltraHLE or Bleem.

Some people have grown paranoid about how much this might affect the Nintendo Switch’s sales success on the market, while other people can’t wait to finally get the emulator and start dumping Switch games so they can get them for free without having to pay Nintendo a dime.

A bunch of fanboys are hoping that the emulator doesn’t become too much of a success too quickly, otherwise they fear people will just grab the emulator and the ISOs/ROMs from websites bypass giving Nintendo a dime.

Some people believe that it would take well over a year before the emulator is running in tip top shape, but if enough people start funding the project and joining the effort, they could get things progressing as quickly as the Cemu team, and then you won’t have to buy a Nintendo Switch at all to play the exclusives.

You can help contribute to the effort by visiting the RyujiNX Discord channel and offering up your services to help. I imagine it won’t be long before a Patreon page pops up as well.