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Since 2021, various outlets have reported that Yuzu can run on the Steam Deck. However, the article was significantly revised shortly after publication, removing this mention. Kotaku initially opined that this improved the look of the game significantly. Ryujinx was reportedly capable of running Dread at 4K resolution, higher than the Switch could. In October 2021, multiple outlets reported that Metroid Dread was able to be played on both Yuzu and Ryujinx within days of its release. In September 2020, Nintendo Life published an article saying that a The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild mod worked on Ryujinx and other emulators. In October 2019, Gizmodo published an article noting that Yuzu was able to emulate some games at a frame rate roughly on par with the actual console hardware. PC Gamer noted that Yuzu was able to run Pokémon: Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! shortly after the games' release, albeit with audio issues. The author of the article expressed concern with the ability of Yuzu to emulate games that were available commercially at the time. In October 2018, Kotaku published an article noting that Super Mario Odyssey was playable in Yuzu. Skyline is an experimental Switch emulator for Android devices, which was initially capable of playing Sonic Mania, Celeste, and parts of Super Mario Odyssey.
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In April 2018, it was reported that another emulator, Ryujinx, was initially able to play part of Cave Story. The coverage and development of the emulators has attracted notable attention from the industry, including Nintendo, as well as Denuvo Software Solutions GmbH, which, at the request of publishing companies partnered with them concerned about piracy, has developed a DRM measure intended to prevent play of emulated Switch games. Switch emulators have been widely noted by video games journalists for the swift and significant progress of their abilities to accurately emulate the console, as they are already able to run existing and new titles for the console in a playable state, sometimes within days of their release, as well as able to run on a variety of devices, including PCs running Microsoft Windows and Linux, and the Steam Deck. Multiple emulators are in development, the most well-known being Yuzu and Ryujinx.
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Emulators of the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo's current eighth-generation video game console, have been in development since 2017, less than a year after the console's release.
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