It often take a little while for console emulators to catch up when a big new game gets released, but that hasn’t been the case for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Despite releasing on May 12, a working version for the PC Switch emulator Yuzu was up and running by May 13, with the developers promising that the emulated version is capable of the same (or greater) performance as the native Nintendo Switch.
The announcement, made via the Yuzu Twitter account, highlights several improvements which are possible using the emulated version. Firstly, the game has been expanded beyond the original 900p resolution limit, with resolutions of 4K and higher and being possible, and full speeds being available on most hardware setups, with users reporting the game working well on Nvidia 30-series GPUs. The post also mentions 60 frames-per-second being possible, but there only seems to be one 60 fps mod available right now, and it’s from a somewhat disreputable source, so that particular element seems unknown right now.
We would normally say that this is unlikely to ruffle many feathers in the great house of Nintendo, as Tears of the Kingdom has been an enormous release, and will likely be heralded as a great success. However, Nintendo takes a very dim view of any activities like this, and has previously acted strongly against emulators. In fact, it was the leaking of Tears of the Kingdom itself which caused Nintendo to go on a rampage against the emulation community, issuing a DCMA takedown notice against Lockpick, a popular tool used for decryption keys for Switch emulation services. Noting Nintendo’s displeasure, development ceased on a prospective Switch emulator for Android, named Skyline.
It’s worth pointing out that Yuzu’s tools should only ever be used with legally dumped versions of Tears of Kingdom — i.e., it should be the game data from a copy of Tears of the Kingdom you already own, that you only use for yourself. The legal area of mods is somewhat gray, but these are the accepted rules within the U.S., and Yuzu’s emulation software is there simply to give you the ability to play your own game on a higher-spec system.
