Nintendo‘s Wii U was pitched directly as a competitor of Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One. It was the Japanese video gaming giant’s first attempt at supporting HD graphics on their video-game console.
While the video gaming console garnered a mixed reception from the gaming community, the Wii U received praise for its gamepad innovation.
The controller featured a mini-display, which can be used as a separate console to play games on it as well. Similar to other Nintendo consoles, Wii U is backward compatible as well.
Also read – Best Nintendo 3DS Emulators for PC
Table Of Contents
Best Wii U Emulator for PC
The list is short for the working Nintendo Wii U emulators that are available for PC.
The lone standing player is the Cemu emulator, which has had commendable success with emulating the comparatively newer emulator.Â
Cemu is available for Windows PC currently, which runs on Windows 7 64-bit or above.Â
Cemu Installation Process
The lone Wii U emulator for Windows 10 PC does not have an installation file. It can be downloaded from the official site in a compressed zip folder. The folder can be extracted, and you can run the emulator right away.
Cemu in Action
As soon as you launch Cemu, you are greeted with a welcome tutorial screen to get you acquainted with the basics. There you can set the game path that will let Cemu scan for Wii U game ROMS, followed by a wizard showing you the essential keyboard shortcuts.
Lets have a look at the display, which offers two options available, OpenGL and Vulkan, toggled according to your requirements.
Players can play online, provided they require the original ROM dump for connecting to the Wii servers. The developers have provided a detailed tutorial on making it work over the official site.
Compatibility list
The compatibility of games on the Nintendo Consoles emulator is relatively good.
Major titles such as Mario Angry Birds Trilogy, Super Meat boy have achieved perfect compatibility on the lone Wii U emulator.
You can check out your favorite Wii U games’ compatibility on PC from the Cemu Compat section.
Wii U emulators for PC that don’t work
There are alot of Wii U emulators that may work for the earlier versions of Wii but are often misled by others in thinking that they can run Wii U games.Â
1. Dolphin Emulator
Dolphin is the ultimate emulator for running GameCube and Wii(7th Generation), a predecessor to Wii U. They have extensive support and game compatibility, coupled with multi-platform support. Unfortunately, Dolphin Emulator does not run Wii U games.Â
2. Yuzu
An emulator for the successor to Wii U, Yuzu is a phenomenal emulator for Nintendo Switch. It has the feel and the broad compatibility for the Switch games.Â
If you think that there is backward compatibility on this emulator, then you might wrong. Just like the Dolphin emulator, Yuzu does not support Wii U either.Â
3. Decaf
Decaf is an open-source Wii U emulator for Windows and Linux. It is among the very first emulator to be released to play Nintendo Wii U games on PC. However, Decaf is not fully functional and does not properly emulate Wii U games. So it is better to use Cemu than Decaf.
Over to You
Finding the best Wii U emulator for PC can be a bit of a challenge at the moment. Cemu is the only emulator for Wii U that works without significant interruptions. Watch out this space for more emulators as they come up on the surface.