Ryujinx

Ryujinx

Developer(s)	gdkchan (Project lead) Ryujinx team
Latest version	1.1.1403 [+]
Active	No
Platform(s)	Windows Linux macOS
Emulates	Nintendo Switch
Compatibility	Compatibility list
Programmed in	C#
License	MIT
BIOS/Keys	Required

Ryujinx is a discontinued, experimental, free and open-source Nintendo Switch emulator/debugger written in C#, available under the MIT license.

Download

Ryujinx is no longer under development, so don't expect any more features or improvements. You can still download the last official release from a mirror or try one of the active forks of Ryujinx.

Overview

The Switch port of Puyo Puyo Tetris was the first commercial game to show a logo in early February 2018 The titles Cave Story+, The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ Ryujinx, One Piece Unlimited World Red Edition Deluxe Edition and 1-2 Switch were among the first group of games to boot on this emulator on April to May 2018. Ryujinx was able to boot and render the introductions of Super Mario Odyssey in early June 2018. The aforementioned One Piece title was the first 3D game to load in-game in Ryujinx in early July 2018.

Even though Ryujinx and yuzu's teams were composed of different people, their development was steady and almost equal, though Ryujinx seemed to be a bit quicker in booting previously incompatible games or improving the rendering of certain games. The majority of games in the Nintendo Switch library boot past menus and go in-game on this emulator, with roughly half of those considered playable without bugs. Ryujinx had an active blog presence. The Ryujinx team made their own progress reports that were released first on Patreon for contributors, then on their website a week later. Feature announcements were released on multiple platforms simultaneously including the Ryujinx blog, Patreon, Twitter...

Though initially some research was shared between the two Switch emulators, (be sure to read this first insightful progress blog report (July 14, 2018) from its sister emulator, yuzu), since 2019 Ryujinx has operated under the MIT licence, making code only able to be ported in one direction; it is only possible for yuzu to port Ryujinx's code, while Ryujinx may not use yuzu's code. There has been some mild controversy over certain yuzu code implementations that purportedly contain Ryujinx code without attributing the source, which would be a violation of licensing requirements.

In July 2020, resolution upscaling was implemented. With a sufficiently powerful system, upscaling to 4K or even 8K is possible.

At the end of August 2020, Ryujinx became the first Nintendo Switch emulator to implement local wireless multiplayer support. This allows games that support local multiplayer to be played with other people globally that are also using Ryujinx. This feature suffers from desynchronization issues and frequent disconnects due to the lack of a disk shader cache.

On November 12, 2020, Ryujinx implemented a robust disk shader cache into the emulator.

On November 26, 2022, Ryujinx released their first port for Mac, bringing Switch emulation to macOS for the first time. As new Apple Silicon Macs use the same Arm instruction set as the Switch, they were able to use a hypervisor rather than pure emulation on the new Macs. While the compatibility and performance were outstanding for a first release, many of the features (such as Transform Feedback Buffers and Buffer Mirrors) were hacked together and couldn’t be up streamed to the main branch as they were. Since the initial release, proper implementations have slowly been introduced to the master branch.

On October 1st, 2024, gdkchan was contacted by Nintendo to settle on an agreement to stop working on the project and remove all assets related to Ryujinx. See Legal status of emulation.

Forks

For more information about other Switch emulators, see Nintendo Switch emulators#Comparisons.

Ryubing

Developer(s)	Ryubing Team
Latest version	1.3.3 [+]
Active	Yes
Platform(s)	Windows Linux MacOS
Architecture(s)	x86_64, ARM64
Emulates	Nintendo Switch
Website	ryujinx.app
Programmed in	C#
License	MIT
Source code	git.ryujinx.app
BIOS/Keys	Required

Kenji-NX

Developer(s)	KeatonTheBot Ryubing Team
Latest version	2.0.5 [+]
Active	Yes
Platform(s)	Windows Linux MacOS Android
Architecture(s)	x86_64, ARM64
Emulates	Nintendo Switch
Programmed in	C#
License	MIT
Source code	git.ryujinx.app
BIOS/Keys	Required

Ryubing

This fork is intended to be a direct continuation for existing Ryujinx users. The project accepts pull requests and code changes. Guides and documentation have not been updated from the original. Recently, due to a DMCA takedown notice, they removed their GitHub repository and migrated to a self-hosted Git repository.

Kenji-NX

Kenji-NX and Ryubing work together closely and share most changes, but Kenji-NX intends to implement changes that better align with the original Ryujinx interface philosophy. Additionally they offer Android builds.

Ryujinx Classic

Ryujinx Classic was originally created as a fork to fix long-standing stuttering issues in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate by caching NROs. It has since evolved into a fully-fledged Ryujinx fork that aims to provide quality-of-life enhancements while adhering to the original Ryujinx development principles. Currently, it does not provide pre-made builds.

Ryujinx Mirror

Originally intended to be a hard-fork with only minor changes and working builds with nightly releases, currently both the original Github repository and the Discord server are unavailable and progress seems to have halted.

MeloNX

This fork is the successor to the (now-defunct) yuzu-based emulator Pomelo by the same developer- currently the most advanced Nintendo Switch emulator for iOS.

External links

• Official Website
• boilingsteam: An Interview With GDKChan, Creator of Ryujinx