Watch Breath of the Wild running at 4K in Cemu emulator

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It's a bit hinky and usually sits at 15 frames per second, but it's running, and it looks great.

Earlier this week Wes spoke to Exzap, developer of the Wii U emulator Cemu, about a video he'd posted to Reddit showing the newly-released Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild running on the software. Not running well, mind you, but functional, and with at least the possibility of proper, playable 30 fps performance in its future—although not for at least several weeks, and possibly even years.

"There is this common misconception that because the game runs so well already, it will run perfectly equally soon, Exzap said. "In reality, there is no correlation."    

Be that as it may, the effort so far seems to be coming along quite nicely. Exzap released the latest Cemu build which can properly boot Breath of the Wild, and YamGaming has posted an 11-minute video of it rendering at 4K. While it struggles (and often fails) to maintain 15 fps, the fact is that it works a mere week after launch, and it looks awfully nice. 

It may well be playable at this resolution someday, too. As we noted in the original report, Breath of the Wild is "heavily CPU limited," meaning that running it at resolutions higher than its native 720p shouldn't have too much of an impact on its overall performance. You can already see that reflected in the Cemu emulation of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which Exzap said runs just as well at 4K as it does at 720p. For now, Zelda still has a long road through bugs and other emulation issues ahead of it.

It's a possibility that certainly seems to have people intrigued: We noted at the start of the week that the Cemu Patreon had jumped from $5900 to $7400 per month; since then it's climbed to a $11,200 per month. 

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Andy Chalk
Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.