NxEmu's September report adds Switch applets and a working DLC system

NxEmu's latest progress report details profile and keyboard applet support, an add-on manager for DLC, and early groundwork for Linux and Android builds.

AI-drafted from 2 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

NxEmu, the open source Nintendo Switch emulator, has published its September progress report, and the headline change is that several games which simply refused to boot now do. Version 0.7.0 adds two long missing pieces of Switch firmware behaviour, a smarter way of handling DLC and updates, and a public site for tracking which games actually work.

The project's progress report explains that a tester called Alexwpi Game has been running through a batch of titles and publishing results in the project's Discord, and that roughly half of the thirty-odd games tried were already playing “nicely” before this release. The developer says compatibility should be noticeably better now, having worked through the issues Alexwpi flagged.

Why Luigi's Mansion 3 wouldn't even boot

The Switch handles multiple users through profiles, each with its own save data, and some games refuse to start at all until the console's profile select applet has been dealt with, even if there is only one profile or none at all. According to the report, that is exactly what stopped Luigi's Mansion 3 from booting on NxEmu. Version 0.7.0 adds a profile manager, letting people create and choose profiles and give them an avatar, either from a file or from images baked into installed firmware.

A similar problem affected games that ask for typed input. The Switch's keyboard applet pops up whenever a game wants a name or a code, and without it NxEmu would either stall or fall back to a placeholder. Pokémon Shield is the example given: entering a trainer name used to just produce the default string “nxemu” instead of whatever the player typed. That applet is now implemented, though the report notes it is a “native applet”, meaning firmware has to be installed for it to render properly, which is a reminder that NxEmu still leans on real Switch firmware files rather than reimplementing everything from scratch.

DLC without the merge

Previously, add-on content such as downloadable levels or game updates had to be merged directly into the base game file, an all-or-nothing arrangement that made it impossible to toggle content off or switch between update versions. NxEmu now lets people point the emulator at separate add-on folders, which it scans for updates, DLC and mods and applies at launch. The Configure Game screen shows what has been found for a title and lets each piece be switched on or off individually, including which game update, if any, gets applied.

Tracking compatibility properly, and what comes next

The developer has also built report.nxemu.com, a site where users sign in with Discord to log compatibility reports against specific games or the emulator generally, rather than issues getting lost in Discord chat. It is reachable from inside the emulator too, via Report Issues under the Help menu. The stated aim is to use that data as the basis for compatibility reporting built into NxEmu itself.

NxEmu remains Windows-only for now, but the report says Linux and Android support are the plan, and this release lays some groundwork: a CMake build, more of the Linux build path, and early Android and ARM64 work. The next release's main focus, according to the developer, is an Android build, with Linux continuing alongside it. Smaller changes in this version include Discord Rich Presence, an optional frame rate unlock, a fix for the speed limiter causing games to dip to 50 to 55 frames per second instead of holding 60, controller vibration support, and quicker access to save and mod folders from the interface.

What is still unclear is how far compatibility actually extends beyond the games Alexwpi has tested, and how the new reporting site's data will be used once it accumulates. The discussion thread on r/emulation is where any of that gets argued out for now.

Sources

Image: NxEmu - Switch Emulator

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