Earlier this year, the Switch emulator Yuzu was shut down after being caught in the fiery gaze of the great eye of Nintendo. A follow-up based on the same source code, Suyu, appeared shortly after, though it unsurprisingly met the same fate. Now, over eight months on, there’s another new kid on the block (thanks, Overkill).
Citron is the latest Yuzu fork, now available in early access on Android. According to AndroidAuthority.com, the Switch emulator is much the same as its predecessor, with a couple of “minor upgrades and optimisations” to keep things slightly distinct.
Where things do differ, however, is in how Citron developer Zephyron is presenting the emulator. According to the creator, this is a “Nintendo Homebrew Emulator” designed for educational purposes and is by no means a Nintendo Switch emulator… hmm. A pop-up when you first open the site reportedly flags its educational intentions and shifts the legal responsibility onto the user.
But that’s not all. Citron also warns its users against loading up pirated or otherwise unauthorised games — though that’s roughly the equivalent of putting a ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on an unlocked and open door since there’s nothing officially stopping users from uploading whichever keys they want. This is the same stance that Suyu took earlier this year, and we don’t need to remind you how successful that was.
Who knows, perhaps this could be the one that escapes Nintendo’s wrath, but we’d be very surprised if these differentiations are enough for the Big N to turn a blind eye. You’d have to imagine that anything even vaguely associated with Yuzu will get the Ninja’s alarm bells ringing.
That said, the lawyers have certainly got their work cut out for them. Another new emulator was recently spawned from the assumed-dead Ryujinx source code, and we struggle to believe these will be the last. Chop off one head, two grow back and all that, eh?