Summary
TheNintendo Museumis using emulators for at least one set of its interactive displays, according to some newly surfaced evidence. A vocal section ofNintendofans found this revelation to be ironic, not least because of the company’s long-standing opposition to emulation.
Following some delays, theNintendo Museum opened its doors to the publicon October 2. The Kyoto, Japan-based center allows visitors to tour the company’s vast library of consoles and titles, in addition to experiencing many of its classic games firsthand.
Video Suggests Nintendo Museum Uses SNES Emulators
But not all of these interactive displays are powered by vintage hardware. This was recently discovered by Twitter user ChrisMack32 after they decided to unplug one controller from a Nintendo Museum station running the1990 SNES classicSuper Mario World. Doing so prompted the machine to play the instantly recognizable “Device Disconnect” sound event, which Microsoft’s operating systems have been using since the Windows XP days from the early 21st century.
Plugging the gamepad back in triggered the equally iconic “Device Connect” sound event, strongly suggesting that theSuper Mario Worlddisplay at the Nintendo Museum is running on a Windows-powered SNES emulator. This revelation prompted some strong online reactions, with a vocal section of social media users calling Nintendo hypocritical for resorting to such solutions while simultaneously pushing back against emulation software.
Nintendo Has Never Been Opposed To First-Party Emulation
Be that as it may, the Japanese gaming giant’s anti-emulation stance has historically only concerned third-party projects, with the group having no qualms about resorting to such software internally. E.g., the majority of theNintendo Switch Online game libraryis emulated, and the company also previously ran a popular 3DS emulation service called Virtual Console. The notion of the Nintendo Museum using emulators is hence in line with this tradition. There is currently no evidence to suggest that the interactive displays at the Kyoto center use anything other than the company’s own emulators, which Nintendo has no shortage of.
Nintendo’s Fight Against Third-Party Emulators Continues
But the fandom’s annoyance with this revelation is far from surprising, especially seeing how it’s barely been a few weeks since Nintendo shut down yet another popular emulation project. It did so in early October 2024, when it contacted Riperiperi, the lead developer of Switch emulator Ryujinx, and had them agree to stop working on the app and even delete its GitHub repository, according to a report from one of the project’s Discord mods. Half a year earlier,Nintendo also managed to shut down Switch emulator Yuzu, although that case was much easier for it to tackle because it successfully argued piracy violations against the app’s developers.
Nintendo
Nintendo is a Japanese video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. While producing highly popular hardware consoles like the Switch, the company is known for its many first party video game franchises like Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, and many more.
