Cemu Setup Guide | Installing The Wii U Emulator

If you’re looking for a Cemu setup guide then you’ve found the right article. In this guide, we’ll be breaking down how to install Cemu and optimize it for the best performance possible.

Cemu is the best Wii U emulator available and it allows you to play Wii U games on your PC. Most games are in a playable state and will run quite well depending on your machine.

Check out our article on why there are no Wii U emulator Android or iOS options available yet and why this may be changing soon!

What You’ll Need

Before we begin, there are a few prerequisites that we need to go over to make sure you’re ready to get everything setup. Most people will be able to run Wii U games on Cemu at full speed without any major issues, but hardware requirements should definitely be considered.

Hardware Recommendations

Even though the Wii U isn’t exactly the most high end console power wise (in typical Nintendo fashion), emulating it requires a machine much more powerful than the actual Wii U console.

The following are recommended specs for your PC to run Cemu well:

• CPU – recommended to have at least an AMD Ryzen 3 or Intel i5 processor. Non-Ryzen AMD chips aren’t recommended because they lack single core processing speed and processors like this will often struggle with most Wii U games. Apple silicon chips can usually handle the performance needs required, however actual Wii U game compatibility isn’t the greatest with macOS.
• GPU – Nvidia GPUs are a great choice and can greatly reduce the burden that’s put on the CPU. AMD GPUs will also work, but they do rely on the PC to perform well. For Nvidia, you shouldn’t go lower than the GTX 700 and for AMD the minimum recommendation is HD 7000.
• RAM – 8GB of RAM is the minimum recommendation. The official Cemu website mentions that it can support down to 4GB of RAM, however this is not ideal and will likely lead to a poor experience.

Before Getting Started

• A Windows PC running Windows 7 or newer
• A controller or the Wii U GamePad is recommended, however you can get by with a keyboard and mouse if you must

Installing Cemu

This section will be pretty straightforward. We’ll be walking you through downloading and installing the Cemu emulator. You can install Cemu by first downloading the necessary files and then extracting them to your PC. Before launching it, we’ll walk you through some steps to make some changes to the program which will fix scaling issues.

We’ll also be showing you how to use community graphic packs to improve your games performance. These community graphics packs do the following:

• Display your Wii U games in higher resolutions and run at higher framerates
• Can adjust gameplay colors
• Improve game anti-aliasing
• Allow you to apply custom game mods

Installation on Windows

• First, head over to the official Cemu website and install the latest stable version of the emulator from the homepage at the bottom.

• After the download completes, extract the Cemu .zip file to your computer’s Desktop so that you can easily access it.
• Right click on the Cemu executable file and click Properties
• From the menu that appears, head to the Compatibility tab
• Click to enable the Disable full-screen optimizations option and then click the Change high DPI settings button
• Click the checkbox to enable Use this setting to fix scaling problem fo this program instead of the one in settings and click the checkbox to also enable Override high DPI scaling behavior. Scaling performed by: Application
• Click the OK button to apply these changes and then click the Apply button and then the OK button once again

• Now open up the Cemu emulator app on your Desktop
• If this is the first time you have run the emulator, you will see a Cemu quickstart guide appear that will take you through setting up the emulator
• First, create a folder named mlc01 and leave the Game path field empty
• Next click the Download community graphic packs button and then click the Next button

• Don’t click Configure input because we will be doing this further down the line
• Click to allow Cemu to Automatically check for updates and then click Close

Controller Setup

So far in this Cemu setup guide, we’ve completed Cemu’s quickstart setup and now we’ll be setting up our controller(s) and mapping inputs.

Keep in mind that for motion control, it can vary depending on the controller. It’s recommended that you use a GamePad and a Wiimote if possible, however Nintendo Switch Joycons and the Dualshock 4 and DualSense controllers have motion control support as well and can be detected automatically using the SDL controller API.

Other third party controllers like the Xbox controller do not have motion control support and will take some additional steps to enable them.

Previously, Cemuhook was needed for setting up and detecting motion controls however these days Cemu natively support motion control using the SDL controller APi. If you’ve previously used Cemu in the past and setup Cemuhook, you’ll need to remember to update your settings in Options > GamePad motion source to use Default.

Setting Up Your Controller

• Open up the Cemu emulator and in the top menu go to Options and then to Input settings
• Switch Emulated controller to be Wii U GamePad
• Click on Controller and then set API to be SDLController
• Change Controller to be your controller (if you notice that no controllers are appearing after connecting your controller to your PC, go ahead and change the controller API until it pops up)
• After your controller is selected, go ahead and map all the controller input buttons
• You can also enable motion control by clicking Settings and changing as needed
• In the top area make sure to enter a controller profile name like Wii U GamePad and then click the Save button to save your changes

How To Get Games

It’s no secret that downloading game ROMs online is illegal. We don’t condone piracy and it’s always recommended that you own a physical copy of any game that you want to play so that you can dump its ROM to play on Cemu. That being said, ROM sites can be very helpful to look through catalogs of games and see which you might want to get for the Wii U.

Using Dumpling To Dump Your Wii U Game ROMs, Updates, DLC, Save Files, And Account Data

Now we’ll be going into how you can dump any of your games, updates, DLC, save files, and account data from your Wii U console onto your PC to be used with Cemu.

We’ll be using a dumpling tool called Dumpling for this and it’ll allow us to transfer all of this data to a USB stick or SD card. The benefit to using Dumpling to dump your files is that you won’t need to decrypt them later as this is done automatically for us.

What You’ll Need

• A physical Wii U system with all of your data
• A USB stick or SD card that has been formatted to FAT32 (your device must be in FAT32 format with 32KB allocated)

Getting Ready

• Power on your Wii U system and make sure that your USB stick or SD card are plugged into the console (if the Wii U asks you to format the device, do not allow it to)
• Load into the Nintendo account which you’ll be using and after selecting the correct account, click your Mii avatar in the top left
• Scroll down and turn on Save password

Launch Dumpling

• Go back to the Wii U Home screen
• If you’ll be dumping a physical Wii U game, make sure that the game disc is inserted into your Wii U console before proceeding further
• If your USB stick or SD card isn’t yet inserted into your Wii U, also make sure that you do that now before proceeding
• Start up the Wii U’s internet browser and navigate to https;//dumplingapp.com
• Once the website loads, press Launch Dumpling
• If you find that your Wii U console freezes at this step, hold down the power button for a few seconds until it turns off and then turn it back on
• Then go ahead and reset your internet browser’s save data and try again until it is successful

Dumping Physical Game Discs

• Choose Dump a game disc and make sure that the right Wii U account is selected
• Choose Start to start dumping the game (this can take quite a while depending on the game)
• When done, you can go back to Dumpling’s main menu

Dumping Online Files

• Choose Dump files to use Cemu online and make sure that the right Wii U account is selected
• Choose Start to start dumping the online files
• When done, you can go back to Dumpling’s main menu

Dumping Your Friend List Application

Your Friend List can be installed just like any other game after it has been successfully dumped.

• Choose Dump files to use Cemu online
• Choose Start to start dumping your Friend List
• When done, you can go back to Dumpling’s main menu

How to Copy Online Files to Cemu Emulator

• Head back out of the Dumpling app if it is open and then power off your Wii U console
• Remove your USB or SD card from the Wii U and put it back into your PC
• Copy the otp.bin and seeprom.bin files from the /dumpling/Online Files folder to the same directory that Cemu.exe is located (if you installed Cemu to your desktop, you’ll see the folder for where to copy these files there)
• Copy both the sys and usr folders from /dumpling/Online Files/mlc01 on your USB or SD card to the mlc01 folder (the mlc01 folder is located in the Cemu folder by default – remember, if you need to find the location of your mlc01 folder again, you can do so by going to Options > General settings and look under MLC Path)
• If asked to overwrite any files, agree to do so

You should by now have dumped your data and games and can move on to learn how to install them in the Cemu emulator.

How To Install Games

Fortunately, installing dumped games is actually quite simple. You can also install your Wii U’s Friend List application just like you would any other game.

Installing Dumped Data

If you dumped your account data and online files to install an eShop game, you can follow the Downloading from eShop tab to download and install that game. If however you dumped a physical game from an actual Wii U game disc, you can install it in Cemu using the Installing dumps tab

Downloading from eShop

• Open up the Cemu emulator and in the top menu click Tools > Download Manager
• Choose your account and click Connect
• Right click on the game that you want to install and click Download
• Go ahead and do this for any additional updates and DLC you need to install as well
• After complete, you can play the game from the Cemu main menu

Installing Dumps

• Open up the Cemu emulator and in the top menu click File > Install game title, update or DLC
• Head to the dumpling folder on your USB stick or SD card and open the folder for the content you want to install (this will the Games, Updates, or DLC folders)
• Next open the meta folder and choose meta.xml
• Cemu will begin to automatically install the files
• You can repeat this until you have installed everything that was dumped

How To Transfer Save Files

• Open up the Cemu emulator and right click on the game you want to transfer the save file to
• Click on Save directory and then open the dumpling/Saves/[name of game] folder in the USB stick or SD card
• Copy and paste the content to the save directory you opened in Cemu

How To Install Updates and DLC

After your games have been installed from their dumped files, you can head to the Downloading from eShop tab to install any updates or DLC that those games have.

Now that all your games and files have been dumped and installed in Cemu, you’re ready to move on to the next step for enabling online multiplayer.

How To Play Online In Cemu

Now we’ll be covering how to enable online multiplayer in the Cemu emulator. The process is pretty simple and will require you to dump some online files from your physical Wii U console so that we can use those files to have Nintendo think that the requests coming from Cemu are actually being sent from your system.

This is really cool because it’ll allow you to play games online with other players whether they’re also emulating using Cemu or using their physical Wii U console.

If you don’t want to use online features, there’s no need to do this section and you can skip ahead to How To Optimize Cemu.

What To Keep In Mind

Because you will be connecting to and playing on official Nintendo servers, make sure you do not use mods, cheats, or any hacks. You also should never share your online files for other people to use as well. And lastly, be cautious and never play online on both Cemu and your physical Wii U console at the same time.

What You’ll Need

• Dumped online files from your Wii U console dumped via Dumpling
• A USB stick or SD card in FAT32 format

How To Enable Online Mode

• Open up the Cemu emulator and in the top menu head to Options > General settings
• Next, go to the Account tab at the top
• Make sure that before proceeding you read the warning text shown at the top of the page and then go ahead and tick the checkbox for Enable online mode
• You should now be ready to play online (you can disable online functionality by going back in and de-selecting the checkbox for Enable online mode)

How To Optimize Cemu

We’ll be using the Vulkan graphics API so that we can get the best performance for Cemu. The Vulkan graphics API typically runs faster than the OpenGL option and allows us to use some cool settings to optimize our games.

Optimizing By Changing Cemu Settings

• Open up the Cemu emulator’s main menu and go to Options > General settings in the top
• Head to the Graphics tab at the top
• Switch the Graphics API to Vulkan if it isn’t already selected
• Make sure that Graphics Device is using the most powerful GPU if your computer has dual graphics
• Set VSync to Match emulated display (Experimental) (if your display has a variable refresh rate like G_SYNC go ahead and set this to Off instead)
• Enable Async shader compiler
• Head to the Audio tab and in General change API to XAudio2
• If changing any of these settings results in poor performance for your machine, simply change them back to the default values

How To Import Shader Caches

For a comprehensive guide on downloading and installing share cache files for Cemu, be sure to check out our tutorial for Cemu shader cache.

Summary

Cemu should now be fully setup and configured to run at peak performance. We’ve walked you through downloading Cemu, installing the emulator, configuring your controllers, dumping your games and files from your Wii U, installing your games and files to Cemu, setting up online play, and even optimizing Cemu for improved performance.

You should now be all set and ready to play some Wii U games!