Pokémon Sword and Shield are now fully playable on PC through the latest early access version of yuzu.

　　While the latest Pokémon installment on the Switch was bootable in the yuzu emulator, softlocks every time an event occurred, made the game unplayable. Hungry fans were able to bypass these freezes by having 4 dumped save files from a hacked Switch, but this only got them to the second city in the game.

　　Overall, the game was unplayable via yuzu, but the latest early access version of yuzu has completely removed these softlocks.

　　“When debugging an audio bug in Toki Tori, bunnei discovered that the issue was a floating point bug in our CPU emulation, but did not narrow down the exact cause”, the yuzu team writes. “However, with that in mind, MerryMage was able to quickly spot the issue. The bug was not in our CPU JIT itself, but rather how we initialize threads.”

　　Check out yuzu version 409 running Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield in the video (courtesy of Reznoire) down below. We’ve also included a list of other changes, including fixes for Link’s Awakening, FFVII, Diablo 3 and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, in the latest version of the emulator:

　　Yuzu 409 Early Access Changes:

　　Pokémon Sword and Shield – all softlocks fixed, running in tall grass fixed, hair salons fixed, animation looping fixedZelda Link's Awakening – miniature placing fixedToki Tori, FF7, Diablo 3, MEGA39s, A Hat in Time – distorted audio fixedTeam Sonic Racing – physics fixedOnimusha Warriors, Tales of Vesperia, The Messenger – game logic fixedSkyrim – audio looping fixed, game progresses furtherOninaki – elevator softlock fixedAll Unreal Engine 4 games – motion jitteriness fixedSuper Smash Bros. Ultimate – fighter select jitteriness / flickers fixedStarlink – softlock fixed, game progresses further

　　Patrons can download the latest early access version of yuzu here. Last week, we already covered that yuzu was able to run Animal Crossing: New Horizons.