How to Play GROOVE COASTER: WAI WAI PARTY!!!! on PC

The Steam port of Groove Coaster has been abandoned and not received updates for quite some time now. Currently, the best at-home Groove Coaster experience exists on the Nintendo Switch, which is currently still in service and still receiving DLC and updates.

This guide will walk through the process of setting up Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, for running Groove Coaster.

Prerequisites

There are a few basic requirements for running Groove Coaster on your PC.

You can find the official Yuzu hardware requirements page here[yuzu-emu.org], but the summary is as follows:

• Windows or Linux operating system
  
• ~5GB of free space
  
• 4-core hyperthreaded processor
  
• OpenGL 4.6 or Vulkan 1.1 compatible GPU
  
• 8GB of RAM

Setting up Yuzu

You can follow the Yuzu Quickstart Guide[yuzu-emu.org] if you want, this guide will provide the basic steps as well.

Downloading Yuzu

Visit https://yuzu-emu.org/downloads/ and install the appropriate version for your system.

Windows users:

Ensure you have Microsoft Visual C++ 2022[aka.ms] installed before installing Yuzu.

Linux users:

Flatpak and AppImage downloads exist. The AppImage is recommended.

Encryption Keys

Upon first launch of Yuzu, you will see a popup looking like this:


Every Nintendo Switch has a set of keys that are required for games to function. Yuzu also requires these keys, but they cannot be legally distributed alongside the emulator. You need to source these yourself.

Current Switch owners who want to do it legally:

Follow the official Yuzu Guide[yuzu-emu.org]

Lazy people or people without a Switch:

Search the web for 'Nintendo Switch encryption keys' or 'Yuzu emulator keys download'. These files aren't executables, and the chances of them being malware are very low. Don't download any .exe files to get these, use common sense.

Ensure you have a valid prod.keys file. Open it with a text editor like Notepad, it should look like the following image, but with strings of numbers and letters instead of red boxes.

Windows users:

Place the prod.keys file in

 C:/Users/[your-user-name]/AppData/Roaming/yuzu/keys 

Linux users:

Place the prod.keys file in

 ~/.local/share/yuzu/keys/ 

Upon relaunch of Yuzu, you should now be at the home screen!

Installing WAI WAI PARTY!!!!

There are two methods available for getting a copy of WAI WAI PARTY on your PC.

Switch owners who already own WAI WAI PARTY!!!! and want to do this legally:

Follow the Yuzu Dumping Guide[yuzu-emu.org] to dump your legal copy of the game.

People who do not own WAI WAI PARTY!!!!:

Search online for 'Groove Coaster WAI WAI PARTY NSP'.

The site I use (and recommend if you have an adblocker) is 'nxbrew'.

Download the base game (always download the [v0] file), the latest update available (which is [v720896] at the time of writing), and any DLC you want.

Here is what my downloaded files look like:

Installing the Copy

In the top toolbar, press File -> Install Files to NAND

Then select the update file
And confirm the installation
Do the same thing for the DLCs.

You now have Groove Coaster installed on your emulator!

Configuring Yuzu for Optimal Performance

Now we have to configure Yuzu to run our game well.

In the toolbar, select Emulation -> Configure


Copy these settings as you see fit.

General Settings

General Tab

Non-optional settings:
Limit speed percent - 100%
Multicore CPU Emulation - Checked

Optional settings:
Extended memory layout - Select this if you have 12GB of RAM or more. If you have 8GB, you can still try this.

CPU Settings

CPU Tab

Non-optional settings:
Accuracy - Auto

Graphics Settings

Graphics Tab

Non-optional settings:
Use disk pipeline cache - checked
Use asynchronous GPU emulation - checked
Accelerate ASTC texture decoding - checked

Optional settings:
API - Set to Vulkan if your GPU supports it.
Device - If more than one option here, set it to the more powerful GPU of the list.
NVDEC emulation - GPU Video decoding if your GPU supports it. If unsure, try it.

Advanced Tab

Optional settings:
Accuracy level - Set to High, change to normal if performance is bad.
Use Fast GPU Time - Checked, disable if you want to render at a lower resolution than 720p.

Baseline Control Scheme

Personally, I prefer playing Groove Coaster with keyboard controls. Here are the bindings I find work best for me:

Make these whatever you want, it doesn't matter so long as it works for you

Launching Yuzu through Steam

It is very easy to integrate Yuzu with Steam. Simply right-click on Groove Coaster in Steam, press Properties, and change the launch options. Like so:

<PATH_TO_YUZU_EXECUTABLE>/yuzu.exe <PATH_TO_GROOVE_COASTER_v0_NSP>; dont_exec%command%

In my case, on Linux, it looks like this:

/mnt/sdc/switch/emu/yuzu /mnt/sdc/switch/games/groove_coaster/wai_wai_party_v0.nsp; dont_exec%command%

Now launching Groove Coaster on Steam will directly boot into Groove Coaster on Yuzu!

Closing Notes

Groove coaster is a light game to run, even through an emulator. It would technically be better to run a pirated dump of the arcade version instead of the Switch version, but that task is much more difficult than this (and not as platform-agnostic!). But you should have a functional copy now! Go and have fun!

The only notable feature missing now is the integration with Steam achievements, so if you really want those you are best off sticking to the Steam version only. But there are many more tracks available in Groove Coaster: WAI WAI PARTY!!!! than on Steam, so you really are losing either way.

If there are any questions, feel free to comment and I will answer them. I will maintain a FAQ section here if there are any recurring issues.

Thank you!

[meprim]

can u do multiplayer