Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra are coming to Pokemon Sword and Shield in the coming months, but non-Switch owners can now play the base games fully via the Yuzu Emulator.
Needless to say, Yuzu is software not supported by Nintendo, and in recent weeks has been patched to be able to fully run more Switch titles on PC.
Version 409 Early Access includes the following changes:
- Pokémon Sword and Shield – all softlocks fixed, running in tall grass fixed, hair salons fixed, animation looping fixed
- Zelda Link's Awakening – miniature placing fixed
- Toki Tori, FF7, Diablo 3, MEGA39s, A Hat in Time – distorted audio fixed
- Team Sonic Racing – physics fixed
- Onimusha Warriors, Tales of Vesperia, The Messenger – game logic fixed
- Skyrim – audio looping fixed, game progresses further
- Oninaki – elevator softlock fixed
- All Unreal Engine 4 games – motion jitteriness fixed
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – fighter select jitteriness / flickers fixed
- Starlink – softlock fixed, game progresses further
You can use the emulator to play Animal Crossing: New Horizons too – but expect to jump through hoops to do so. Generally speaking emulation, particularly of a current-generation console, doesn't run quite as well as it would on native hardware.
If that doesn't bother you, you can download the latest version of Yuzu here.