A-TIER repo
Nintendo static recompilation — native Zelda and Mario Kart ports
100k ft — What is this?
Nintendo static recompilation — native Zelda and Mario Kart ports
50k ft — Why care?
Static recompilation projects turn Switch games into native apps: Tears of the Kingdom on Apple Silicon Mac and iPhone (~90fps on a MacBook Air), Skyward Sword HD on Windows, Linux, Steam Deck and Mac at 60fps/4K with a mod manager, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on iPhone/Mac with online play. Bring your own game copy.
10k ft — Key takeaways
• Community-shared shader lists cut stutter for everyone
• Recompiling once ahead of time beats emulating at runtime
• link: https://github.com/Apolinario-coder/SkyRecomp
• link: https://github.com/c22dev/mush8
• link: https://github.com/ly05010419/MacNativeGames
5k ft — Tools & techniques
MacNativeGames, SkyRecomp, mush8
shared shader cache, static recompilation
1k ft — Deep-dive / try it
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom now runs natively on Mac and iPhone, Skyward Sword HD on PC, Steam Deck and Mac, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on iPhone and Mac. No emulator. Bring your own copy of each game. Which one are you playing first?
Tears of the Kingdom: github.com/ly05010419/MacNativeGames
Skyward Sword HD: github.com/Apolinario-coder/SkyRecomp
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: github.com/c22dev/mush8
Ports by ly05010419, Apolinario-coder and c22dev. Footage: Nintendo (official trailers and gameplay demo)
#ai #nintendo #zelda #mariokart
Transcript excerpt
Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom, and Skyward Sword, plus Mario Kart 8 just got turned into real apps, so you can play them on your Mac, your iPhone, and even a Steam Deck. And the way they pulled it off is the crazy part. Let me explain. Normally, to play a Switch game on a computer, you'd use an emulator. That's an app that pretends to be a Switch and translates the game the whole time you're playing. These translate the game once, ahead of time, into a normal app, so your computer just runs it. Tears of the Kingdom runs on Apple Silicon Macs, and on a Mac Air, it hits around 90 frames a second. You can even stretch it out to ultra-wide, which is something you can't do on a Switch. And it now runs on an iPhone 14 or newer, with touch controls laid out just like a Switch controller. Players even share a list of the game's shaders, the little pieces that draw every effect, so each new build shudders less for everyone. That list is already almost 27,000, and nothing gets sent unless you choose to. Skyward Sword HD now runs natively on Windows, Linux, the Steam Deck, and Mac, at 60 frames per second, up to 4K or ultra-wide. It even has a mod manager built in, so you can turn mods on and off with one click. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe now runs natively on an iPhone and a Mac, and you can race online or on the same Wi-Fi with friends, even ones still on a real Switch. And here's my favorite part. Open it on a Mac, and your friends can use their iPhones as controllers, so nobody needs…