Nintendo Switch games successfully emulated on an M1 Mac

The M1 Mac lineup is brand new, both for Apple and consumers. So of course some folks out there want to test the limits of what Apple’s first-party processor can do. Emulation is one way to do that, and one developer has found a way to emulate Nintendo Switch games on Apple’s new hardware.

Developer @daeken has revealed on Twitter (via The 8 Bit) this week that they have successfully emulated Nintendo Switch games on an M1 Mac. There are some issues, technically. Specifically, limitations to the MoltenVK runtime library that ultimately forces the titles to crash after a short time. But, at least to start, this is a solid step in the right direction when it comes to emulating Nintendo Switch games on Apple’s new processor and computer(s).

Interestingly, emulating Nintendo Switch games on iOS? Well, it doesn’t sound all that impossible (even if it remains unlikely for now):

Speaking about the possibility of a similar port to iOS, apart from macOS, the developer notes in a reply that “if Hypervisor.framework is ever made available on iOS, porting it would be pretty painless I imagine.”

This is probably something that won’t last long, unfortunately. Nintendo is known for being firmly, borderline aggressively against emulation of its video game library. So while this is a great way to see the possibilities available on an M1 Mac, it probably won’t lead to the rise of Nintendo Switch emulation for the devices in the future.

This is fun, plain and simple. One can only wish that more could come from it.