OVERSwitch 2 emulation reaches PC: Eden-NX2 and the Eglantine fork boot Mario Kart World, and Pokémon Pokopia is getting further
Nintendo Switch 2 emulation went public this week, much sooner than most people expected. About a week after the console's first public jailbreak, two experimental PC emulators have appeared, and both can already boot Mario Kart World. Neither is anywhere near finished, and there's no Android version, but this is the first time anyone outside a small group of developers can try it.
Eden-NX2: where it started
Late on October 29, a developer called Takoroka posted a pre-release named NX2 on the Eden project's own git server. It's an experimental branch of Eden, the Switch emulator many of our readers already use on Android, with early Switch 2 support added. Takoroka calls it "something to start with" that "needs a lot of fixes", and says some meshes are missing because shaders aren't implemented yet. It's Windows x64 only and asks for a lot of hardware: Windows 10 or 11, a Vulkan GPU with 8 GB or more of video memory and 16 GB or more of RAM. Press tests reported Mario Kart World loading and playable with frequent stutter and visual bugs, and Donkey Kong Bananza running below 60 fps.
Eglantine: the fork moving fastest
Eglantine is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) fork built on that NX2 work, and on Eden, yuzu and Sudachi before it. Its README credits developer Camille LaVey with starting it. Its GitHub repo went up at the same time, passed 1,700 stars within three days, and its automated test builds are already numbered close to 100. The project says it runs Mario Kart World at decent to full speed depending on your PC, and that Splatoon Raiders runs with a variable frame rate. Recent builds added:- Windows x64 and Linux x86_64 builds, plus Linux ARM64 builds from build 89 (October 31), and fixes for macOS builds.
- FSR 3 support, and an optional "AMD Boost" post-processing shader with FSR 1 upscaling and sharpening.
- A separate experimental line of builds to fix crashes on AMD graphics drivers.
- Handheld-mode images cropped to the panel, GPU buffer readback that fixes missing collision on some objects, and a fix for Splatoon Raiders' missing fog in the AMD test line.
Pokémon fans, take note
Pokémon Pokopia, the Switch 2 Pokémon life sim, is one of the games Eglantine's developers are working on. Build 74 (October 31) got it past the point where it crashed during audio setup, by letting games ask for more memory than the original Switch allowed (Pokopia asks for 9.5 GB). Build 96 (November 1) fixes a freeze at its name-entry keyboard, and the latest Linux builds bundle an audio library without which the game got stuck on Ditto. Nobody is claiming it's playable yet, but it's moving every day. We'll keep tracking it alongside the native ports on our Pokémon on Android page.
What it means for handhelds
For now, nothing you can play on an Android handheld. There's no Android build of either emulator, and the Linux ARM64 builds are for ARM Linux PCs, not Android. On PC handhelds, the hardware bar is the problem: Takoroka lists a GPU with 8 GB of video memory plus 16 GB of RAM as the minimum, Windows handhelds share one pool of memory between the CPU and GPU, and we haven't seen reliable reports of either emulator running well on one. Treat any video of Switch 2 games on a handheld with suspicion until there's a repeatable setup.
Stay safe and legal
You need your own Switch 2, your own game dumps and your own console keys. Overclocked doesn't host or link games, keys or firmware. Eglantine's popularity has already produced lookalike repos with the same name, so only download from the Eglantine GitHub repo or Takoroka's NX2 page on Eden's own server. For Switch 1 games on Android today, start with our emulators hub.
Related on Overclocked
- Eden setup on Android handhelds: first boot to per-game tuning
- Eden keeps crashing on Android? Fixes that actually work
- Eden: official download link and latest version