Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto.
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Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University.
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Summary
- Someone got Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom to run natively on an M4 Mac with instant loading and 90fps support.
- The port rewrites Switch code as needed, maps NVN graphics to Metal 4, and answers system services via a host.
- This is a very unofficial open-source port. You need to supply your own game dump.
In an interesting twist, someone has gotten Nintendo Switch masterpiece The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom running natively on an M4 Macbook and Mac mini, including "instant loading" and 90fps support. It looks like Mac has beaten Windows to a game this time around, though it's through a very unofficial port.
The port, first shown off on Twitter by @liyong2077 (Yong Li) (see the video below), doesn't use traditional emulation. Instead, according to Li, the game's ARM64 code runs directly on the M4 and, where needed, is rewritten. "...the Switch system services are answered by a small host, and the game's NVN graphics are rebuilt on Metal 4," writes Li on the port's translated GitHub page, listed as MacNativeGames. Tears of the Kingdom likely landed on Mac first over PC because both the Switch and Apple's chips use Arm64 architecture.
Li emphasizes that the GitHub repository doesn't contain any game files and that the project isn't affiliated with Nintendo. Also, there's no straightforward app that lets you upload the disc image directly. Instead, you need to handle it yourself with Xcode command-line tools and Homebrew. Like most recent retro and modern game ports, the project was built with AI's help.
While Tears of the Kingdom seems to run relatively smoothly on the M4 MacBook and Mac mini based on Li's video and early user impressions on Twitter, he notes that there's some lag when entering new areas while shaders compile (there is a shader prewarming feature, though). I haven't tried the port myself yet, but plan to soon (I'll update this story with my impressions regarding performance once I do).
Getting Tears of the Kingdom running on Mac isn't exactly straightforward
You can already play the game on PC through an emulator
Li says they tested the game on an M4 MacBook Air and Mac mini, and once 8582 shaders were compiled, the game hit an impressive 90fps. Like the wave of retro and modern decompilations/recompilations that have appeared over the past few weeks, getting this port of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom running requires you to provide your own XCI or NSP file, which you can dump from your own cartridge or acquire elsewhere.
The fact that Tears of the Kingdom ran as well as it did on the original Switch was already impressive. The enhanced Switch 2 Edition's jump to 60fps at up to 1440p when docked was another welcome improvement, but it'll be interesting to see how far the game can be pushed on more powerful hardware. It's worth noting that you can already play Tears of the Kingdom on PC with emulators like Eden and Citron, two Yuzu-based emulators, and that you can also push the game to higher frame rates with mods like NX Optimizer.
In other PC port-related news, the Link's Awakening remake for the original Switch was recently given the static recompilation treatment, making the game playable on PC. Someone also ported Halo: Combat Evolved to the Nintendo 64, complete with four-player multiplayer. Yes, you read that correctly.