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Willa Rowe is a contributing writer at Polygon, covering games and entertainment. She is a New York-based journalist and critic whose work has been featured in Kotaku, Digital Trends, the A.V. Club, GamesRadar+, and more. She also co-hosts the Girl Mode podcast.
Congrats on putting Angry Birds in Mario Kart World
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If you've ever thought to yourself, "You know what would make Mario Kart a better game?" and answered "Family Guy's Peter Griffin," then you must be really fun at parties. I do have some good news for you, though. A modder has jailbroken the Nintendo Switch 2 to allow players to have their way with the console. This was accomplished, of course, with the help of generative AI in the latest example of how technology is plaguing the games industry.
But the Switch 2 jailbreaking hack news doesn't necessarily spell doom for Nintendo. It's a surprisingly complicated situation.
Mario Kart World will never win Game of the Year
X user pepsipu posted Thursday that they had jailbroken the Nintendo Switch 2. They proved this by showing footage of Mario Kart World running with characters like Sanrio's Cinnamoroll and vocaloid Hatsune Miku. The future is now, folks. The full explanation of how this was accomplished is extremely complicated and requires that users buy programming software app SmileBASIC 4 on the Nintendo eShop for $25 (an exploit I'm sure Nintendo will figure out a way to shut down soon).
Although advertised as a jailbreak, this is not a complete, user-friendly solution in the traditional sense. The instructions are incredibly hard to parse for the average gamer and the hack resets when powered off. This means that to use the exploit, you need to go through the entire process again after every shutdown.
The age of AI-slop and vibe-coding begins in gaming
Sony has been dealing with the same AI-assisted jailbreak issue that Nintendo now faces. Recently, the PlayStation 5 has received a number of firmware updates geared toward addressing security vulnerabilities and fighting against new jailbreaks popping up faster than ever due to AI. It seems homebrewers are looking to crack the system again before the release of Grand Theft Auto 6, perhaps due to the anger some fans have at Sony and Rockstar for starting to turn away from physical media.
Console jailbreaks are just one area in which AI-coding has sped up projects from the community. There has also been a wave of browser ports for games like the original Halo: Combat Evolved, as well as a string of viral videos showing people adding Mario to Elden Ring and skateboarding to Call of Duty. These have all been made possible thanks to the use of AI-coding, specifically the release of Claude Opus 5.5 in September. While this trend has risen to popularity amongst hackers and homebrewers, companies are also taking notice. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma recently announced Xbox Labs, a division that — while not outright mentioning AI and vibe-coding — appears to be heavily inspired by these trends.
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