Nintendo Switch 2 games are beginning to run on devices outside Nintendo’s hardware, with developers demonstrating Mario Kart World on an iPhone 18 Pro and Splatoon Raiders on PC. The demonstrations, shared on October 28, 2026, follow the console’s recently disclosed jailbreak and show early progress toward running Switch 2 software on other platforms.
Developer Will Faust demonstrated Mario Kart World running on an iPhone 18 Pro using a privately modified version of nxnative. Separately, developer Sheepish showed Splatoon Raiders reaching its character selection screen through a modified build of the Eden emulator on PC. Both demonstrations remain experimental, and neither establishes reliable compatibility with Nintendo Switch 2 games.
Faust’s work builds on nxnative's existing ability to run original Nintendo Switch games on Apple Silicon devices. The project takes advantage of the ARM architecture shared by Nintendo’s hardware and Apple’s processors, allowing compatible game code to execute without conventional CPU instruction emulation.
Running Switch 2 software requires additional modifications, including support for Nintendo’s newer NVN2 graphics API. Nxnative translates Nintendo graphics commands into Apple’s Metal API, allowing supported games to render on iPhones, iPads and Macs.
Faust first demonstrated Mario Kart World running on macOS on October 27. That footage showed the game progressing into a race, although missing geometry, incorrect colors and other rendering problems were clearly visible.
The following day, Faust published footage of the game running on an iPhone 18 Pro. He explained that his implementation uses userspace file-backed memory management, similar to swap memory, to reduce physical RAM consumption.
According to Faust, Mario Kart World consumed just under 6.5GB of physical memory during the demonstration. He suggested that this approach could potentially allow the game to run on devices with 8GB of RAM, including the iPhone 16. However, that broader device compatibility has not been independently established.
Faust also explicitly stated that he would not publicly release the source code for his Switch 2 modifications. Consequently, the demonstrated functionality cannot currently be reproduced or independently benchmarked using a publicly available version of his project.
Meanwhile, separate development efforts are targeting traditional PC emulation. Developer Sheepish shared footage of Splatoon Raiders running through a privately modified version of Eden, an emulator originally developed for Nintendo’s first-generation Switch.
An initial demonstration showed the game starting but failing to progress normally through its opening sequence. A subsequent update on October 28 showed the game reaching character selection.
Sheepish acknowledged substantial technical limitations, including severe slowdown, missing functionality and a lack of working vertical synchronization. The footage therefore demonstrates progress in getting Switch 2 software to boot rather than evidence of stable, playable emulation.
The developer also discussed using AI-assisted development and suggested that the modifications might become publicly available later in the week. No confirmed public release was available at the time of the demonstrations.
A separate claim circulated through Centro LEAKS, accompanied by an image suggesting that Donkey Kong Bananza was also running on PC. However, the image was not accompanied by sufficient technical information to establish how the game was executed or how well it functioned.
The developments follow the public disclosure of a Switch 2 jailbreak that enabled researchers to examine and extract certain game files. Access to those files has opened additional avenues for compatibility research, but the jailbreak itself does not provide a complete Switch 2 emulator or guarantee that extracted software will run on other devices.
The Apple Silicon and PC demonstrations also use different technical approaches. Faust’s nxnative fork focuses on executing compatible ARM game code directly while adapting system services and graphics calls. Eden instead builds on an existing console emulation framework.
For players, the distinction is important. Mario Kart World’s appearance on an iPhone and Splatoon Raiders reaching a menu on PC do not mean Nintendo Switch 2 exclusives are ready for general use outside the console. Both projects still face significant compatibility challenges, and their reported results remain limited to developer demonstrations rather than independently verified public builds.
