ANY Switch Game Can Now Run Natively on Mac — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Today's video is sponsored by War
2. 0:01Thunder, the free vehicle combat game
3. 0:03that runs great on Mac, console, and
4. 0:05mobile. This is a Switch game running
5. 0:07natively on my Mac. It's not being
6. 0:09emulated, and it's not being translated
7. 0:11through Crossover. The game's own code
8. 0:13is running directly on Apple silicon. On
9. 0:15Switch, Monster Hunter Rise is capped at
10. 0:1730 FPS, but here on my M1 MacBook Air
11. 0:19with 8 GB of RAM, it runs at a smooth 60
12. 0:22frames per second. And some of these
13. 0:23games have never even been on PC before,
14. 0:25like Unicorn Overlord. It never came to
15. 0:27Windows, so you couldn't run it through
16. 0:28Crossover. You could only ever play it
17. 0:30on Mac through emulation, and now it
18. 0:32just runs natively on the Mac. Just a
19. 0:33few days ago, a project like this could
20. 0:35run just one popular open-world Switch
21. 0:38game, which, for legal reasons, I'll be
22. 0:40calling Cries of the Monarch. But this
23. 0:42new project that we're talking about
24. 0:43today is so much more. We can now build
25. 0:45any Switch game natively for the Apple
26. 0:47silicon Mac, and today I'm going to be
27. 0:49telling you all about this brand new
28. 0:50project called NX Native. But before we
29. 0:53carry on, here's something that I've
30. 0:54been playing a lot on this MacBook Air,
31. 0:56and that game is War Thunder. This one
32. 0:58is natively on Apple silicon, and even
33. 0:59on a fanless MacBook Air, it has great
34. 1:01performance. Honestly, it's one of the
35. 1:03best-looking free games that you can get
36. 1:04on Mac right now, and it's today's
37. 1:06sponsor. War Thunder is the most
38. 1:07comprehensive vehicle combat game ever
39. 1:09made, and right now it's free on PC,
40. 1:12consoles, and mobile. You can command
41. 1:13over 2,500 tanks, planes, helicopters,
42. 1:16and ships from 10 major nations, from
43. 1:191920s biplanes and armored cars to
44. 1:21today's fighter jets and main battle
45. 1:23tanks. And these aren't simple boxes
46. 1:24with hit points. Every vehicle is
47. 1:26modeled down to its engine, fuel tanks,
48. 1:28weapons, and crew, and armor and shells
49. 1:30behave like the real thing. When a
50. 1:32vehicle is destroyed, the X-ray view
51. 1:34shows exactly where the shell went in
52. 1:36and what it took out. With detailed
53. 1:38vehicles, realistic graphics, and
54. 1:39authentic sound, it really puts you at
55. 1:41the controls, and you don't need a
56. 1:43joystick, just mouse and keyboard or a
57. 1:45controller. What I love about this as a
58. 1:46Mac game is how well optimized Gaijin's
59. 1:49Dagor engine is. As you just saw, it
60. 1:51runs smoothly even on a MacBook Air, and
61. 1:53maxed out on a high-end Mac, it looks
62. 1:54fantastic. Join over 95 million players
63. 1:57worldwide. If you love military history,
64. 1:59there's no better game. New to War
65. 2:00Thunder or haven't played in 6 months?
66. 2:02Use the links in the pinned comment and
67. 2:04description below to sign up and get a
68. 2:06bonus on PC, Mac, and consoles. Click
69. 2:08the links and start playing now. So,
70. 2:10some background. Normally to play
71. 2:11Nintendo Switch games on the Mac, we
72. 2:13have to use an emulator. And the Switch
73. 2:15emulator called Astra can run really
74. 2:17well on Mac. However, an emulator has to
75. 2:19pretend to be an entire Switch, the
76. 2:21processor, the graphics chip, and the
77. 2:23operating system. That's a lot of
78. 2:25overhead, which is why emulation needs a
79. 2:27powerful Mac to run at high frame rates.
80. 2:29But now, there's a new project called NX
81. 2:31Native. It grew from the project that
82. 2:33could run Diablo II Resurrected and also
83. 2:35Crysis of the Monarch brilliantly. But
84. 2:38how does it work so well? The fact is
85. 2:39that the Switch and the Apple Silicon
86. 2:41Mac both use ARM chips. And instead of
87. 2:43emulating an entire Switch operating
88. 2:45system and hardware, what NX Native does
89. 2:47is that it runs the game's actual code
90. 2:49directly on your Mac's CPU. It only
91. 2:51rewrites the few instructions macOS
92. 2:53can't run, then it fakes just enough of
93. 2:54the Switch's operating system for that
94. 2:56game, and rebuilds Nintendo's graphics
95. 2:58API on top of Apple's Metal. And to get
96. 3:00it all working, all you have to do is
97. 3:02give NX Native your own copy of your own
98. 3:04legally owned Switch game, plus your own
99. 3:06Switch keys file, which you can get from
100. 3:08your jailbroken Switch. Then you go
101. 3:09ahead and run the scripts from the
102. 3:10GitHub page, and it spits out a brand
103. 3:12new native application. You can drag it
104. 3:14to your applications folder and launch
105. 3:16it just like any other Mac app. So,
106. 3:18first things first, yes, you can play
107. 3:20your favorite open-world game Crysis of
108. 3:22the Monarch. And I have learned my
109. 3:24lesson here. For legal reasons, I won't
110. 3:25be showing any actual footage, but the
111. 3:27frame rate really holds up on my M1
112. 3:29MacBook Air with only 8 GB of RAM. And
113. 3:31these native ports perform insanely well
114. 3:33because they're optimized for the Mac's
115. 3:34ARM architecture. On my MacBook Pro, for
116. 3:36example, I could run multiple native
117. 3:38windows of these Switch games all at
118. 3:39once, and it could easily handle 60 FPS
119. 3:42the entire time. So, can it run any
120. 3:44Switch game? Here's the truth. NX
121. 3:46Native's build script accepts any Switch
122. 3:48game you throw at it. However, there are
123. 3:50additional bundled fixes called recipes
124. 3:52for things like game fixes, unlocking 60
125. 3:54FPS, and support for resolution scaling.
126. 3:57And when I started writing the script
127. 3:58for this video, there were only 40
128. 4:00recipes, but right now I just checked
129. 4:02and there are 58 recipes in total and
130. 4:04this number is growing every day. It's
131. 4:06not going to be long before virtually
132. 4:07every single Switch game is going to be
133. 4:09supported. And if NX Native doesn't have
134. 4:11a recipe for your game, it will still
135. 4:13build a Mac app. I managed to get the
136. 4:14game Neon White to build and boot even
137. 4:17though it didn't have a recipe and
138. 4:18really this is just the beginning of
139. 4:19Nintendo Switch native gaming on Apple
140. 4:22Silicon Mac. I tried out many games
141. 4:24including Dark Souls Remastered, Dragon
142. 4:27Quest 11S, Unicorn Overlord, and the
143. 4:31original port that started it all, D2R
144. 4:33Mobile, which is for Diablo 2
145. 4:35Resurrected. And here we are, only
146. 4:38around a week after all of this kicked
147. 4:40off with that original port and the
148. 4:42progress that's been made in the
149. 4:43community is absolutely immense. And one
150. 4:46game I tried was Dark Souls Remastered
151. 4:48and we did have a couple of graphical
152. 4:50issues including vertex explosions plus
153. 4:52the fact that because we can't connect
154. 4:54to Nintendo servers, this is going to be
155. 4:55a single player game only. However, I
156. 4:57was extremely impressed about how this
157. 4:59actually ran. I recall a petition many
158. 5:01years ago to get Dark Souls Remastered
159. 5:04natively ported to the Apple Silicon
160. 5:05Mac. It failed to get the support that
161. 5:07it needed, but in the end, here we are
162. 5:09now with a native port running on Apple
163. 5:11Silicon Macs anyway. And another game
164. 5:13that I tested was Final Fantasy
165. 5:15Resonance which just came out. Yes, we
166. 5:17have no Mac port of this game, but this
167. 5:19manages to run pretty well. However, one
168. 5:21issue that you're going to notice is
169. 5:23that there are some flickering graphics,
170. 5:25but like I said, it's probably very
171. 5:27likely that this is going to get fixed
172. 5:29by an NX native recipe in the future.
173. 5:31Now, a few important things to know
174. 5:33before you get too excited. Firstly,
175. 5:34none of these ports include the actual
176. 5:36game content. You need your own copy
177. 5:38dumped from your own jailbroken console
178. 5:40and I'm not going to show you how to do
179. 5:41that and please don't ask me for files
180. 5:43in the comments. I definitely don't want
181. 5:45to be on the receiving end of Nintendo's
182. 5:47lawyers. Secondly, a lot of these
183. 5:49projects were built with the heavy help
184. 5:50from AI coding tools and that's a big
185. 5:53part of why so many have appeared in the
186. 5:54last few weeks and it's also
187. 5:56controversial in the recompile and
188. 5:58decompile community because AI written
189. 5:59code can be harder to maintain. But
190. 6:01because this is an open source project,
191. 6:03I'm really hoping that this is going to
192. 6:05be able to get long-term updates. Number
193. 6:07three, right now performance isn't
194. 6:08perfect. I couldn't get games like Doom
195. 6:10Eternal Switch edition to run, but the
196. 6:12vast majority of games that I tried
197. 6:14worked at very enjoyable performance
198. 6:16even on my M1 MacBook Air. And I'm sure
199. 6:18that these minor issues can be fixed by
200. 6:20NX native's recipes because this is just
201. 6:22the beginning. And here's the thing,
202. 6:24right now NX native is actually a
203. 6:25project designed to get Switch games on
204. 6:27iPhones and iPads and the Mac ports are
205. 6:30just an afterthought. And the
206. 6:31instructions don't actually bundle
207. 6:32together a Mac app at the time of
208. 6:34recording. However, it is remarkably
209. 6:36easy to do this with just one additional
210. 6:38command. I've listed all of my
211. 6:40instructions on the Apple gaming wiki
212. 6:42website, which I'll leave a link to in
213. 6:43the description, and I'm posting a link
214. 6:45to my full video tutorial on my second
215. 6:47channel on how to get all of this
216. 6:48running on Mac. Well, what does this all
217. 6:50mean? Well, we used to beg developers
218. 6:52and publishers for native Mac ports to
219. 6:54take advantage of our beautiful Apple
220. 6:56Silicon hardware, but now an open source
221. 6:58community project is turning Switch
222. 7:00games into native Apple Silicon apps and
223. 7:03new games are being added every day. And
224. 7:05these have so much potential. Games like
225. 7:07Diablo II Resurrected on the D2R port
226. 7:10implemented click to move, a feature not
227. 7:12on Switch, and these ports have a huge
228. 7:14amount of potential on Mac. There's even
229. 7:16a pull request right now to add more
230. 7:18Mac-centric features like render scaling
231. 7:20and super sampling options, and who
232. 7:22knows? Perhaps in the future we'll get
233. 7:24features like Metal effects and maybe
234. 7:26even full mouse and keyboard support in
235. 7:28some games. Anyway, let me know in the
236. 7:30comments whether you're excited about
237. 7:31this project and what games you want me
238. 7:33to feature next. If you're into
239. 7:34AI-assisted ports and decoms and recoms,
240. 7:37I have a full playlist on my second
241. 7:38channel, so please check it out. I'll
242. 7:39leave a link in the description. Thanks
243. 7:40again to War Thunder for sponsoring this
244. 7:42video. It's free on PC, consoles, and
245. 7:44mobile, and it runs natively on Mac. If
246. 7:46you're new or haven't played in 6
247. 7:47months, the links in the pinned comment
248. 7:49and description will get you a bonus on
249. 7:51PC, Mac, and consoles. Click them to
250. 7:52start playing now. Anyway, thank you for
251. 7:54watching and I'll see you in the next
252. 7:55video.
253. 7:58>> [bell]