M1 Mac users and gamers will have much to celebrate during the holidays after developers announced the successful emulation of Nintendo Switch games.
Apple released its M1 Mac lineup only this month and already, users are gushing over the power and speed it has, courtesy of the new Apple Silicon chip. There are some, however, who are a bit downcast after learning that they cannot play their Nintendo Switch games on the machines due to the absence of emulation software. Today, gamers and users can celebrate as developers announced they have successfully emulated Nintendo Switch games on the new M1 Macs.
Nintendo Switch games have been successfully emulated on M1 Macs. pic.twitter.com/wC26paa9y9 — MICHΛΞL NGUYΞN (@MacMike1000) December 23, 2020
You can play games designed for gaming consoles like the Nintendo Switch through emulation. A game emulator is oftentimes software that allows a computer system to function like another computer system, like a gaming console. Since the M1 Mac is a new computer system, there is no ready emulator for the machine, that is, until now. A developer that goes by the name of @daeken on Twitter recently posted on the microblogging site they have successfully emulated Nintendo Switch games on the new M1 Mac. According to the developer, while there are some technical issues, the emulation is generally successful.
Among the issue that the developer encountered while trying to emulate the Nintendo Switch games on the new M1 Mac is the limitations of the MoltenVK runtime library. Such limitations eventually cause game titles to crash after short gameplay. Nevertheless, the developer said that their successful emulation of Nintendo Switch games on the M1 Mac, even if just shortly, proves that it is possible after all. They also said that it is a good step in the right direction as regards emulating Nintendo Switch games using Apple's new processor and computer architecture.
With such a possibility opening up, developers are now considering emulating Nintendo Switch games, not only on M1 Macs but also on iOS devices. The developers said that after their successful emulation of the games on the new M1 system, doing the same for iOS devices is not that impossible, even if the scenario appears unlikely now. When asked about the likelihood of using a port to iOS similar to that of Apple's M1 Mac, the developer replied that it is possible. "If Hypervisor framework is ever made available on iOS, porting it would be pretty painless I imagine," said the developer using the Twitter account @daeken.
The downside is that even if developers were successful in emulating Nintendo Switch games on the new M1 Macs, the new emulator might not last that long. Industry observers say that Nintendo is famous for being firmly aggressive against emulation of its video games. This is the reason why emulated Nintendo Switch games may work for the time being but after a time, they crash. So while the news of @daeken successfully emulating Nintendo Switch games on M1 Macs is a welcome development, it probably will not lead to the birth of Nintendo Switch emulation for various devices in the future. For now, you can simply enjoy the emulated games.
