Splatoon Raiders and Donkey Kong Bananza Boot on PC as the Eden Emulator Tackles Nintendo Switch 2
The hardware barrier separating Apple Silicon from Windows desktops has been crossed in less than twenty-four hours. Right after Mario Kart World booted on Mac via an nxnative fork leveraging the shared ARM64 instruction set of Apple M-Series chips, two new technical demonstrations shared on October 28, 2026 confirm that Nintendo Switch 2 exclusives are now booting on Windows 11 PCs. An experimental branch of the open-source Eden emulator has successfully launched Splatoon Raiders, while Donkey Kong Bananza is simultaneously running in a native desktop window.
Experimental nx2 Branch of the Eden Emulator Boots Splatoon Raiders on Windows 11
Until today, early efforts to run Nintendo Switch 2 code outside of official hardware relied on direct architectural parity between the console's ARM64 processor and Apple Silicon chips, bypassing the need for CPU emulation altogether. On an x86-64 Windows 11 PC, the engineering hurdle is significantly steeper: every ARM64 machine instruction and every call made to Nintendo's upgraded NVN2 graphics interface must be translated on the fly for desktop processors and the Vulkan API.
A private development build of the Eden emulator (an open-source project derived from the original Yuzu architecture) has just cleared that initial hurdle. In a 32-second Windows 11 recording shared by developer Sheepish (@MakoCW), an experimental build identified in its window title bar as Eden 9f30683b24-nx2 | nx2-9f30683b24-nx2 successfully boots Splatoon Raiders, the single-player and co-op spin-off released exclusively for the Nintendo Switch 2 on July 23, 2026.
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The footage provides a clear technical snapshot of where this experimental nx2 PC branch currently stands:
- Boot Sequence and Volumetric Rendering: The executable clears its initial black boot screen at the six-second mark to render the animated volumetric cloud backdrop of Splatoon Raiders. Because vertical synchronization (VSync) is not yet functional in this prototype build, the emulator's internal counter spikes up to 109 FPS during transitions.
- Menu Input and Current Limitations: By the twenty-fourth second, the game reaches the three colored selection banners (green, blue, and red) with working squid cursor movement mapped to the mouse. However, text fonts fail to render, heavy stuttering occurs during shader compilation, and major system routines remain unimplemented.
Donkey Kong Bananza Runs on PC While Mario Kart World Stays Under 6.5 GB of RAM on iPhone 18 Pro
Alongside the Eden emulator breakthrough, a second proof of concept surfaced on October 28 showing Donkey Kong Bananza, Nintendo EPD Tokyo's 3D action-platformer, running directly inside a Windows 11 desktop window. Titled "Donkey Kong Bananza (recompilado)" in the window bar, the build goes beyond the title screen to load an active 3D cavern environment in real time.
Donkey Kong's 3D character model, fur shaders, destructible rock walls in the foreground, and the glowing golden Banandium crystal in the center of the cavern render with recognizable lighting and geometry. Even so, the background remains covered in jagged black triangles where proprietary NVN2 graphics buffers and shaders are not yet translated properly on PC.
Meanwhile, on Apple's ARM64 mobile hardware, developer Will Faust (@willfaustcuber) pushed his private fork of nxnative further by demonstrating Mario Kart World running on an iPhone 18 Pro. By implementing a userspace file-backed swap memory mechanism, physical memory consumption stays just under 6.5 GB of RAM. According to Faust, keeping memory overhead below that threshold means the title could theoretically run on devices equipped with 8 GB of RAM such as the iPhone 16, though he reiterated in a disclaimer that he will not release the source code for his Switch 2 modifications.
Driven by the ns2jb Exploit, Yet Strictly Limited to Researchers
This rapid wave of PC, Mac, and iOS breakthroughs stems directly from the ns2jb userland software jailbreak on Nintendo Switch 2 firmware 23.0.1, documented by security researcher Sammy Hajhamid (pepsipu) using a 32-bit integer overflow in SmileBASIC 4 (since delisted from the eShop by Nintendo) paired with a filesystem path normalization bug. Combined with Kurumuz's RPC bridge and misshexa66's open-source OunceCake utility, the chain allows researchers to extract decrypted RomFS asset directories and ExeFS (.NSO) binaries from games running legitimately on their own hardware.
Even with these milestones, developers emphasize that every demonstration shown so far remains a raw, private proof of concept. Because the Nintendo Switch 2 kernel and master cryptographic keys remain unbroken, encrypted cartridges cannot be dumped or booted without owning a physical console on firmware 23.0.1. Players should exercise extreme caution online: any public website or repository claiming to offer a ready-to-play Switch 2 PC emulator right now is distributing fake archives or malware.
My Perspective
Looking at these builds from a pure hardware architecture perspective, jumping from Apple Silicon to a Windows 11 PC in less than twenty-four hours is a far bigger technical milestone than yesterday's macOS showcase. On an M-Series Mac, the processor executes ARM64 instructions natively without CPU translation. Seeing an experimental nx2 branch of the Eden emulator boot Splatoon Raiders at 109 FPS in the menus on an x86-64 Windows rig proves that Horizon OS on the Switch 2 retains enough structural DNA from its predecessor to give emulator developers a massive head start.
Of course, nobody should mistake an early boot covered in black triangles in Donkey Kong Bananza for a playable daily driver. Reverse-engineering and translating the full NVN2 graphics pipeline into stable Vulkan calls will take months, if not years, of painstaking work. Still, the speed at which binaries extracted via OunceCake have been loaded across Windows PCs, Macs, and inside a 6.5 GB RAM budget on an iPhone 18 Pro shows that Nintendo's hardware exclusivity wall is already facing unprecedented technical pressure.
Based on the outskirts of New York City, Chaya 'Chayane' spent five years studying software engineering in Montreal before returning to her home state. A Full-Stack developer and Deep Learning AI architecture researcher, she explores neural networks and algorithmic optimization while engineering data pipelines for Retrocharting and Gamescharting alongside Grimtag. A gamer for over 20 years and an avid collector of Nintendo history and The Legend of Zelda, she explored World of Warcraft's Azeroth before bringing her deep technical background to video game analysis.
