Mario Kart World and Pokémon Pokopia Forced to Run on the Original Nintendo Switch: From 2 FPS Handheld to a Cut Open World
The Nintendo homebrew scene has just come full circle in the most ironic way possible. Just hours after the first public Nintendo Switch 2 emulators Eden-NX2 and Eglantine launched on PC, modder fuyuka (known on X as @touhoufagyuri) shared two unexpected proof-of-concept videos: Nintendo Switch 2 exclusives Mario Kart World and Pokémon Pokopia forced to boot and run on an original first-generation Nintendo Switch.
Mario Kart World on Switch 1: From 2 FPS in Handheld Mode to a Cut Open World
To force the Mario Kart World binary to boot on the 2017 Nvidia Tegra X1 chip and its 4 GB of LPDDR4 RAM (compared to 12 GB of LPDDR5X on Nintendo Switch 2), the developer relied on decrypted game files extracted via the ns2jb userland exploit chain (using the SmileBASIC 4 vulnerability and the firmware extraction tool built by Kurumuz), paired with backporting scripts heavily assisted by the DeepSeek AI model.
During initial unvarnished boot attempts with unmodified graphical assets, the hardware bottleneck was brutal: the game crawled at roughly 2 FPS in handheld mode and 10 FPS in docked mode. To push past that wall on an overclocked original Switch running in docked mode, fuyuka had to make drastic sacrifices:
- Cutting the Free Roam Open World: A massive portion of the interconnected Free Roam map had to be stripped out of the build entirely to prevent the original Switch's 4 GB memory pool from crashing on load.
- Prebaked Shaders, Forced Low LOD, and Lower Resolution: By prebaking shaders, forcing the lowest possible geometric Level of Detail (forced low-quality LOD), and aggressively dropping internal rendering resolution, the modified build manages to hold a steadier framerate along standard track sections.
- Broken Water Physics and Missing Visuals: Several core Switch 2 gameplay mechanics remain broken in this experimental executable, including an inability to properly drive across water surfaces alongside missing environmental shaders.
This community experiment directly echoes earlier revelations from producer Kosuke Yabuki and Nintendo's development team: Mario Kart World originally began prototyping on the first-generation Switch back in 2017, before the ambition of a seamless open world and 24-player races at 60 FPS forced Kyoto to move the project onto Nintendo Switch 2 hardware. For players looking to experience the full uncompromised release, here are the best verified deals currently available:
Pokémon Pokopia Hits 30 FPS at 720p on an Overclocked V1 Switch as PC Reaches 45 FPS on RTX 3060
Alongside Mario's flagship racer, the same modder applied her backporting workflow to a second Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive: the life-simulation spin-off Pokémon Pokopia. Tested on an original V1 Nintendo Switch with a GPU overclock (while keeping system memory at stock clock speeds), the title fared noticeably better thanks to its lighter rendering footprint:
- 1080p with GPU Overclock: Performance hovers between 10 and 15 FPS.
- 720p with GPU Overclock: Uncapped framerates climb to 32 to 35 FPS, though with heavy frame-pacing stutters. Once locked to a 30 FPS cap, the footage shared by
fuyukalooks surprisingly playable during early segments, even if progression bugs still prevent the game from being completed from start to finish.
Following the native execution of Mario Kart World on Apple Silicon Macs through nxnative, optimization is also accelerating on Windows and Linux PCs. Weekend benchmarks recorded on a mid-range desktop pairing an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor now show Mario Kart World running at around 45 FPS on public Switch 2 emulator builds.
As for the Switch 1 backports, fuyuka explicitly stated that she has no plans to publicly release these modified builds or share the underlying source code in its current state. Because all clips were shared via direct video capture without showing the physical console in frame, the showcase remains strictly an isolated technical proof of concept.
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My Perspective
There is a delicious irony in watching the modding community shoehorn Mario Kart World into the 4 GB memory ceiling of a 2017 Nintendo Switch. For months, a vocal subset of players wondered whether Nintendo could have simply launched its flagship racer on the original hybrid console. The technical reality exposed by fuyuka's proof of concept answers that question brutally: without gutting the interconnected Free Roam world, crushing geometric LODs, and pushing the aging Tegra X1 past factory clocks, the game collapses to a slideshow of 2 frames per second in handheld mode.
Watching Pokémon Pokopia hold a locked 30 FPS at 720p proves that smaller-scale Switch 2 titles can technically survive a DeepSeek-assisted translation pass onto older silicon. Yet between broken water physics, stripped-out open-world zones, and unreleased private code, this wild reverse-engineering experiment ultimately highlights why Nintendo's leap to 12 GB of RAM and custom Ampere graphics on Switch 2 was an absolute necessity.
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.
