Foul-mouthed developer @daeken on Twitter has gotten Nintendo Switch games to run fairly well on Apple M1 Macs.
https://twitter.com/daeken/status/1340777743244509196
The implementation is not quite perfect yet due to the technical limitations of the MoltenVK runtime library, which “maps Vulkan to Apple’s Metal graphics framework.” Even with these limitations, the emulation looks very promising.
In the video posted on Twitter you can see Super Mario Odyssey running on macOS. As the game begins, though, you can start to see those technical limitations. The developer has also installed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on macOS and is sure to test more titles.
https://twitter.com/daeken/status/1340802622547214338
Apparently, emulating a Switch CPU on Apple Silicon seems to be easy, given that the Switch itself runs on an ARM processor.
Speaking about the possibility of a similar port to iOS, apart from macOS, the developer notes in a reply that “if Hypervisor.framework is ever made available on iOS, porting it would be pretty painless I imagine.” The Hypervisor.framework is the same framework that initially enabled a developer to successfully virtualize Windows ARM on Apple Silicon, as per The 8-Bit’s reporting.
MacDailyNews Take: The power and versatility of M1 Macs never ceases to amaze. We expect there’s much more goodness yet to come!
I’m not really seeing a game running here – it is just some slides.
Well I can run Tandy Color Computer 2 games on my MacBook Pro 2015.
I’m able to simulate being a real, competent artist on even an Intel Mac, let alone an M1. I suck at being a real artist though, or even living a good life. But that’s me, your friendly artistic dork who loves being anti-family, anti-capitalism and pro-commmie leftoid nutjobbe.
Very cool. Apple’s engineers amaze me with their technical experimentation and superb results.