A developer that goes by ‘Sera Tonin Brocious’ on Twitter has uploaded a video of a working Nintendo Switch emulation on an M1 Mac.
The tweet showed screenshots of a 13-inch MacBook Pro running Super Mario Odyssey via Yuzu, an open source emulator that utilizes 3D graphics API Vulkan. The similarity between the M1 Mac and Nintendo Switch is that they both use Arm-based processors. However, the emulation is not perfect due to MoltenVK limitations.
Sera Tonin Brocious mentioned in a follow-up tweet that Metal support is the big hurdle in running the emulation to an optimized state. The developer said current MoltenVK implementation resulted in a ‘middling performance’, something that must be fixed for the emulation to be smooth and lag-free.
The tweet did not say how to run the Nintendo emulator or how to download the game, but it’s an achievement that stands as a testament to the Apple silicon chip’s graphical capabilities.