Mario Kart World

NS2

Mario Kart World (switch2mac)

azmasm/switch2mac

switch2mac: a fork of nxnative that builds native versions of Switch 2 games on your Mac from your copy, as regular macOS apps. It isn’t an emulator: the game’s ARM64 code runs directly on the Mac, with its system calls rewritten into a native runtime and its shaders translated to Metal ahead of time. Its game is Mario Kart World 1.0.0, which according to the README plays start to finish: menus, Grand Prix, Free Roam, traffic, and movies, at about 58 fps in races on an M1 Max, at 2560x1440. It also builds Donkey Kong Bananza with nxnative’s builder and Pokémon Pokopia with Pokopia Native’s, not yet tested inside switch2mac. It has a performance overlay and a settings panel, supports controllers and keyboard, and needs no keys and decrypts nothing. It was created on November 3, and all 6 of its commits list Claude as a co-author.

You needYour own dump of Mario Kart World 1.0.0 for Nintendo Switch 2; for the other games, the version each game’s page gives. An Apple silicon Mac with macOS 26 or later, Xcode with its Metal tools, the .NET 10 SDK, and Python 3.12.

NS2

Mario Kart World (kartnative)

pahorema/kartnative

kartnative: a Switch 2 fork of nxnative that runs Mario Kart World 1.0.0 natively on an Apple silicon Mac. As with nxnative, it isn’t an emulator: the game’s code runs on the Mac’s CPU, and NVN2, the Switch 2’s graphics API, is implemented on Metal, with its own frontend for the console’s SM86 shaders; all 11,567 of the game’s shaders translate, with task and mesh shaders becoming Metal mesh shaders. According to the README it boots, shows the menus and movies, and plays whole Grand Prix cups at 150cc, Time Trials, and Free Roam with a controller, at a steady 60 fps, also in fullscreen on 120 Hz ProMotion screens. Some scenery objects vanish and reappear while driving, and there’s no online play. For now it’s Mac only, with no iPhone build, and it was tested on an M5 Pro with macOS 27. To learn what the Switch 2’s services, NVN2, and SM86 do, it drew partly on the public commits and notes of the Eglantine and PokeDinner emulators. The repository was created on November 1.

You needYour own copy of Mario Kart World 1.0.0 for Nintendo Switch 2 (0400C3F00006E000), dumped and decrypted as exefs and romfs folders. An Apple silicon Mac with nxnative’s tools (Xcode with Metal, .NET, and Python); the first build translates about 11,600 shaders, roughly 30 minutes.