Super Mario Odyssey PC port: a free recompiler turns your own Switch dump into a native Windows game, no emulator

Most Switch games on a PC run inside an emulator, which pretends to be a Switch the whole time you play. This project skips the pretending. In the README’s words, “The game’s ARM64 code is translated to C ahead of time and compiled into a regular Windows program.” Then it supplies its own versions of “the parts of the Switch the game talks to (kernel, system services, the NVN graphics API, audio).”

That technique is called static recompilation, and the README describes the result as “a native PC port of Super Mario Odyssey for Windows and Linux.” Translating once at install, instead of translating on the fly during play, is the whole trick.

The shader work follows the same logic. The README lists “every shader compiled at install time, so effects don’t stutter the first time they appear.” Anyone who has watched a fresh game hitch the first time a fire effect shows up knows what that fixes. (Your patience, mostly.)

The settings menu is longer than a Switch owner would expect. The README lists up to 4x internal resolution, Nvidia DLSS and DLAA, AMD FSR 1, SMAA and an ultrawide “Fill window” aspect ratio. The mouse turns the camera: “the pointer stays in the window until you open the menu (Esc),” and “everything can be rebound in the menu.” Controllers and keyboards both work.

Frame rate is where the README gets cautious. It says “Native 90 and 120 FPS are experimental on both versions: some objects or effects can move unevenly or look doubled,” and puts higher frame rates on a later list. Ask any Mario how a jump feels when the game runs at the wrong speed.

The install is meant to be short. You download the Windows zip from Releases, extract it, point the installer at your extracted exefs and romfs folders, press Install, and then press Play. It wants Windows 10 or 11 on x64, a CPU with AVX2, a Vulkan 1.3 GPU, 8 GB of RAM (16 GB recommended) and about 12 GB of free disk space. It supports game version 1.0.0, or 1.4.1 with the update already applied.

The legal wording is plain. The README says “This is a fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Nintendo.” It also says “Instructions for getting game files are not provided, and requests for game files will be closed.” The code itself is under the MIT License, and third-party pieces keep their own licenses. The DLSS support, for example, is credited as being under Nvidia’s RTX SDK license.

Then there is the fine print the maker puts up front: “This is an early preview.” Known problems include crashes on some PCs, low frame rates on some AMD and Linux setups, and online features that don’t work. Code mods aren’t supported, and “Linux and Steam Deck are experimental: less tested than Windows.”

Other big Switch games with a dedicated fan could get the same treatment. The tooling is open, the output is a normal executable, and the target is a game people can still buy. The legal line is the one the README draws: bring your own copy.

Whether Nintendo ever comments on it is the open question, since the repository’s own page makes no claim about that. The Releases section was empty when I read it, so a zip is promised and not yet posted.

Press Play. Fullscreen.