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A technically impressive Switch-to-Mac port that is a legal liability, not a business, and Nintendo has a long record of shutting down projects like it.

AI roast score: 24/100 (F)

The idea

You rebuilt Nintendo's graphics layer on Metal, shipped it free, with no revenue plan, solo, and your biggest unknown is regulators. That is not a startup. That is a cease-and-desist with a README.

In the founder's own words

ly05010419/MacNativeGames — Play your own Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild natively on Apple silicon Mac, iPhone and iPad. Not an emulator: the game's ARM64 code runs directly, NVN rebuilt on Metal. Bring your own game.

MacNativeGames



Play your own Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of the Wild natively on Apple silicon Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Not an emulator: the game's own ARM64 code runs directly on Apple chips, and its NVN graphics are rebuilt on Metal.

English

Breath of the Wild 1.6.0 and 1.9.0 are now officially supported on Mac! 1.6.0 also runs on the iPhone (first played on an iPhone 14, October 23).
Tears of the Kingdom 1.0.0, 1.2.1 and 1.4.3 are now officially supported on Mac, iPhone and iPad!



Game
Version
Platform
Status
Folder



The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
1.0.0, 1.2.1, 1.4.3 (1.1.2 builds too)
Mac, iPhone, iPad
Supported
games/totk


The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
1.6.0, 1.9.0
Mac; 1.6.0 also on the iPhone
Supported
games/totk (shared runtime), list in games/botw


Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
13.0.2
Mac
Community port
games/ssbu


Super Mario Odyssey
1.3.0
Mac
Community port, early
games/odyssey


Bayonetta 3
1.2.0
Mac
Community port, work in progress
games/by3



Community ports keep their own runtime, graphics layer and scripts in their folder and are built with the steps there.

Use your AI assistant to help you build the Mac app. We recommend Claude Code, Codex, or any other AI assistant you prefer.

English | 中文

Legal

You must own the game. Use this project only with a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom that you bought, and with keys and system files dumped from your own Nintendo Switch. This is an independent, non-commercial project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda and Nintendo Switch are trademarks of Nintendo.

The repository contains no game content and distributes none: no game program, art, text, audio, shaders or keys. Everything the game needs is made on your own computer from your own files when you build the app. The app you build contains the game, so it is for your own use only; do not share it. What the repository does hold is the information needed to make the port work: the patch code, the addresses and hashes used to check your files, and the shared shader list , which names shaders and bind states but contains no shader code.

Play your own copy of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom natively on Apple silicon Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Bring your game file (XCI or NSP) and your prod.keys ; one script builds a Mac app or an unsigned iPhone/iPad IPA. The iOS build requires iOS/iPadOS 26 and iPhone 14 or newer. It is not an e

The roast

The engineering is real. Running the game's own ARM64 code on Apple chips with NVN rebuilt on Metal is hard, and 'first played on an iPhone 14' is a great demo. But this is a hobby project, not a company. You wrote 'This is an independent, non-commercial project' and you picked free with no revenue decided. You told the market the business is zero. The legal line is thin. You say 'Not an emulator' and 'Bring your own game', but the build needs keys dumped from a Switch and a patcher that handles Nintendo's code. Nintendo shut down Yuzu with a lawsuit and a $2.4M settlement, and Ryujinx went offline after Nintendo contacted its developer. Your own answer says regulators are your biggest unknown. For this project it is the only thing that matters. Your edge is speed, but speed is no moat when a repo can be forked in one click. You are a solo founder, you have no funding, and your growth plan is a placeholder. Your audience is developers and young adults who will take the code and never pay you. You also lean on an AI assistant to help users build the app, which does not make the legal risk smaller.

Red flags

Verdict

Treat this as a portfolio piece that proves your Metal and ARM64 skills, and move that skill to a legal product before Nintendo's lawyers find you.

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