A Reddit user has used AI coding tools to get Nintendo Switch games running natively on an Apple TV 4K, and the project is now open to anyone who wants to try it.
The user, identified as u/FloatingFalafel, released TVPort, a fork of the nxnative toolkit. The software recompiles Switch and Switch 2 games for the set-top box, and the process runs on a Mac. In the project post, the developer said they used Claude Opus 5.5 to build it.
The developer described the core challenge in plain terms. "Most games run essentially the same on the Switch, but some load textures into memory differently and need to be diagnosed and fixed before the game will run properly," they wrote.
TVPort also includes features beyond the basic port. According to the post, it backs up save files to a Mac or iCloud. Users can also choose a target frame rate of either 30 or 60 frames per second.
Performance varies by game. Super Mario Odyssey is said to run at 60 fps with "very slight stutters on occasion and some audio issues around waterfalls specifically." Animal Crossing: New Horizons appears limited to 30 fps. The developer, who is also working on native Switch ports for the Xbox Series X, said they had not run into any issues with that game.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a harder case. The developer said the game experienced thermal throttling on the Apple TV during testing, and that getting it to run properly will take more work.
"In order to get games like TOTK running, there are serious diagnostics and even partial rewrites of the game's engine as a patch in the program," the developer stated. "Heavier games like TOTK might never run on the Apple TV 4K 3rd-gen."
The TVPort repository does not include any game files. Anyone who wants to test the software will need to supply their own game files, which the developer said should be legally obtained from their own Switch cartridges.
TVPort is one of several recent projects in which people have used AI tools, particularly Claude Code, to recompile or clone software. Some users have reverse engineered subscription-based apps, including Adobe's Creative Cloud applications, to build their own versions. Others have decompiled and recompiled video games to run them on other platforms and in web browsers, with mixed results.
The practice is contentious. The operators of decomp.dev, a prominent website in the decompilation community, recently announced they were shutting the site down. They said the "community aspect of decompilation has been broken" by bad actors using AI. Anthropic has since instructed Claude Code not to recreate existing games.
The TVPort project also shows what the Apple TV 4K can do as a gaming device. The Switch is nearly 10 years old, and it was underpowered even when it launched. Still, the set-top box can handle games well beyond streaming shows and sports, and this project makes that case in a practical way.
Questo articolo è stato scritto con l'assistenza dell'IA.
News Factory APP - notizie agentiche per potenziare il tuo SEO e AEO.