Switch recomp wave: Link's Awakening, Smash, Let's Go, Metroid Dread and TotK get unofficial native PC ports

In October 2026, Switch games picked up a new route to PC that doesn't use an emulator: static recompilation. Starting with The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, more than a dozen Switch games, including Pokémon Let's Go, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Metroid Dread, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Tears of the Kingdom, got unofficial native PC ports. On November 1 the tracker recomp.party listed 14 Switch projects. You build each one from your own game files, and most say Anthropic's Claude wrote most of the code. In the first week of November, Super Mario Odyssey, Bayonetta 3 and Xenoblade Chronicles X joined them, and a Switch 2 game got its first PC recomp. As of November 3, none of these projects appears in Nintendo's published GitHub DMCA notices.

How it differs from emulation

An emulator imitates Switch hardware while the game runs. Static recompilation translates one game's ARM64 machine code into C or C++ ahead of time, then compiles it into a program that runs directly on Windows, Linux or Android. Nintendo's NVN graphics API is reimplemented on Vulkan.

On Apple devices, nxnative takes a third route: the Switch and Apple chips are both ARM64, so the game code runs directly without translation. Our Zelda native ports story compares the approaches.

October's projects at a glance

The tracker also lists projects for Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Bayonetta 2 and 3, and Persona 5 Royal, most of them early.

TotK Recomp: the first Tears of the Kingdom port with an installer

Tears of the Kingdom already had source-only recompilations such as SkyboundTOTK and UltraTears. TotK Recomp, released October 29, adds a graphical installer: pick your game files, a language and an install folder, and it builds the game once on your machine.

• Release pace: 0.1.1 on Oct 29, 0.2.8 on Oct 31 (a recommended update that fixes lost saves, the Depths camera quest that couldn't be finished, and equipment locking up after Fuse), and v0.3.4 on Nov 2. It had about 4,100 GitHub stars on Nov 3.
• Game versions: base game plus the 1.2.1 or 1.4.3 update; 0.2.8 also accepts 1.1.1.
• Graphics: 60 fps by default, up to 144 fps or the monitor's refresh rate (experimental); custom resolutions, supersampling, FSR 1; 16:10, 21:9 and 32:9; shaders compiled during install.
• Controls: remappable keyboard, mouse and gamepad with rumble and gyro.
• Platforms and requirements: Windows 10+, a CPU with AVX2, a Vulkan 1.3 GPU and about 36 GB free during setup. A Linux build exists since 0.2.1 with Steam Deck defaults, though the author calls it new and barely tested.
• AI: the project says most of its code and documentation is written by AI coding agents (Claude Code) under the maintainer's direction. Its credits list LAS Recomp, MacNativeGames, nxnative, Savage Wind and Ryujinx, among others.

Watch out for a SourceForge copy with rewritten instructions that tells you to run "Launcher.exe" and click past the SmartScreen warning. Rehosted pages like that are a common way to bundle malware.

First week of November: Odyssey, Bayonetta 3, Xenoblade X and the first Switch 2 recomps

• Odyssey: the author says every kingdom, boss, 2D and 8-bit section, the ending and the post-game have been played through, at 60 fps (game logic is tied to frame rate, so no higher). Windows and Linux are playable; macOS is an early test build. Like the others, the project says it was written with heavy help from Claude. PCMRace notes there's no independent testing yet. It's hosted on GitLab; the author says their GitHub account was banned after uploading it there. The reason is unconfirmed, and GitHub's DMCA repository has no matching notice. More in Super Mario Odyssey's unofficial native PC port.
• Switch 2: pokopia-recomp needs your own copy of the game at version 2.0.1a, Windows 10/11, a Vulkan 1.3 GPU and 16 GB of RAM. dkb-pc-recomp often crashes after the first intro cutscene. Both are covered in the first Switch 2 PC recompilation.

AI is the common thread

LAS Recomp's author says Claude Code wrote nearly all of its code, tools, reverse engineering and documentation, with a human directing, testing and reviewing. The Android BotW port and TotK Recomp say the same about Claude. Eglantine, the Switch 2 emulator fork from the same weeks, also leans heavily on AI; see the first emulators that run Switch 2 games.

In late October, Anthropic added a related rule to Claude Code. According to XDA and Dexerto:

• Around October 27, an X user noticed Claude Code receiving a new server-side prompt: original games, games in a genre, and games built from the user's own designs and assets are fine, but not "recreations of specific existing games, even if renamed or described as original." XDA found the text in Claude Code 2.1.314.
• Anthropic reportedly pointed reporters to an October 30 X post by engineer Addy Osmani: two sentences were added to the Claude Code prompt for Opus 5.5 to steer it away from recreating other people's specific games, because using Claude to infringe IP violates its usage policy. Original and genre games "should work as usual," and the rule will keep being tuned. (The quote first appeared in a Game Developer report we couldn't locate; we cite it via the outlets above.)
• In XDA's test, Claude refused to remake Pokémon Diamond but agreed to help with decompilation and static recompilation.

So it's too early to say whether the rule will slow recompilation projects down.

What Nintendo has done

• GitHub DMCA: as of November 3, Nintendo's notices in GitHub's public repository don't name any of these projects. October has only three Nintendo notices (two on October 1, one on October 23), and the November folder hadn't appeared by November 2; publication lags. The Odyssey recomp author says their GitHub account was banned, for reasons that aren't confirmed, and there's no matching notice. The October 23 notice targeted a Rhythm Tengoku GBA decompilation. It isn't a Switch project, but it shows Nintendo going after decompilation work too.
• Videos: YouTuber Andrew Tsai said on October 22 that one of his recomp videos got a copyright strike from Nintendo. On October 30, VideoCardz wrote that the Switch 2 demo videos embedded in its earlier story had all been removed from X, reportedly through Nintendo copyright takedowns.
• Stance: at the June 2026 shareholder meeting, Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa said the company will respond to IP infringement whether or not generative AI is involved.

What this means for players

If you want to play one of your own Switch games on a computer, recompilation is now an option. It usually runs smoother than emulation and adds things the console doesn't have, like high frame rates and ultrawide. The trade-offs: one project per game, specific game versions only, you build it yourself, and a project can vanish at any time. Ready-made "PC version downloads" don't come from these projects; see how to spot fake emulator sites.

If there's no recomp for your game, emulators are still the way: see the best Switch emulators in 2026, the Windows setup guide and hardware requirements. Compatibility by platform: Tears of the Kingdom, Breath of the Wild, Link's Awakening, Smash Ultimate, Pokémon Let's Go, Metroid Dread, Animal Crossing, Super Mario Maker 2, Super Mario Odyssey. For the native route on Apple devices, see nxnative.