Zelda Ocarina of Time Switch 2 Remake Runs on PC Emulator One Day Early

Players with a working copy of the Lichii Switch 2 emulator already have the full Ocarina of Time remake booting and running on their PCs, a full day before Nintendo puts the $59.99 title on sale. Footage circulating online shows the game reaching its title screen, loading a save in Kokiri Forest, and letting Link move through Hyrule, all inside a desktop window rather than on the console that ships tomorrow.

Lichi is essentially a fork of the Eglantine project, which drew inspiration from some of the older Switch emulators in the Yuzu family. When the remake was tested on multiple machines, frame rates jumped all over the place, ranging from 20 to 60 frames per second with a lot of stuttering. The colors are so washed out that it’s like staring at a watercolor painting, and Link is frequently lost in the environment. On the other hand, the background music and sound effects play back smoothly and without interruption. The same emulator has previously run Mario Kart World and even the new Star Fox remake, so it’s not surprising that this title has just fallen into place.

The ns2jb jailbreak, a software hack that allows you to gain filesystem access on a Switch 2 running firmware v23.0, provided access to all of those files. The SmileBASIC 4 software served as the entry point for all of this, and after the hack is in place, you can utilize tools like OunceCake to go in and grab a game that has already been unlocked on the console, and then pull the unencrypted romFS and exeFS via FTP. They got the source material via dumping early physical copies that had leaked a few days before the launch, as well as pre-loads totaling roughly 24.5 GB. The dumped build includes both the original 1.0.0 package and the 343 MB day-one update, which increases the overall install size to around 24.8 GB and enables the Zelda Notes companion features.

The remake performs at a consistent 60 frames per second on the Switch 2 hardware in both docked and portable modes. When connected to a TV, dynamic resolution can reach 1440p, although it decreases to 1080p as things grow more intense. Handheld output is somewhat limited, ranging from 720p to 1080p. The game uses some older FSR 1 upscaling technology combined with SMAA, which is not quite the same as DLSS, and preliminary study indicates that it shares some underlying technology with Breath of the Wild. That contrasts sharply with the emulator footage, which is still battling to achieve acceptable graphics fidelity and frame pace.

Nintendo has already removed SmileBASIC 4 from the eShop and taken other steps to block the entry point, but the current jailbreak still allows users to dump first-party titles. With the remake now playable on PC a day before its official release on November 5, the gap between console release and emulator availability has closed once more.