Super Mario Bros. Wonder now runs natively on PC without emulation

An unofficial native PC port of Super Mario Bros. Wonder, the 2023 Nintendo Switch game, is running on a PC without emulation, XDA Developers reports.

YouTuber Belamante shows the game at about 60 frames per second on a laptop with an RTX 3050, with no emulator, translation layer or just-in-time compilation involved. Belamante says the port uses recompiled C++ code, an NVN-to-Vulkan translation layer that talks directly to the Nvidia driver, and further optimizations. It still has graphical glitches and occasional frame-rate drops.

The project is not public. Belamante reportedly plans to release the recompiler, the NVN-to-Vulkan layer and the NVN documentation at some point, and to test it on an integrated GPU similar to the one in the Switch. The channel is small, with 458 subscribers, so readers largely have to take the creator's word, although writer Patrick O'Rourke calls it very legitimate.

XDA reports no statement or legal action from Nintendo and speculates that the company would not be happy and would likely respond legally. The port follows the release of Suyu v0.0.4, an open-source Yuzu fork with a Static Recompiler Mode, and it is unclear whether the two are related.