It hasn’t even been a week since Metroid Dread released for the Switch, and emulation enthusiasts have not only managed to get the game to run on PC, they’re supposedly getting it to run better. I’m not sure if this is an emulation mile stone or anything, but it sure is crazy to think that modders might be getting a game to run better on a platform it was in no way designed for.

This achievement was executed and shared by YouTube channel “Gaminja,” and it apparently was done by using Ryujinx: a very good Switch emulator. The relevant specs for the machine running the game are that it has an Intel Core i5 8400, 16GB of RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060. With this build and emulator, they’ve apparently got the game to run at 4K 60fps. I don’t doubt the 60fps, but I wonder about the 4K.

(Be careful, there might be spoilers depending on how much you’ve played so far)

Even if a graphics card is capable of 4K output, doesn’t the game being run need to have textures of a high-enough resolution that they don’t wind up looking stretched or something? I’m also wondering how it is that an emulator is able to perform better than the native device. Obviously it can since “Gaminja” was able to make it happen, but it’s curious all the same.

As for what to take away from all this, I’m not sure. It would be easy to say something like “Nintendo should publish for PC,” but I’m not sure I want to say that. There’s something about Nintendo games that make me think that they just don’t belong on PC. Maybe that’s just successful branding on Nintendo’s part, but who knows?

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What do you think? Should Nintendo games be on PC? How is it possible to run a game at a resolution it wasn’t designed for?

Lede image from the Metroid Dread eShop page.