Switch 2 emulation on Android runs Ocarina of Time remake at 30 FPS

The remake now boots on phones

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake, launched for the Nintendo Switch 2, can already be played on Android phones. According to 9to5Google, a Reddit user got the game working on a free program called Banana Native, which is available through GitHub. The milestone reportedly came about a week after extra development work on the emulator scene.

The report describes the results as surprisingly smooth for such an early stage. It is worth noting that this comes from a single user's demo rather than a formal test, so results on other devices may differ.

How Banana Native works

Banana Native is not a traditional emulator. Instead of imitating the Switch 2's hardware, it uses the game's own ARM64 code, which can run directly on a phone's processor. This works because the Switch 2 uses a mobile Nvidia chip, so its software is built for the same processor family as most Android handsets.

Performance has reportedly reached the 30 FPS mark with frame generation enabled. That means the game actually computes around 15 frames per second, and AI-based interpolation scales the output up to appear like 30 FPS. The figure is a claim from the user's setup and has not been independently verified.

Hardware and driver limits

The demo ran on a Poco F7 Ultra, which uses the Snapdragon 8 Elite (Gen 4), a chip one generation behind the newest models. 9to5Google notes that phones such as the Redmagic 12 Pro, with a newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme, could deliver better performance once support arrives.

Software of this kind also needs specific graphics driver support for each phone. According to the report, platforms like Droid Deck and Game Native do not yet offer proper drivers for the latest chips, which limits what the newest hardware can do here.

Context for Android gaming

The report places this result in a broader trend. 9to5Google's Damien Wilde recently reviewed Droid Deck, a similar native-style app that lets people play Steam games they already own on a phone by signing into their Steam account. The review found it works well on many devices.

Together, these projects show how quickly phone-based play of console and PC software has moved this year. Readers should still treat the Zelda result as an early demonstration: it depends on the user's specific phone, drivers and game files, and nothing in the report suggests Nintendo endorses or permits this use of its software.