Trick Allows Play All NES Games on Hacked Switch with Online Service

It seems possible to play all NES games on the emulator that Nintendo ships with the Switch Online service. The emulator stores the list of compatible games in a plaintext file and the games are in common .nes files.

Anyone who has those .nes files seems to be able to easily add games to the NES emulator of Switch Online, Kotaku writes based on tweets from developer KapuccinoHeck. According to him, it is a rapidly modified version of the emulator of the NES Classic Mini, the re-release of the game console from the 1980s that came out two years ago.

The Switch gets the list of compatible games that players are allowed to boot from a file called lclassics.titlesdb, which the developer put on Pastebin. It’s easy to add titles to that, after which users can play them on their Switch.

Nintendo does not want to comment on the trick. It is only possible on hacked Switch consoles, which narrows the target audience. Switch Online was released this week and, in addition to the NES games, also includes cloud saving for various games, an app with extra functions for smartphones and the ability to play against other players online. The service costs 19.99 euros per year.