"It has begun!": Nintendo Switch 2 hacked, emulator created, and FromSoftware's The Duskbloods files being studied

Recently, a California Institute of Technology student and security researcher known as pepsipu boasted that they were able to hack the Nintendo Switch 2 using artificial intelligence. However, this is not a full kernel hack, but only a "tethered jailbreak" — the jailbreak will last until the device is rebooted.

Thanks to this bypass of firmware 23.0.1's protection, pepsipu was able to modify the game Mario Kart World and back up saves. Nintendo soon reacted to the user's post and removed the application where the vulnerability was found from the store.

Nevertheless, other tech enthusiasts have already started working. NERS reported that a dump of the game Deltarune for Nintendo Switch 2 (chapters 1 to 4) was obtained. In addition, there are reports that 3D models were extracted from Mario Kart World, and materials from the beta of The Duskbloods — a new game from FromSoftware studio, which became a Switch 2 console exclusive — are being studied.

Meanwhile, the "ounce-core" project repository appeared on GitHub. Developer hffgzktbcc-blip positions it as an emulator for the Nintendo Switch 2 engine, written in Rust. According to them, it is capable of running unmodified native 64-bit files and captured machine code from official firmware 23.0.1 dumps.

The repository does not contain system files, which helps avoid copyright claims. ROM files for Nintendo Switch 2 games have not yet been publicly released.