Halo: Combat Evolved runs on Nintendo Switch through Xemu
A modder has shown Halo: Combat Evolved running locally on the original Nintendo Switch. The demo was posted by Generalkidd on X, and shows the game running on Nintendo’s ARM-based handheld without cloud streaming or official support.
Xemu involved
Interestingly, this is not a Proton 11 test . Proton was recently udpated to support ARM64 architecture, which is probably why Windows Central first assumed Valve’s new ARM64 work was involved, but later clarified that the game is running through an ARM64 build of Xemu . That means the demo uses the original Xbox version of Halo: Combat Evolved through Xbox emulation.
Xemu is an open-source emulator for the original Microsoft Xbox. The project offers builds for Windows, macOS and Linux, including a Windows ARM64 build. The emulator also supports low-level Xbox hardware emulation and render scaling.
The gameplay was not shown, and performance is likely not great, so this is not a practical way to play Halo on Switch yet. The Switch has already been used for Linux and Steam experiments, and this Halo demo adds original Xbox emulation to that list. And yes, there’s also the original Xbox menu available.
Source: Generalkidd , Windows Central
