A Nintendo Switch emulator is now running natively on jailbroken PlayStation 5 consoles. The project, called ProsperoEden and built by developer BlackBearReloaded, adapts Eden, the actively developed fork of the defunct Yuzu emulator, to run as homebrew directly on PS5 hardware rather than through Linux or a virtual machine layer.
BlackBearReloaded published compatibility results alongside the latest v1.000.010 alpha build, and the numbers are further along than a first public release usually manages. Cuphead reportedly holds 60 FPS, Metroid Dread runs at around 40 FPS, and Super Mario 3D World is playable in the sections tested. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe now boots into actual racing rather than stalling at a black screen, though it doesn’t hold a steady 60 FPS yet.
How the Nintendo Switch emulator runs on PS5
Running as homebrew matters here because it’s a harder path than the alternative. Other PS5 emulation projects have leaned on installing Linux on jailbroken hardware and running an existing desktop emulator inside it, accepting the overhead of an extra operating system layer. ProsperoEden instead ports Eden’s code to talk to the PS5’s own graphics stack directly, which is also why the port is currently limited: it only has an OpenGL backend, with no Vulkan support built for the PS5 side yet.
That limitation is also why several of the frame rate figures BlackBearReloaded published come from menu and title-screen testing rather than full playthroughs, and why some titles, like Pokemon Legends Z-A, are described as very slow with crashes on shutdown.
What plays and what doesn’t
The compatibility spread is wide for an alpha build:
- Cuphead: 60 FPS
- Metroid Dread: around 40 FPS
- Super Mario 3D World: playable in tested sections
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: boots into gameplay, frame rate unsteady
- Pokemon Legends Z-A: very slow, crashes on shutdown
Tom’s Hardware tested a wider spread of the compatibility list and found Hollow Knight and Horizon Chase Turbo reaching similarly playable results, while The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is listed as unplayable and Animal Crossing: New Horizons runs “with major issues” at around 15 FPS.
Why the frame rate spread matters
Put side by side, Cuphead’s 60 FPS and Metroid Dread’s roughly 40 FPS mark out a 50% swing between the best and worst of the games BlackBearReloaded calls playable, by our arithmetic. That’s a useful measure of how uneven this alpha still is: a single build spans from a fully playable 2D platformer to a 3D title that plays but visibly struggles, with Zelda and Animal Crossing further down the list still barely running at all. The full breakdown is on the project’s compatibility document on GitHub.
teqpost covered the jailbroken PS5 emulation scene on 7 September, when the KytyPS5 emulator got GTA V’s PS5 build running at 60 FPS before crashing a few minutes in. ProsperoEden is a different kind of project: instead of emulating the PS5’s own library, it imports an entire second console’s catalogue onto the hardware, which is a much easier problem since Switch games target far less demanding specs than native PS5 titles.
What to watch next
Nintendo has shut down emulation projects before, Yuzu being the clearest example, so how long ProsperoEden keeps developing in the open probably depends on how much attention it draws and how fast it progresses. The immediate technical item to watch is whether BlackBearReloaded builds a Vulkan backend for the PS5 side, since that’s the piece missing before frame rates on heavier titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Pokemon Legends Z-A can realistically improve.
