Earlier this year, Citra, the 3DS emulator, was officially released for Android devices. If you thought that this was the biggest emulator news for Android this year, then you thought wrong. Enter Egg NS: a working Nintendo Switch emulator for Android.

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While it was made publicly available a few days ago, Egg NS was developed over a period of two years by the NXTeam Studios according to the official website. The website also claims that the team is based in the U.S. but that remains to be confirmed especially considering the typos and Chinese texts on the website. The video above is one of the few that are available at the time of writing and have been posted on the official website but GBAtemp member @mattyxarope noted that YouTuber Taki Udon confirmed the existence of Egg NS on Discord (under #android-devices) and shared additional videos (some of which you can see here, here and here). Another YouTuber, ETA Prime, also said that it's a "a legit Switch emulator for Android" and shared a picture of the emulator running Hollow Knight with a video planned for a later release.

GBAtemp member @bylaws who worked on getting Android to run on the Switch noted that Egg NS "uses stolen code from yuzu for the GPU emulation".

According to the official website, Egg NS works on Snapdragon 855, 855+ and 865 phones, with a list of compatible phones available on their website. The catch is that the emulator works specifically with the $100 GameSir X2 controller which is available for preorder, since it apparently provides a code required to run the app. Upon closer look, the Egg NS logo bears some similarity to GameSir's Happy Chick app (the chick inside a cracked egg) which itself runs a number of emulators.

NXTeam Studios has also shared a games compatibility list, detailing the performance of each game they tested. Understandably, less graphically-demanding games like Cuphead and Enter The Gungeon seem to run better in Egg NS, with the exception of Pokemon Sword & Shield which is said to have a "perfect" compatibility.

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Given that Egg NS is an emulator, not all games will run as well as on the native console. You might be better off with a Switch for now but it does show the potential of mobile phones and with time, Egg NS might improve and similar emulators with better performance might even pop up.

@mathew77 already started a discussion thread linked as the source material below. As for Egg NS' website and download links, you can find it from the YouTube videos but aren't shared in this post as they contain links to illegally-shared files.

SOURCE

 

[Super.Nova]

No love for us poor Exynos users?

 

[medoli900]

I'll say this as many times as I need to, until it's as clear as purified water:

You can't "steal" code if it's open-source. That's like stealing those AOL CDs that grocery stores gave out for free. Or stealing the newspapers that say "free, take one."

You can't steal code, period. Stealing is the act of taking something from someone without their permission, which make it so that other person does not have the thing you stolen anymore. The only feasible way to "steal" code I see is by stealing a drive containing the source code, and that other person doesn't have backup of said source code.
You can however infringe upon copyright or license, which is the case here, on source code. Stealing and copyright/license infringement are two very distinct things, stop mixing them up.

 

[LightBeam]

For the love of god just please stop with this "you can't steal code" bullshit, we are running circles. If you can't answer to what's already been said about that instead of just repeating the same thing then you just need to stop

 

[brapfarmer]

Hey guys, just made an account to point out two things.
Gamesir2 poster https://i.imgur.com/2sNgqRU.jpg
Eggns poster https://i.imgur.com/Gx1WMHr.jpg

Same style including the font. Shitty photoshop? probably, but seeing how advance the app UI looks makes this feel like something GameSir made.

 

[Prans]

Hey guys, just made an account to point out two things.
Gamesir2 poster https://i.imgur.com/2sNgqRU.jpg
Eggns poster https://i.imgur.com/Gx1WMHr.jpg

Same style including the font. Shitty photoshop? probably, but seeing how advance the app UI looks makes this feel like something GameSir made.

yeah I also noted in the article how the Egg NS app icon shares similarities with the GameSir's Happy Chick app icon. Not too subtle...

 

[HarveyHouston]

Lawsuit pending!!! Nintendo may be taking action on this... or not. Depends on how lax they really are with the Switch.

 

[rehevkor]

Is it my imagination or is Prime ETA a bit of a shill?

 

[spotanjo3]

Read the message from Reddit. According to this:

Yuzu developer /u/bunnei:

Hi tomkatt! I'm contacting you with regards to yuzu, and because you are a familiar name on r/emulation and r/EmulationOnAndroid. It has recently come to our (the yuzu team's) attention that a company based in China has developed a custom gamepad for Android devices that they are selling paired with a closed sourced Android Nintendo Switch emulator (called "Egg NS") that is largely based on yuzu. We are actively pursuing legal action against this team and their parent company. I am kindly asking you to spread the message among the moderation teams among these two communities, with hopes that your teams can block such posts (Example: https://www.reddit.com/r/EmulationO...rently_there_is_a_new_closed_source_nintendo/). This is an illegal violation of our open source license. I am happy to provide further details (if you need evidence) based on our team's reverse engineering of their released binaries. Thank you for your understanding, and I appreciate any help you can provide.

and further:

I am personally OK with discussion about it, but I just want the word to be well spread that this is based on stolen open source work. People do not realize how much this damages open source and preservation, and is the motivation for projects like Drastic, Cemu, Mikage, etc. to go the closed source route.

Interesting.

 

[MRJPGames]

Nah, those never hold up in court.

Except always, when it actually holds up in court lmfao.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...bility-gnu-gpl-as-both-license-contract.shtml
https://gpl-violations.org/ (No longer active but the precedents still hold)
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/149256863.pdf

The EU even has EUPL, though GPL is (obviously) also still valid within the EU.

 

[Bladexdsl]

pirates suing pirates what the fuck has the world come to?!

 

[spotanjo3]

Lawsuit pending!!! Nintendo may be taking action on this... or not. Depends on how lax they really are with the Switch.

I doubt! There re many emulators already on Androids and none are sued them.

 

[brapfarmer]

yeah I also noted in the article how the Egg NS app icon shares similarities with the GameSir's Happy Chick app icon. Not too subtle...

> Happy Chick Emulator is a platform that offers various types of games for players to choose from: trendy games like PUBG and Arena of Valor, retro games like Pokemon, Super Mario Bros and Final Fantasy.

Shocking I tell you. Sucks, but still pretty cool that they were able to get yuzu on android lmao.

 

[hhrocha]

 

[BeniBel]

The only way I would pay 100 dollar to play Switch on the android, is if it was on Android 18. Else, I'll just fork out an extra 100 and get a Switch Light

 

[munnimann]

For the love of god just please stop with this "you can't steal code" bullshit, we are running circles. If you can't answer to what's already been said about that instead of just repeating the same thing then you just need to stop

In the end, the problem is an ideological one, more so than it is about semantics. There are those who would like the laws protecting intellectual and/or digital property (but also patent law, for example) to be reformed/more lax (see for example the Adelphi Charter from 2004). That idea got a lot of support when in 2018 people were proclaiming the death of memes due to the EU Copyright Law Reform. Some might even suggest, that the copying (or pirating) of digital media should be exempt from punishment. The argument that comes up when the accusation of theft is made is then that it's not theft because the property is still within the owner's possession. The disagreement is less about whether theft is the correct word and more about if it is condemnable at all and, if so, if it is as condemnable as "regular" theft.

I'm not making an argument about whether it's appropriate to call this specific case theft or not (nor was I in my other comment). I'm just pointing out that it's not so cut-and-dry as some here make it out to be.

 

[Crunchykevlar]

This emulator also does something with phone numbers, if you look into the folders inside the app

 

[mattyxarope]

Such a weird video by him. Shows 0 gameplay. I guess he's trying to avoid a DMCA claim.

 

[rdurbin]

I'll say this as many times as I need to, until it's as clear as purified water:

You can't "steal" code if it's open-source. That's like stealing those AOL CDs that grocery stores gave out for free. Or stealing the newspapers that say "free, take one."

well if you use code from an open source project to use it in another project that is a closed source, I am pretty sure its a violation of most open source license agreements. if you use code from an open source, your project must in turn be open source. read below....

GPL is a copyleft license. This means that any software that is written based on any GPL component must be released as open source. The result is that any software that uses any GPL open source component (regardless of its percentage in the entire code) is required to release its full source code and all of the rights to modify and distribute the entire code.

now im not sure if this applies to this project or not but if it does. I would consider it stealing.

 

[mattyxarope]

You can't steal code, period.

EggNS developers:

 

[cashboxz01]

Is it my imagination or is Prime ETA a bit of a shill?

About 80% of his videos are 10 minute 12 seconds of random retro gameplay on some new daily garbage hardware he finds which can run retroarch. The retro gamer YouTube formula:
1. Find a random piece of hardware which can run retroarch or a crappy retro gaming box/handheld on AliExpress/amazon.
2. Show the install process
3. Fill the remaining up with random gameplay and every other minute, talk for 5-10 seconds on how you feel playing on it.
4. Recommend or don't recommend.
5. If the hardware or controller is on Amazon, place an affiliate link.
6. Profit from ad revenue and affiliate commission.