It's been a fun time for the Switch scene, as over the weekend multiple prototypes from both first and third party developers for the Nintendo Switch were leaked online. These prototypes were recovered from prototype ODIN-eMMCs and show games in various stages of completion. Some of these games are post-release debug builds, and some were, as far as we know, never developed into full games. To run these, an SDEV or a retail resigned .nsp is required.

The game list is as follows:

• A post release debug build of ARMS dated somewhere between April 7th and May 10th, 2017 (based on revision number comparisons)
• 2 post-release debug builds of Splatoon 2 from June 1st and June 9th, 2017
• An unreleased Ridge Racer game built in Unreal Engine 4, reportedly developed by Bandai Namco Singapore Studios
• 3 builds of Harmony, an unreleased Nintendo-published RPG with music mechanics developed by Retro Studios
• An unreleased Lego game titled Lego Civilization
• A debug enabled build of RiME

(Images: usernge3at, Lunar)​

As per usual, please keep in mind the site's rules about warez.

Source (Ridge Racer)
Source (Harmony)

 

[PatrickD85]

Was bound to happen sometime but hey always fun to uncover stuff we were not supposed to see

 

[Inkwell]

Do dev kits get passed around often? I always thought they'd only stick around in one studio, but it's really interesting to see how all the prototypes found were developed by different studios, I don't think the dev kits that were discovered before that was the case, although they also never really had more than one prototype or a game at all. It's really amazing just how much was able to be recovered on this and even more so that a good number of them were unannounced. Thinking about it, could make sense if it did get passed around or builds were shared and uploaded to it, Bandai Namco did provide support to ARMS and Splatoon 2 and Singapore specifically had connections with Retro in relation to Metroid Prime 4, and assuming dev kit was last used from around Summer 2017 since the debug build of Splatoon 2 was only like a month before release and when Prime 4 was first announced. Lego Civ kinda throws that all out though I wonder why that'd be here and if it had any connections to Bandai Namco? (Singapore also had like wayyy more involvement on Splatoon 3 than I thought, long after these builds so maybe a little unrelated but was Singapore specifically like the go-to to provide support for Nintendo and it was that division at Namco helped those other Nintendo games, or at least with Splatoon 2? Namco not too long ago did reveal Nintendo-focused teams Studio 2 and Studio S but looking at their credits it seems they've been around for a while and did support work on Arms, Splatoon's not listed on the site though like 3 was on Singapore's site)

There was a modified version of that 9GB Harmony build uploaded a few days ago that was repackaged with retail keys on works on retail firmware, but interestingly only on a custom build of Ryujinx and not on a hacked Switch itself, despite able to install completely. The Atmosphere crash error seems to reference MemoryReapManager a lot, I don't know what that does but if it was related to RAM it wouldn't be too shocking since I did read that Switch dev kits had 6GB of RAM (before OLED bumped that up to 8GB), and could explain why it was harder to get any of the Harmony builds working and required patches than any of the other prototypes. There was a mention of "SetMemoryHeapSizeEm" in the error so I wonder if that can be modified somehow, I don't know if it's just a simple flag or anywhere in the game files or if it's more directly system/firmware. But if I understand what heap is, wouldn't that mean the system was looking for free memory and could it have only gotten to that point because the game already had enough ram allocated to it? It's really interesting learning about all of these things

 

[FR0ZN]

The dumps come from ODIN eMMC modules which are the eMMC modules that are found in devkits.
These devkits get marked for destruction by Nintendo at some point and are handed over to chinease companies, that handle this "e-waste".
The workers there know what they have to look for in the trash and/or sell the destroyed units to online sellers, who use the parts as spare parts.
There was a time, when you could buy these ODIN modules on AliExpress as spare parts for your retail Switch.
Some people noticed that and bought like 50 of these modules and began dumping them, that's how this leak happend, or the MK8D Prototype leak for example.
They didn't come from one single devkit.

Edit: The modules look like this:

If you see the ODIN writing, you know it comes from a devkit, as the retail modules don't have it on them.

 

[Inkwell]

The dumps come from ODIN eMMC modules which are the eMMC modules that are found in devkits.
These devkits get marked for destruction by Nintendo at some point and are handed over to chinease companies, that handle this "e-waste".
The workers there know what they have to look for in the trash and/or sell the destroyed units to online sellers, who use the parts as spare parts.
There was a time, when you could buy these ODIN modules on AliExpress as spare parts for your retail Switch.
Some people noticed that and bought like 50 of these modules and began dumping them, that's how this leak happend, or the MK8D Prototype leak for example.
They didn't come from one single devkit.

Edit: The modules look like this:

View attachment 497781

If you see the ODIN writing, you know it comes from a devkit, as the retail modules don't have it on them.

Ohh wow, thanks for correcting me on that and giving a proper background on how these came to be! I remember hearing about these parts being sold but nothing beyond that (or what that process looked like) and didn't put two and two together! o: I wonder why they aren't just scrubbed and officially reused by Nintendo themselves, but I guess that'd require more work on their end than there needs to be

 

[SylverReZ]

The dumps come from ODIN eMMC modules which are the eMMC modules that are found in devkits.
These devkits get marked for destruction by Nintendo at some point and are handed over to chinease companies, that handle this "e-waste".
The workers there know what they have to look for in the trash and/or sell the destroyed units to online sellers, who use the parts as spare parts.
There was a time, when you could buy these ODIN modules on AliExpress as spare parts for your retail Switch.
Some people noticed that and bought like 50 of these modules and began dumping them, that's how this leak happend, or the MK8D Prototype leak for example.
They didn't come from one single devkit.

Believe that is where the leaked Mario Kart 8 prototype for the Switch came from, sometime around 2022.

 

[FR0ZN]

Believe that is where the leaked Mario Kart 8 prototype for the Switch came from, sometime around 2022.

Yup

 

[gooba6]

Stupid Nintendo ditching Bandai NAMCO as if it's nothing.

I'm very curious to have known what a Bandai NAMCO Metroid Prime 4 could've been.
It's like, that canceled Sheik game from RetroStudios.
Great ideas, great developers, held back by Nintendo, what a shame.

fr

 

[Inkwell]

Sorry for the bump, but has anyone been able to figure out how to get Harmony running on retail hardware or would know the process to get it to? Had been following some threads around here about repacking Unity/UE4 software using the SDK as a jumping off point but only got so far as to get it to install but unable to boot

 

[divajrh]

Hey, do you know how the ARMS dev build was opened? I can't seem to install it on my switch, I'd appreciate some help, or how to get in contact with the people who shared that screenshot.

 

[MPRTwice]

No metroid dread?

 

[divajrh]

Hey, do you know how the ARMS dev build was opened? I can't seem to install it on my switch, I'd appreciate some help, or how to get in contact with the people who shared that screenshot.

Hey, have you seen this?

Post automatically merged: Monday at 8:15 PM

Got the leaked RR8-Proto build from 'buncha nintender leakz', extracted exefs/romfs with the (leaked too) dev keys with hacpack, then made my own control.nca and rebuilt the nsp, of course w/ordinary retail prod.keys.

A-a-and... The game works good on OG Switch!..

Can you explain how to do this with the arms dev build?