Modders already have ‘Half-Life 2’ running on Switch

A large portion of Half-Life 2 content has been discovered in the Portal Companion Collection, which was released on Tuesday (June 28).

As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Oatmeal Dome, who describes themselves as a “Switch tinkerer”, tweeted that the new Nintendo Switch Portal Companion Collection contains files for Half-Life 2 in its data. They said “The entirety of Half-Life 2 (minus maps and music) is present in the ROM,” and continued to speculate that it “might be leftovers from the [Nvidia] Shield version.”

They also added, “I should note that having at least some Half-Life 2 leftovers present in the ROM is expected, considering Portal 1 is just a fancy mod of Half-Life 2. That being said, there are a lot of files that shouldn’t be here (HL2-specific models, NPCs, voice clips, etc”.

Using a modded switch, OatmealDome then attempted to import Half-Life 2 maps into the game to make a Switch port, eventually succeeding and tweeting out a video of Half-Life 2 running on the handheld console.

It wasn’t without its issues though, as they went on to add “the game kinda works,” but with the flaws that “it occasionally crashes, some maps are impossible to progress in, NPC animations are bugged, saves don’t work, and world cameras are placed at the wrong coordinates.”

Other users then began attempting their own ports following the discovery of the Half-Life 2 data including Twitter user ArTuRMV, who said they “did some progress,” along with a picture of their attempt showing a Half-Life 2 environment, although that too was flawed. They also tweeted it to their main feed and roughly translated, said that they were “able to run custom map and almost boot” the game.

It seems there’s quite a way to go to get a fully working version of the game running on Switch, but this early progress suggests it is entirely possible.

The Portal: Companion Collection was released for Nintendo Switch yesterday (June 28) and contains both Portal and Portal 2.

In other news, Blizzard Entertainment has acquired Proletariat, the studio behind battle royale game Spellbreak.