# Mario Kart runs at 60 fps on PC: the Switch 2 emulator Eglantine gained 4,700 stars in nine days, and it's not the code that did it · GitHub open-source project

> Source: https://stringers.io/en/github/gh_Djihads80__Eglantine.html (Stringers / 什么值得做, generated 2026-11-08)
> Stringers answers one question every day: what small product can one or two people build in a few months and actually make money from. Numbers come from 15 databases we collect daily, each with source and date.
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> The Switch 2 had just been jailbroken and players were waiting for an emulator. It was the first to offer double-clickable installers for all three platforms on GitHub, and it had a headline-ready demo, "Mario Kart at full frame rate on PC". Media and YouTubers piled in.

[GitHub open-source project](https://stringers.io/en/github/index.md) · written 11-6

Djihads80/Eglantine · Djihads80

# Mario Kart runs at 60 fps on PC: the Switch 2 emulator Eglantine gained 4,700 stars in nine days, and it's not the code that did it

**What it is** A free, open-source Switch 2 emulator, forked from the Eden/yuzu lineage of code, that can run <i>Mario Kart World</i> on a PC.

**Why it blew up** Switch 2 had just been jailbroken and players were waiting for an emulator. It was the first to ship a double-click-to-run installer for all three platforms on GitHub, plus a "Mario Kart PC at full framerate" demo that wrote its own headline. Media and YouTubers piled on.

**C** **How you could follow it** Stop building a general emulator. Build what it didn't do well: compatibility lists, one-click configs, handheld tuning, packaged multiplayer tools. The lesson worth taking is the play itself: when a platform event hits, get a finished product your average person can use onto the most findable spot first, and pair it with a demo that's easy to screenshot.

Grade C: the play is worth learning, but the core product needs emulator expertise and rides a one-off jailbreak event. There are already 123 forks, and the fork Lichii is overtaking it. It could also get hit by a Nintendo DMCA at any moment. Following it now won't pay off for stars. Public / widely discussed

Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-29 · 5,164 stars · 7 days +4,017

GitHub · stars

Data 2026-10-31 → 2026-11-08 (9 days, 9 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

A week after the Switch 2 jailbreak, an emulator called Eglantine appeared on GitHub. Almost all of its core code belongs to others, and earlier versions existed. But media and players ended up linking to it: 9 days, 4,700 stars, and about 500k installer downloads. It shows one thing: when a platform event breaks, traffic goes to whoever first puts a finished product where people can find it. But this wave is already crowded and carries legal risk, so following it isn't worth it.

### A 12-minute race clip

On Oct 31, the YouTube channel Unreal Gaming PC posted a 12-minute video: a PC with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and an RTX 4080 running Mario Kart World through Eglantine at 60 fps. DSOGaming made a headline out of that clip the same day. XDA, Wccftech, TweakTown and TechEBlog all covered it that day too, with near-identical headlines along the lines of "Mario Kart already runs at full speed on PC," and their articles linked github.com/Djihads80/Eglantine directly. On r/macgaming someone posted that Apple Silicon runs it too: "Actually playable, uses about 36GB of RAM." The first line of the YouTube tutorials is "Free up at least 32GB of space first."

The next day, Nov 1, the repo gained 827 stars in a single day, its biggest one-day jump so far.

### What it actually is

An open-source, free Switch 2 emulator written in C++ under the GPL-3 license. The README states plainly that it is "derived from Eden, Yuzu and Sudachi," inheriting from the older Switch 1 emulator lineage. The contributor list is topped by veteran yuzu-era developers; that's inherited commit history, not new people's work.

It wasn't the first. On Oct 29, Takoroka, a developer on the Eden emulator, released Eden-NX2 on Eden's self-hosted git site, an "experimental Switch 2 support" build that could boot Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Bananza, but with heavy stutter and graphical glitches, and Windows only. The same day, an account called Djihads80 created Eglantine on GitHub as a fork of NX2. That person's earlier repos were all Fortnite assets, with the bio "Larp it till you make it." Merging code and maintaining the build mostly fell to another community contributor.

No money taken. The README says "We currently do not take in any donations."

### Why this one

Same technical roots, a few hours later, and it won on four things.

**Timing.** The Switch 2 had gone 16 months without being cracked. In Oct 22 the first pure-software jailbreak came out, making it possible to dump games and keys. Without that step, emulation was off the table. PC players were waiting for a working emulator, and Eglantine launched in Oct 29, right when demand peaked that week.

**A demo that's easy to screenshot.** "Mario Kart on PC at 60 fps" is a headline in one sentence and a video thumbnail in one clip. Every outlet built on that; none of them bothered with a feature list.

**On GitHub, with direct installers.** The upstream Eden had been hit with a Nintendo DMCA, so it stayed on a self-hosted git site, hard to find and hard to download. NX2 only had a Windows pre-release. Eglantine sat on GitHub with compiled packages for Windows, Linux and macOS. It shipped 9 versions in 78 days, at peak about one an hour, and on X someone posted about going "from build 178 to 206 in one night." Regular players didn't need to compile anything. Double-click and go. By GitHub download counts (11-06), the Windows package has about 386k downloads, Linux about 91k and macOS about 18k. That includes repeat downloads and mirror scraping, but the scale shows real installs by everyday players, not just developers padding stars.

**Open to patches from day one, with AI speeding things up.** In 9 days the PR and issue numbers had passed 600. Among the earliest PRs were "Experimental NS2 support and accumulated GPU fixes" and "add agent tooling," which set up branch rules and hooks for AI coding assistants. XDA's line was "Eglantine's development is heavily AI-assisted." Outside contributors kept submitting GPU, scheduling and memory fixes, and that's how the "best at running Mario Kart" reputation got held.

Having a ready-made base mattered too. The Switch 2 and Switch 1 architectures are close, and a decade of yuzu-lineage code is why it went from "boots" to "playable" in under a week.

### Where users come from

Entirely organic. No paid acquisition at all (it had no money to buy any).

| Channel | What we saw |
|---|---|
| The jailbreak itself | 10-22 jailbreak released; the whole community was waiting for an emulator |
| Gaming tech media | XDA, Wccftech, TweakTown, DSOGaming, TechEBlog, covered heavily from 10-31 to 11-03, all linking to the repo |
| YouTube | Gameplay videos and tutorials like "How to Play Mario Kart World on PC," with releases links in the description |
| Reddit | r/pcmasterrace, r/macgaming, r/switch2hacks, r/PS5_Jailbreak and more |
| X and Instagram news accounts | Reposts of build numbers and short clips of "Mario Kart at full speed" |
| Discord | Two servers linked in the README, for development and user support (size unverified) |

GitHub Trending didn't help: the repo was only 8 days old and never charted.

### Who it's competing with

The fiercest rival is its own fork. **Lichii** split off from Eglantine in Oct 31, focused on fixing memory leaks, can run <i>Star Fox</i>, supports Switch 1 and 2, and has an Android version too. 11-06 It has about 3,200 stars, and gained 1,258 a day from 11-05 to 11-06, faster than Eglantine over the same stretch. Media already call Lichii "at the cutting edge."

Below that is a big crowd: EglantinePS5, a port to jailbroken PS5 (about 230 stars); several Eden forks aimed at Android (dozens of stars); reskinned forks tuned for specific GPUs or handhelds; Instaurix (49 stars), written from scratch but unable to run commercial games; and switch2mac (121 stars), which skips emulation and recompiles individual games into native Mac apps. GitHub already has 123 repos with "eglantine" in the name or description.

What's more telling is the name-squatting: eglantineemulator.com-style SEO download sites are already live, there are fake repos on GitHub, and on r/SwitchPirates2 someone reported that "Build 135" was flagged as a virus, suspected to have come from one of the fake sites. People are already using this name's traffic to spread malware.

The Ryujinx lineage has said outright it will never support Switch 2. Nintendo won't ship a PC version and keeps filing DMCAs: in February 2026 a single round took down 401 Switch emulator repos (per Dexerto).

### What it did poorly and can't protect

Its advantage is all in distribution and timing; the code isn't its own. Anyone can fork that advantage away, and Lichii catching up to 70% of its stars in two days proves it. The maintainer isn't an emulator developer, and the project runs on community support. If the core contributors move to Lichii, it slows down.

The biggest open question is the DMCA. GitHub repos are the easiest to take down. Once removed, traffic will most likely shift to Lichii or to versions on self-hosted git (inferred).

### If it were you

**Bottom line:** trying to build "the next Eglantine" is already too late, and it demands emulator skill plus the ability to absorb DMCA risk. What's worth learning is the play, not this project. Grade C.

**Who it suits:** people who've already written GPU or shader code in the yuzu/Eden community, or who want to build small companion tools (launchers, save and multiplayer tools, packaging tools; NSP-Box, a packaging tool, already has about 500 stars).

**Who it doesn't suit:** anyone who hasn't touched emulators; anyone who cares about GitHub account security or doesn't want to be caught in DMCA fallout; anyone hoping to collect stars from reskinned forks, since 123 repos are already doing that.

**How to do it:** If you're going to follow it, don't build another general emulator. Go after the piece it didn't handle well: a reliable compatibility list site (the official list doesn't exist yet), a one-click config and fake-build guide for regular players, and dedicated tuning for a specific handheld (Steam Deck, ROG Ally). The method is the bigger takeaway: next time a platform event hits (a new jailbreak, a new open interface, a new model release), get a finished product that a regular person can double-click to run onto the most findable spot first, with a demo that's easy to screenshot.

**How to get users:** Copy its playbook: a clip that can carry a headline posted to YouTube and Reddit, a demo GIF and download button on the first screen of the README, and actively pitch leads to sites like XDA and Wccftech.

**When to move:** The heat from this Switch 2 wave probably peaks before late November (estimate). If you're building companion tools, ship within two weeks.

**What would mean you got it wrong:** ① A new Switch 2 emulator written from scratch, not forked from Eglantine or Lichii, reaches 2,000+ stars in November, which would mean the space isn't saturated yet; ② after Eglantine is taken down by a DMCA, its companion tools keep gaining stars, which would mean demand for companion tools outlasts the core product; ③ conversely, if both Lichii and Eglantine are taken down by mid-November, skip companion tools too.

---

Sources: GitHub repo pages, release download counts and daily star history (as of 11-06); XDA, Wccftech, DSOGaming, TweakTown, TechEBlog coverage (from 10-31); public Reddit and YouTube posts and videos; Dexerto (DMCA, 2026-02). Anything marked "estimate" or "inferred" is an estimate or inference.

[GitHub repo ↗](https://github.com/Djihads80/Eglantine)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eden-NX2(Takoroka) | Open source | 2026-10-29 | Pre-release on Eden's self-hosted Forgejo; media called it the first public Switch 2 emulator | The upstream of Eglantine; self-hosted git, Windows only, weak performance. Eglantine is on GitHub, three platforms, merging community patches at high frequency |
| Lichii(zortos293) | Open source | 2026-10-31 | 3,218 stars / 491 forks (11-06); 11-05 to 11-06 single-day +1,258 | A fork of Eglantine that fixes memory leaks, runs Star Fox, supports both Switch 1 and 2, and has an Android version |
| Eden SX2A / NX2A / eden-nx2-android | Android | From ¥2026-10-31 | Small fork, dozens of stars | Android-focused port |
| EglantinePS5 / ProsperoEden | Other | 2026-10-30 | 229 star | Port to jailbroken PS5 |
| Instaurix | Open source | 2026-10-25 | 49 star | Switch 2 emulator written from scratch, can't run commercial games |
| nxnative / switch2mac / Mario Kart recomp | Open source | late 2026-10 | switch2mac 121 star | Ports or recompiles individual games into native apps, not a general emulator |
| Ryujinx / Ryubing | Open source | Older project | Mainstream Switch 1 | Explicitly does not support Switch 2 |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Platform event: Switch 2 jailbreak, ns2jb** : 10-22 released, games can now be dumped (TechPowerUp/XDA/GamesRadar)

- **Verified** **gaming tech press** : XDA, Wccftech, TweakTown, DSOGaming and TechEBlog all covered it with a repo link on 10-31, 11-01 stars +827

- **Verified** **Reddit** : r/pcmasterrace, r/macgaming, r/switch2hacks, r/SwitchPirates2, and r/PS5_Jailbreak all have threads

- **Verified** **YouTube tutorials and gameplay videos** : Techno Ninja, Unreal Gaming PC, and others; multiple "How to play Mario Kart World on PC" tutorials

- Inferred **X / Instagram news accounts** : Forha and Pixel Cherry Ninja reported build numbers; IG gaming news accounts reshared it (not in the x-radar corpus)

- **Verified** **GitHub high-frequency releases and Discord** : 9 days, 78 releases, about 500k downloads; the README links a Discord

## Eglantine (Djihads80/Eglantine) research report

> In one line: a Switch 2 emulator, forked from Eden's experimental branch Eden-NX2, hosted on GitHub. About a week after the Switch 2 jailbreak (2026-10-22) came out, it became the first Switch 2 emulator that could run Mario Kart World at full frame rate and ship ready-to-install packages for Windows, Linux, and macOS. A wave of gaming tech coverage 10-31 pushed it up. Research date: 2026-11-06. Data comes from the GitHub API (live as of that day), our github library (repo_day), and Jina web search.

### 1. Basic data

| items | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Repo created | 2026-10-29 00:25 UTC | GitHub API |
| Star / Fork | 4,693 / 517 (11-06 live); data card 11-06 records 4,265 / 484 | GitHub API; data card |
| Star curve | 10-31 320 → 11-01 1,147 (+827, single-day high) → 11-02 1,856 → 11-03 2,384 → 11-04 2,942 → 11-05 3,534 → 11-06 4,265 | Data card daily |
| Release | 9 days, 78 releases (build-xx, daily-xxxx, v0.1.0-rc1, branch builds), each with Win/Linux/macOS packages; 11-03 also had an Android apk at one point | GitHub releases API |
| Installer downloads | Cumulative downloads across all release assets: about **500k** : Windows 386k, Linux 91k, macOS 18k, Android 4k. The two Windows zips for v0.1.0-rc1 alone account for 64k | GitHub releases API, 11-06 totals |
| PR/issue numbers | Already past #639, meaning over 9 PRs/issues opened in 600 days | GitHub commits/issues |
| Code origins | The README says "derived from Eden, Yuzu and Sudachi - started by developer Camille LaVey"; the contributor list is topped by veteran yuzu-era developers (bunnei, lioncash, etc., inherited commit history) | README;contributors API |
| Paid | The README says "We currently do not take in any donations", so no revenue | README |

Download counts include repeat downloads and CI/mirror scrapes, but the volume shows real users are installing it, not just starring it.

### 2. Where it came from: lineage and timeline

1. **2026-10-22** : The first pure-software Switch 2 jailbreak, ns2jb, was released (built with help from OpenAI Codex, and requiring a $25 eShop game to start). From then on, games and keys could be dumped (TechPowerUp, XDA, GamesRadar 10-22 covered it; shattered.io). Without dumps there is no emulation, so this is the starting point for everything.

2. **10-29** : Takoroka, a developer on the Eden emulator, published the Eden-NX2 pre-release on Eden's self-hosted Forgejo (git.eden-emu.dev), described as "experimental Switch 2 integration." It could already boot Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, but stuttering and graphical glitches were severe (TweakTown 10-31).

3. **Same day 10-29** : Djihads80 created Eglantine on GitHub as a fork of NX2 (XDA: "it laid the groundwork for Eglantine, a fork of NX2"). The first issues/PRs came from yumekiru and kraibse, with titles like "Experimental NS2 support and accumulated GPU fixes" and "add agent tooling: branch grammar, claims, and hooks," a sign that development leaned heavily on AI agents. XDA also wrote: "Eglantine's development is heavily AI-assisted."

4. **10-30** : The first release went out.

5. **10-31** : XDA, Wccftech ("Mario Kart World Already Runs at Full Speed on PC via Switch 2 Emulator Eglantine"), TweakTown, DSOGaming ("runs Mario Kart World at 60 FPS") and TechEBlog all covered it. There are threads on r/pcmasterrace, r/macgaming and r/PS5_Jailbreak, and YouTube has gameplay and tutorial videos from Techno Ninja, Unreal Gaming PC and others. **That coverage is what drove the 11-01 stars, +827 in a single day.**

6. **11-03 to 11-06** : A new build came out almost every hour (someone on X even posted "build 178 → 206 overnight"). 11-04 shipped v0.1.0-rc1, and the list of playable games grew to include Splatoon Raiders, fixes related to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Pokopia shader work.

### III. Competitors

| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from Eglantine |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eden-NX2(Takoroka) | Open source, self-hosted Forgejo by Eden | 2026-10-29 | No star count to compare; media called it "the first public Switch 2 emulator" | Upstream of Eglantine. Hosted on self-hosted git, Windows pre-release only, poor performance. Eglantine moved it to GitHub, merged many community patches, and shipped frequently for all three platforms |
| Lichii(zortos293) | Open source, GitHub | 2026-10-31 | 11-06 live: 3,218 stars / 491 forks; in our library 11-04 586 → 11-05 715 → 11-06 1,973, **now growing faster than Eglantine** | A fork of Eglantine. Focused on fixing memory leaks, can run the Star Fox remake, supports both Switch 1 and 2, and has an Android version. DSOGaming and XDA are already reporting that "Lichii is at the cutting edge." |
| Eden SX2A / Eden NX2A / eden-nx2-android | Open source, Android | From ¥2026-10-31 | Small community forks, a few dozen stars | All based on Eglantine/PokeDinner, focused on Android. SX2A has announced v0.3.2 as the final version |
| EglantinePS5, ProsperoEden, PlayTendoh | Open source, jailbroken PS5 | From ¥2026-10-30 | EglantinePS5 live: 229 stars (in library 11-01 44 → 11-06 203) | Ports it to a jailbroken PS5 |
| Orchid, notsapinho/Eglantine, ZendNevs, selevet-eglantine, Eglantine-3060Ti, etc. | Open source, GitHub | From ¥11-01 | From a few to 260 stars | Reskins or tuned forks (frame generation, tuning for a specific GPU, parameters tuned for Z-series handhelds) |
| Instaurix(PHENGOX) | Open source | 2026-10-25 | 49 star | 从零写的 C++20 Switch 2 模拟器,跑不了商业游戏 |
| Native ports / recompilation (nxnative, switch2mac, Mario Kart World recomp) | Open source / Mac | Late October onward | switch2mac 121 star | Not an emulator; converts individual games into native PC/Mac programs, a different route |
| Ryujinx / Ryubing | Open source | Older project | Mainstream Switch 1 | Explicitly says "never supporting Switch 2" (readonlymemo) |
| Official | big tech | None | — | Nintendo doesn't sell a PC version and keeps filing DMCA takedowns (2026-02 a single takedown removed 401 Switch emulator repos, per Dexerto) |

Bottom line: Eglantine wasn't the first (Eden-NX2 came hours earlier), and it wasn't written from scratch, but it was the first to be "on GitHub, with ready-made installers for three platforms, running Mario Kart at full frame rate." It has now been overtaken by its own fork, Lichii.

### 4. How users found it

| Channel | Evidence | Confirmed |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform event (jailbreak) | ns2jb released 10-22, enabling game dumps; the community was waiting for a usable emulator | Yes |  |
| Gaming tech media | XDA, Wccftech, TweakTown, DSOGaming, TechEBlog, TechSpot, and Adafruit all covered it between 10-31 and 11-03, each linking directly to github.com/Djihads80/Eglantine | Yes |  |
| Reddit | r/pcmasterrace, r/macgaming (M4 Max running Mario Kart), r/switch2hacks, r/SwitchPirates2, r/PS5_Jailbreak, r/GlitchMod | Yes |  |
| YouTube tutorials / gameplay videos | "The FIRST EVER Switch 2 Emulator Is HERE", "How to Play Mario Kart World on PC | Eglantine Setup", Mac tutorials, "Eglantine & Eden NS2" | Yes |
| X news accounts | Forha, Pixel Cherry Ninja and others reposted build numbers and RC releases (seen via Google results; not in the x-radar local corpus) | Partial |  |
| Instagram / Facebook gaming news accounts | multiple reels/posts saying "Mario Kart World at full speed" | Yes |  |
| GitHub's own discovery channels | Listed on trendshift; star-history chart in the README. GitHub Trending requires the repo to be about 60 days old, which it hasn't reached yet (data card trending_days_any=0) | Partial |  |
| Discord | Two Discord links in the README, where both dev discussion and user support happen | Yes (scale not verified) |  |
| Paid acquisition | None found. Unlikely, since there's no revenue and there's legal risk | Not found |  |

Distribution is all organic: the event plus the "Mario Kart carriage at 60 FPS on PC" angle, a point that can be screenshotted and filmed, gives media and YouTubers a natural reason to write and film it.

### V. Why it took off

1. **Timing** : the Switch 2 had been on sale for 16 months with no jailbreak; once the 10-22 jailbreak came out, games could be dumped, and PC players wanted an emulator most. Eglantine's repo was created 10-29, right at the peak of that demand (XDA's words: "the Switch 2 was just jailbroken a little over a week ago").

2. **It had a ready-made demo** : Mario Kart World is the Switch 2's flagship game, and "Mario Kart running at full frame rate on PC" can be screenshotted and recorded, so media headlines built almost entirely around that point.

3. **On GitHub, with installers handed out directly** : after upstream Eden was taken down by DMCA and moved to a self-hosted Forgejo, Eden-NX2 only shipped Windows pre-releases. Eglantine lives on GitHub with one-click downloads for all three platforms and a new build almost every hour, so ordinary players don't have to compile anything. The Windows package has been downloaded 386k times, showing the user base is mainly everyday PC players.

4. **Open PRs, with AI agents speeding things up** : in 9 days there were 600 PRs/issues, with outside contributors (rdenno, Duck912, zirulo, SmileyTatsu, PastaLaPate, kraibse) submitting fixes for GPU, scheduling and memory. The repo has dedicated "agent tooling", so iteration is much faster than upstream, and the "runs best" reputation rests on that.

5. **Built on existing foundations:** A decade of Switch 1 code from yuzu → Sudachi → Eden, plus the Switch 2 and Switch 1 architectures are similar (both NVIDIA + ARM), so it went from "boots up" to "playable" in about a week.

### VI. Differentiation

Technically there's nothing original; the core code comes from Eden/NX2 and yuzu. The differentiation is in **distribution and cadence** : an official-looking GitHub repo, prebuilt packages for three platforms, open merging, hourly builds, and Mario Kart running best. That really is why it took off: Eden-NX2 shipped a few hours earlier with the same technical roots, but media and players ended up linking Eglantine.

That differentiation won't hold, though. Lichii used the same playbook (fork, fix the pain points, ship an Android build) and reached about 70% of Eglantine's stars within two days, with 11-05 to 11-06 gaining 1,258 in a single day, faster than Eglantine over the same period. The maintainer Djihads80 is a 3D artist by trade (his earlier repos used Fortnite assets, and his bio reads "Larp it till you make it"); merging and CI are mostly handled by PastaLaPate, and the project runs on community support.

### VII. Visibility and copycats

- **Visibility: already widely covered.** Mainstream gaming tech outlets such as XDA, Wccftech, TweakTown and DSOGaming have all written about it, with threads in several large Reddit subs and a pile of YouTube tutorials. There's no revenue to speak of (no donations accepted).

- **Lots of copycats** : Lichii (3.2k stars), EglantinePS5, Orchid, ZendNevs, selevet, PokeDinner, the Eden SX2A/NX2A Android builds, KartLink-P2P (multiplayer), playDB-CNT (launcher), NSP-Box (packaging tool, 504 stars); there are already 123 GitHub repos with "eglantine" in the name or description.

- **SEO sites and malware riding the name** : SEO download sites like eglantineemulator.com and lichiiemulator.com; a fake repo, EglantineDev/Eglantine-Switch-Emulator; someone on r/SwitchPirates2 reported "Eglantine Virus Detected on Build 135", suspected to come from a fake site. In other words, traffic under this name is already being harvested for SEO and malware distribution.

### VIII. What to take from it

- **When a platform event breaks, take the spot for "the ready-to-use build"** : when the technical roots are the same, whoever first puts a double-clickable package on the most searchable platform (GitHub) gets the traffic.

- **Spread it with a representative, screenshot-worthy case** (the carriage at 60 FPS) rather than a feature checklist, which is far more useful.

- **Open the repo and merge frequently with AI agents** : hundreds of PRs can pile up in a few days, and iteration speed is what keeps the "best to use" reputation.

- **The money is in the periphery** : the project itself makes no money; what actually draws traffic is SEO download sites, tutorial YouTubers, news accounts, and malware.

### 9. What I'm still unsure about

- Whether and when Nintendo will DMCA it (2026-02 has already taken down 401 repos; GitHub repos are the easiest to hit). If it's taken down, traffic will likely shift to Lichii or a version on a self-hosted git.

- How many of the 500k downloads are real, distinct users (repeat downloads and mirror scraping can't be separated out).

- Discord size and daily activity, not verified.

- What the relationship between Djihads80 and "started by developer Camille LaVey" (Eden's lead) really is; the README was adapted from Eden's and may just have carried over that credit line.

- How many games beyond Mario Kart and Splatoon Raiders actually run, since no official compatibility list has been published yet.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.