Daytona USA Lands on Nintendo Switch via Static Recompilation
Daytona-NX-Modern brings Daytona USA to the Nintendo Switch via Sega Model 2 static AOT recompilation, locking at an authentic 57.52 FPS.
Arcade classic Daytona USA is running natively on the Nintendo Switch thanks to Daytona-NX-Modern, a new static AOT recompilation project by developer Thorhax. If you want arcade-perfect racing on your handheld without fighting an emulator, this release hits the spot.
The port translates the Sega Model 2 i960 RISC CPU, Fujitsu MB86234 TGP DSP, and 68000 sound CPU programs straight to native ARM64 instructions. It features a multithreaded software rasterizer split across Core 0 and user Core 2, cutting raster time by roughly 50%. The result is a locked 57.52 FPS at stock 1020 MHz, matching the authentic arcade refresh rate while dodging 60 Hz VSync judder. Meanwhile, another developer, toniisound, dropped a concurrent independent release via daytona-recomp-nx.
How to Try It
- Grab the release from the Daytona-NX-Modern Releases page.
- Prepare your own MAME
daytona.zip(Revision A) arcade ROM set. - Create a folder on your SD card at
sdmc:/switch/daytona/and place yourdaytona.nroanddaytona.zipinside. - Launch via the Homebrew Menu using Title Override for full memory access.
