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Metroid Prime 4 Recomp — native Windows build

A native PC build of your own copy of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for Windows. It is built on the SwitchRecomp runtime by MZ Labs: the game's Switch code is recompiled ahead of time into a native Windows DLL on your PC, and the Switch GPU's work is translated to OpenGL.

This is a Windows build of linuxopt/mp4-recomp, which develops and play-tests the game on Linux. The game code, renderer and audio are the same; see that project's README for the full list of rendering, stutter, shader and audio fixes.

No Nintendo files are included. No game code, no RomFS, no keys, no generated C. You need your own legally obtained, dumped copy of the game. The release holds the runtime, the recompiler and a bundled GCC and Python; it compiles the game from your files during the first-run setup. The only game-related file inside is a manifest of RomFS file names, sizes and SHA-1 hashes, used to verify your dump.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

• GPU: an OpenGL 4.3+ driver (AMD, NVIDIA or Intel).

• Your game dump: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond for Switch, program 010019A01E2F2000, with the update whose main has build ID 8275FBE1EC5191C279F3A943AD8524F4BAB087A3 (the cartridge alone is build E860CBED… and is refused). Either:

  • the files from your Switch: the game as .xci (cartridge) or .nsp (eShop) and the update as .nsp (DBI or nxdumptool), plus your Switch's prod.keys (Lockpick_RCM) in %USERPROFILE%\.switch\ or %APPDATA%\Ryujinx\system\ (yuzu-style %APPDATA%\<emulator>\keys\ folders work too); or
  • an extracted ExeFS (main, main.npdm, rtld, sdk, subsdk*) and RomFS (Worlds\, UI\, Preload\, Kernel.pak, …) with the update applied.

  Setup checks the build ID and verifies all 445 RomFS files (26.9 GB) against the manifest.

• About 30 GB of free space on the drive you put the game folder on.

Controllers, audio and the game's videos need nothing extra: SDL2 is included and the video decoders are built in.

Install and play

1. Download MetroidPrime4Recomp-PC-vX.Y.Z.zip from the latest release and extract it anywhere with room, for example D:\Games\. You get a Metroid Prime 4 Beyond folder.
2. Run Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.exe in it.
3. First run: the setup screen asks for your game (its .xci / .nsp file, or an extracted folder) and the update (its .nsp, or an extracted folder). Press Start Setup: it verifies the files, copies them into the game folder and compiles the game with the bundled GCC (a few minutes on a fast CPU).
4. Press Play. The first launch builds shaders in the background; later launches load them from the cache.

Everything stays in the game folder, next to the EXE:

Path	What
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.ini	settings, rewritten with every option explained on the first start
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond_data\	the installed game data, saves, cheats and mods
shader_cache\	compiled shaders
Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.log, setup.log	logs for bug reports

The Play screen can also add the game to Steam as a non-Steam game and install updates from this repository's releases.

Saves

Saves are plain files in Metroid Prime 4 Beyond_data\save\user\.

Using your Switch save: export it with a save manager on a homebrew-enabled Switch (JKSV or Checkpoint), close the game, back up the existing save.bin, and copy the exported files into that folder. A save from a newer game update than the one this build targets may not load; restore your backup if it doesn't. Nintendo's cloud saves can't be downloaded to a PC.

Controls and the in-game menu

• Xbox controllers work as they are; SDL2 adds Switch Pro, Joy-Con, DualShock 4, DualSense and 8BitDo over USB or Bluetooth (pair Bluetooth controllers in Windows Settings first). ZL is the left trigger.
• Keyboard and mouse play like a PC shooter: WASD to move, mouse to look, left click shoots, right click locks on, middle click or F fires the subweapon, Space jumps, E interacts, Left Ctrl or C is the Morph Ball, Q switches visors, V is the Vi-O-La, 1-4 pick a shot, Esc or Tab opens the game's menu. G fires the lasso (keep holding to yank up). In the Morph Ball: left click bombs, F power bombs, Space boosts (hold, release), Q springs, right click is the Spider Ball. On the Vi-O-La: left click goes, Shift or right click brakes, Space boosts, E fires.
• F1 or the Home / Guide button opens the in-game menu (settings, cheats, FOV, upscaling).
• F3 saves a screenshot to captures\, F4 toggles the 60 fps limit, F5 writes a frame trace for bug reports, F11 toggles fullscreen.

Known issues

• Windows is newer than Linux here. The game was play-tested on Linux; the Windows build compiles from the same code and reaches the setup screen, but has had less play time. Please report what you find.
• Shader compile threads with their own OpenGL contexts are Linux-only so far, so new areas may stutter a little more while shaders compile.
• VSync is off by default on Windows (forced_vsync=1 in the .ini turns it on).
• First visit to a new area can still compile a handful of shaders the game loads moments before drawing them.
• Loading a save freezes for about 0.5 s while the lighting volumes upload.
• The FOV slider has no effect yet (the camera address for this build hasn't been found).
• Not modelled yet: a filter effect on two audio submixes and an aux effect, so a few sounds may be clearer than intended.

Troubleshooting

• Attach Metroid Prime 4 Beyond.log (the last five are kept) and setup.log to bug reports. The Play screen's bug report button zips them for you.
• Screenshots with F3; a frame trace with F5 at the moment something looks wrong helps most.
• Setup can't find prod.keys: put it in %USERPROFILE%\.switch\, or choose an extracted game folder instead.
• Rendering glitches: delete the shader_cache folder once to rule out a stale cache (the next launch rebuilds it).

Building from source

Developer notes and the bring-up log are in DEVELOPMENT.md. On Windows, from a PowerShell prompt in the repository:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File windows\get_tools.ps1
$env:GLSLANG = "$PWD\third_party\glslang\bin\glslang.exe"
.\build.bat release 1.2.3

get_tools.ps1 downloads the pinned toolchain (GCC 14.2.0 from winlibs, Python 3.12 embeddable, glslang 16.6.0, SDL2) and checks each file's SHA-256. build.bat release X.Y.Z puts the game folder and its zip in release\X.Y.Z\; plain build.bat builds only bin\runtime_win64_win32.exe.

Releases are built by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/release.yml): push a tag vX.Y.Z and the workflow builds on Windows and publishes the zip, the in-place update package and update.txt as a GitHub release.

Credits

Copies, forks and builds of this project must keep these credits where users can see them (NOTICE.txt).

Source

This repository is a Windows build of linuxopt/mp4-recomp, taken at commit 31ff5d5 (release v2026.11.02) with its full history. All the game work (the Prime 4 bring-up, rendering, shader, audio and video fixes, the setup and Play screens) is theirs. linuxopt/mp4-recomp is in turn a fork of Metroid Dread Recomp by yozander2009-stack and contributors.

Windows port

The Windows build, packaging and releases in this repository were made by PlagueDrRiess with Claude (Claude Opus 5.5, by Anthropic) as AI pair programmer, who co-authored these commits:

• the release packager fix that let build.bat release finish (beyond/make_release.py),
• windows/get_tools.ps1 (the pinned, checksum-verified toolchain) and the GitHub Actions release workflow,
• this Windows README, the Windows text in the setup screen and the release's README.txt, and pointing the Play screen's updates and bug reports at this repository.

Everyone else

• yozander2009-stack and contributors: the recompiled runtime and launcher this port is built from
• linuxopt: the Metroid Prime 4 fork and its fixes (made with Claude as AI pair programmer too), including the later Ice Belt fog and Control Beam fixes and the built-in cheat hooks ported here from 079dfb0
• Gamerjin, Luffysan and others on GBAtemp, with pointers by ZiT866: the cheats behind the built-in cheat hooks
• melos444 (GameBanana): the mod the Green Energy 10x option is based on
• MZ Labs: SwitchRecomp (Apache-2.0); "SwitchRecomp by MZ Labs" and NOTICE.txt must be kept
• ScarletNX: the native Vulkan renderer (GPL-3.0)
• AMD: FidelityFX Super Resolution 1 (MIT)
• Dear ImGui (MIT), libvpx and OpenH264 (BSD), SDL2 and zlib (zlib licence), GCC / MinGW-w64, Python
• Program icon: Metroid icon created by Smashicons - Flaticon

Licences

The released program is distributed under GPL-3.0 (LICENSE), because it contains the ScarletNX renderer; its source is this repository. Each source file keeps its own licence (LICENSE.txt and NOTICE.txt for SwitchRecomp's Apache-2.0; Apache-2.0 and MIT code is GPL-3.0-compatible). The licence texts are also in the release's licenses folder.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is © Nintendo. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.