Nintendo Switch: Grand Theft Auto III has been ported to the Switch – Playable with pretty good performance thanks to RE’d game engine!
With the exception of Grand Theft Auto 1 & 2, none of the series’ main games ever ended up on Nintendo consoles but that hasn’t stopped the homebrew community from porting GTA III to the Switch. In this article, we’ll be looking at this port which is based upon the re3 engine that was created through reverse-engineering!
Grand Theft Auto III ported to the Switch
Earlier this week, Adrian Graber (AGraber) ported the re3 game engine to the Nintendo Switch which was created through reverse-engineering Grand Theft Auto III. This game engine port, which is aptly called re3-nx, allows one to play Grand Theft Auto III on hacked Switch consoles without having to boot in Android and as per gameplay videos posted online, performance is quite solid provided that you use uncompressed audio files.
Details about the re3 engine itself are a tad scant although it is suspected by some, such as MVG, that the PlayStation 2 port of GTA III might have aided in its creation. This is because this port contains debug symbols which can pretty helpful in reverse-engineering even though the PlayStation NDA from around 2005 clearly states that these should be removed before release!
How can I play GTA III on my Switch?
As this port is unofficial, you need a hacked Switch console running either Atmosphere or SX OS together with files for the PC version of GTA III. Provided you have these on hand, the process is roughly as follows:
- Grab the latest version of re3-nx from the link below
- This contains an NRO file that you can open via hbmenu together with a script for converting GTA 3’s audio files to play better with re3 if your files don’t contain uncompress WAV files. A ZIP file with re3-specific fixes is also included
- Copy the re3 NRO file to ‘/switch/re3/re3.nro’ on your microSD card
- Transfer the files from the PC version of GTA III to the ‘/switch/re3’ directory where your NRO file resides
- If you don’t wish to copy all files & folders to your Switch, you can copy those that are actually needed by following a list linked below
- While it’s not 100% needed, AGraber recommends you extract ‘gamefiles.zip’ (ZIP file containing re3-specific fixes) to the aforementioned ‘/switch/re3’ directory
Conclusion
You may read more about re3-nx and getting GTA III on your Switch by checking out the links below. It’s also a good idea to check out the ‘Known Issues’ list in the GBATemp thread linked below as the game might mess up a bit when docking or undocking.
re3-nx GBATemp Link (more information + instructions + Known Issues): https://gbatemp.net/threads/re3-nx-reverse-engineered-gta-3-for-nintendo-switch.574308/
re3-nx GitHub Release Page (download links for the aforementioned files + list of required files from the PC’s GTA 3 port): https://github.com/AGraber/re3-nx/releases
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