Half-Life 2 files found on Portal Switch port

Modders get Half-Life 2 running on Switch less than a day after Portal Companion Collection releases

Following the Portal Companion Collection‘s release – announced at yesterday’s Nintendo Direct Mini – modders have managed to find a lot of Half-Life 2 assets in the collection’s files. From these files, “Switch, iOS, and macOS tinkerer” OatmealDome has managed to get Half-Life 2 running on Switch.

In a Twitter thread, OatmealDome starts by describing some details of the Portal port on Switch. They say it’s likely based on the port for the NVIDIA Shield and uses OpenGL rendering. They then note that “the entirety of Half-Life 2 (minus maps and music) is present in the ROM”.

So, does this mean Valve are prepping for a Half-Life Switch port? Maybe not, as OatmealDome puts it: “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”. However, they do then say “there are a lot of files that shouldn’t be there”, citing Half-Life specific assets.

Thanks to how similar both Portal and Half Life are and the leftover assets, OatmealDome managed to get Half-Life 2 running on Switch in about 8 hours.

Here’s the full video:

Half-way to playable

Obviously, there’s a lot of optimization work that would need doing. As we can see, the game chugs regularly and a lot of animations are missing. Also, as OatmealDome states in the video’s description, there are occasional crashes and “some maps are impossible to progress in”. But, a running port is a running port, and this is all within a day of Portal’s Switch release.

OatmealDome isn’t the only one to get Half-Life running. One reply to the thread shows user ArTuRMV shows them in gm_construct on the Switch. Meanwhile, another reply has user QuackCocaine loading into a dev test map.

No doubt, these modders won’t rest until they get Half-Life 2 fully playable on Switch. That is, if Valve don’t officially port it over before that happens.

Do you think modders will make Half-Life 2 playable on Switch? Or do you think Valve will beat them to the punch? Let us know your thoughts down in the comments below! Or, if you want to read more about versions of Half-Life not intended for release, check out our article on Half-Life: Ravenholm! You can also join our Discord to chat with us directly about all things gaming and entertainment!