One of the most notorious Nintendo Switch ports is now running much better on Nintendo’s brand new hardware, released just yesterday. The backward compatibility feature on the Switch 2 appears to exceed expectations, even improving Batman: Arkham Knight’s infamous performance issues.

The Switch 2’s backwards compatibility is proving more impressive than anticipated, as it helps resolve the severe performance problems of Batman: Arkham Knight—a port widely considered the Switch’s worst. Digital Foundry experts recently published a video highlighting how Nintendo’s next-gen console, available since yesterday, can run Rocksteady’s problematic Batman title without the disastrous performance issues seen on the original system.

The translation layer used to run the original code on the new system has shown to be effective, allowing the game to take advantage of the Switch 2’s upgraded specs. Of course, compromises made by the port developer regarding texture quality and the lack of anti-aliasing can’t be fixed, and some stability problems remain. Still, the fact that the Switch 2 delivers dramatically better performance with backward-compatible games is promising. The video also noted improvements in The Witcher 3’s performance on Switch 2, though these findings are based on preliminary, cursory testing by the publication.

Despite being a solid title overall, Batman: Arkham Knight has been infamous ever since its launch due to its terrible state on PC, which required multiple patches and was even pulled from sale for a time. The Switch port, released in December 2023, was also infamous—at times dropping to 0 FPS, so badly that players would be staring at a frozen image for several seconds.

So far, the initial results look encouraging. Only time will tell how well Nintendo Switch 2 performs in the long run.

Source: WCCFTech