GTA 5 Homebrew Port Now Runs Full Story Missions on a Modded Switch Lite

The unofficial effort to get Grand Theft Auto V running on the Nintendo Switch has come a long way. A new video from the handheld-testing channel Deck Wizard shows full GTA 5 story missions and free roam on a Switch Lite, the smallest and least powerful console in the family, on the latest build of a native homebrew port.

This is the work of a developer known as M0jso, under the Paralympics Productions banner, and it is a native port rather than emulation. It takes the GTA V source code that leaked in 2023 and recompiles the game to run directly on the Switch's ARM chip, with no Android, Linux or streaming layer in between. To fit the console's 4 GB of memory, the team stripped out most of the DLC, compressed the assets and cut the draw distance, leaving the whole thing weighing at a lean 49GB.

Fair warning, this isn't a plug-and-play mod. You need a modded Switch on custom firmware and heavy overclocking, through tools like Horizon OC, to reach playable frame rates. Do that, and the game reportedly holds around 30 FPS in a lot of areas, roughly in line with the old PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. Saving works through the in-game phone.

Understandably, Grand Theft Auto Online, gyro, and HD rumble, aren't supported.

Back in 2024, we covered an early proof-of-concept from a different group, Superstar South, that got the prologue loading on a stock Switch. It was choppy, it crashed fast and it was more "look, it boots" than anything you would sit down and play. Two years and a lot of community work later, M0jso's port runs entire missions on the weakest Switch there is. It is a separate project, but it is the same leaked code paying off.

It fits a pattern of Grand Theft Auto fans building Rockstar Games ports the company has not released. At the moment, a separate group is working on a Grand Theft Auto IV project, recompiling the game for the Android and Switch. All of it comes as Rockstar keeps GTA V off Nintendo hardware entirely, where the official GTA option is a rough re-release in the form of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition, and as Grand Theft Auto VI is confirmed to skip the Switch 2.

The experiment arrives amid continued interest in whether GTA 6 could reach the Switch 2.

The project also faces an obvious rights issue: it uses leaked source code, and Rockstar's mod guidelines prohibit modifying games for platforms where they have not been officially released. Take-Two Interactive has taken action against other projects before. That history makes enforcement a real risk, not a confirmed outcome for this build.

More than a decade after launch, the footage shows an unofficial attempt to bring GTA V to a Nintendo handheld. It is not a Rockstar release.