Project Nativ recompiles four PS Vita games into native PC programs, Killzone: Mercenary online play included

A new open-source project turns your own copies of Killzone: Mercenary, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Unit 13 and Shovel Knight into native Windows, Linux and macOS programs.

AI-drafted from 4 sources. This story was written with AI from the outside reporting listed under Sources, and checked by automated tools before it went up. The originals have the full detail.

The PS Vita has had a capable emulator in Vita3K for years. Project Nativ takes the other route: it recompiles Vita games ahead of time into ordinary programs for Windows, Linux and macOS. The repository went public on 27 October, the first public beta followed on 29 October, and version 0.1.5 landed on 2 November.

Four games so far

Each game needs its own pack, and only exact US releases work for now:

European and Japanese copies are not supported yet, and nor are the later patches for Uncharted, Unit 13 and Shovel Knight. The fixes for each game patch code at fixed addresses, so the game's main program has to match the build they were written for. The README promises higher resolutions, wider screens, 60fps and mouse aiming, depending on the game.

How it works

A static recompiler translates the game's ARMv7 code, including Thumb-2, VFP and NEON instructions, into C once, and that C is compiled into a native program. The Sony libraries a game loads, such as libgxm, libc and FIOS, are recompiled the same way from your firmware. Under them sits a runtime that stands in for the Vita's kernel and hardware, drawing on your GPU and playing the sound.

None of that ships in the repository. You supply your own copy of each game and the firmware update file from Sony's site, and the tools decrypt and recompile them on your machine. The project says Nativ contains no Sony or game code. There is a launcher that walks players through setup, and a Linux install script brings its own compiler and Python for machines like the Steam Deck that have neither.

Online without PSN

The most unusual part is multiplayer. According to the online play guide, Sony's own servers are never contacted. Each copy of Nativ runs a small matchmaking service, the player who creates a room hosts it, and Killzone's login server is answered inside the game itself. Killzone's matches and Botzone and Unit 13's two-player co-op both work this way. The guide says the plan is for a community revival server to become the default for public Killzone matches, so ports and real Vitas share one pool of players.

Early days

This is a public beta, and the 0.1.5 notes show it. They fix Killzone takedowns freezing at 60fps, scrambled textures in Uncharted on AMD graphics cards when rendering at twice the resolution, and Linux builds that broke in 0.1.3 and 0.1.4. The README also says much of the code and documentation was written with AI assistance under the developer's direction. Nativ is free software under the GPL, version 2 or later.

Sources

Image: Image: Project Nativ

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