Remote Controlling a Nintendo Switch for Fun and Profit

For a long time I’ve wanted to proxy controller input from my PC to my Nintendo Switch, and with the introduction of sys-botbase that is now a reality.

I’m glad you asked, anonymous reader, because the answer is “because you can do some truly dumb things that way.”

Let’s start with the obvious. If I’m running my controller inputs through my computer, I don’t have to worry about what the Nintendo Switch thinks is an acceptable input method. I can map a PS4 or PS5 controller to the Switch. This was already possible for certain types of controllers (namely XBox controllers) through Switch homebrew, but now I can take that to a ridiculous degree.

There’s some benefits to doing that - configuring an input display for a speedrunning stream is much easier, for instance. But that’s not the only benefit.

A computer can support as many controllers as you can plug into it at once, whereas the Switch supports either 4 or 8 dependent upon what you classify as a “controller.” sys-botbase only supports emulation of one controller at this time, which brings us to our first really dumb idea:

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