If you are looking at an NSP file for TotK, you will need a just to breathe. The "Sigpatches" Reality Here is where the conversation gets technical (and slightly grey). A stock Nintendo Switch cannot run an NSP file unless it is signed with Nintendo’s private encryption key.

Nintendo has been notoriously aggressive regarding TotK. In the weeks leading up to its May 2023 launch, they issued thousands of DMCA takedowns for NSP links. The reason? TotK was the most pirated Switch game of the year, largely because the NSP was leaked two weeks before the street date.

It’s been over a year since Link descended from the floating islands of the Great Sky Island, and yet, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK) still dominates the conversation. Whether you are marvelling at the Ultrahand physics or getting lost in the Depths, this sequel to Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece of scope and engineering.

Why does this matter? The Nintendo Switch officially supports microSD cards up to 2TB, but the console has a hard limit on usable game data. 16GB pushes the Switch hardware to its absolute limit. To put it in perspective, Breath of the Wild was roughly 13.4GB. That extra 3GB in TotK is packed with the physics engine for Fuse, the verticality of the Sky Islands, and the procedural nature of the Depths.

If you are a collector, backing up your physical copy to an NSP via a homebrewed Switch (using tools like nxdumptool) is the only "clean" way to get this file. If you own a physical copy of Tears of the Kingdom and want the convenience of not swapping cartridges, converting your game to an NSP is a neat project. However, for the average player, sticking to the eShop download or the cart is vastly simpler.

But if you’ve spent any time in the darker corners of the Nintendo Switch homebrew scene, you’ve likely seen a specific acronym floating around: .

For the homebrew and emulation community to play Tears of the Kingdom via an NSP, the console must be "custom firmware" (CFW) ready, usually Atmosphere. This requires —small patches that bypass the signature checks.

Hyrule is worth the admission price. Have you attempted to dump your copy of Tears of the Kingdom? What format do you prefer: XCI or NSP? Let us know in the comments below.