Setting up Ghidra

Ghidra is a powerful open-source reverse engineering tool developed by the National Security Agency (NSA). It allows you to analyze and decompile executable files, making it easier to understand how a game works and how to modify it.

Prerequisites

• JDK 21

Installing Ghidra

1. Go to the latest GitHub release.
2. Download the .zip file.
3. Extract the downloaded file to a location of your choice.
4. Open the extracted folder.
5. Run ./ghidraRun (macOS/Linux) or double-click ghidraRun.bat (Windows).

Installing Switch Loader

To analyze Animal Crossing: New Horizons or any Nintendo Switch game, you will need to install the Switch Loader plugin for Ghidra. This plugin allows Ghidra to understand and analyze Nintendo Switch executable files.

1. Go to the Switch Loader releases.
2. Download the .zip built for your Ghidra version. The version is in the release name, for example Ghidra_12.1.2.
3. Start Ghidra and use the “Install Extensions” dialog (File -> Install Extensions).
4. Click on the + button in the upper right corner.
5. Select the downloaded .zip and reopen Ghidra.

Tip

dt12345’s fork of Switch Loader is more up to date and has some extra features, but it has no releases, so you have to build it yourself (with JDK 21). Install the built .zip with the same steps.