Chunks Of Half-Life 2 Are Hidden Inside Portal on Switch ⁠— And Hackers Are Getting Them Working

ign.com:

After yesterday’s Nintendo Direct Mini, Valve released Portal: Companion Collection, a bundle of Portal and Portal 2 for the Nintendo Switch. Within 24 hours, hackers have already found out that this bundle essentially contains a hidden game within its code, and it’s none other than Half-Life 2.

Yesterday, Twitter user @OatmealDome shared that they had found Half-Life 2 in its entirety (save for a few things like maps and music) within the game’s files.

[Portal 1]The Source Engine debuts on the Switch!- Likely based on the NVIDIA Shield port, with a little Xbox 360 sprinkled in- The entirety of Half-Life 2 (minus maps and music) is present in the ROM(!?), might be leftovers from Shield version- Uses OpenGL for rendering

@OatmealDome pointed out that Portal having bits and pieces of Half-Life 2 is expected because “Portal 1 is just a fancy mod of Half-Life 2.” However, they also found larger chunks like NPCs and voice clips that don’t have any correlation to Portal.

In fact, there are so many pieces that they were able to fully mod Half-Life 2 onto Switch using the fragments hidden within Portal.

Of course, the version of Half-Life 2 they constructed via Portal isn’t quite up to par with its PC predecessor — @OatmealDome noted that they edited out load times and built a bypass for crashes. That being said, it runs impressively smoothly for a mod constructed out of another game.

Aside from Portal: Companion Collection (and its hidden Half-Life 2 chunks), yesterday's Nintendo Direct Mini also gave way to other announcements like Persona on Switch.

Amelia Zollner is a freelance writer at IGN. Find them on Twitter: @ameliazollner.