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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the 1991 classic from Nintendo has been reverse-engineered to bring it natively to more platforms. Nintendo are no doubt warming up their lawyers. Available on GitHub under the MIT license, it notes the game is fully playable from start to finish and it does need the original ROM for the resources, so it doesn't include the copyrighted assets.

Some extra features were added too including:

  • Support for pixel shaders.
  • Support for enhanced aspect ratios of 16:9 or 16:10.
  • Higher quality world map.
  • Support for MSU audio tracks.
  • Secondary item slot on button X (Hold X in inventory to select).
  • Switching current item with L/R keys.

Looks like it's supported to run it across Linux, macOS and Windows too!

You can see their own side-by-side comparison in the below video:

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24 comments
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dpanter Feb 1, 2023
Magnificent project! Compiled without issues on Siduction.
Grabbed Libretros GLSL shaders git for that sweet SABR shader, then Puzzledudes ALttP MSU1 Deluxe music pack and the thing works perfectly with my Logitech F710 gamepad. Enabled some QoL stuff in the zelda3.ini file and boom.

One of the best Zelda games just got upgraded to Godlike.
legluondunet Feb 1, 2023
Playstation is opening its doors to PC gamers, they are now selling some of their games on Steam and you can play other PS games on the cloud with PS+
With Xbox Game Pass, PC gamers can play XBOX games on the cloud.
The physical console is evolving towards dematerialized and you can play the same games on Windows, Linux, Android through the cloud... Whatever the OS or your hardware.
What awaits Nintendo to follow? There are a lot of Nintendo game fan projects, why? Because people want to play their games, old or new, and they can't! The competition is fierce, I think Nintendo should open up its market, not stay cloistered on a machine or they will disappear, like Sega before.
JamesKruk Feb 1, 2023
Very exciting.
officernice Feb 1, 2023
Inb4 Nintendo kills it like they do anything their fans create.
Bumadar Feb 1, 2023
Playstation is opening its doors to PC gamers, they are now selling some of their games on Steam and you can play other PS games on the cloud with PS+
With Xbox Game Pass, PC gamers can play XBOX games on the cloud.
The physical console is evolving towards dematerialized and you can play the same games on Windows, Linux, Android through the cloud... Whatever the OS or your hardware.
What awaits Nintendo to follow? There are a lot of Nintendo game fan projects, why? Because people want to play their games, old or new, and they can't! The competition is fierce, I think Nintendo should open up its market, not stay cloistered on a machine or they will disappear, like Sega before.

The mentally of Nintendo seems quite simple, they are happy how things are now, they selling a lot of consoles, they don't really compete with pc/xbox/ps on the AAA front (flashy gfx etc etc). They got their zelda, Mario and focus more on family fun. They shoot anything and everything down which tries to touch their stuff, fan based or not. Sad but that is how it is and as long as they are happy with the yearly results it will not change.
Purple Library Guy Feb 1, 2023
Nintendo are no doubt warming up their lawyers.
That makes Nintendo's lawyers sound somewhat robotic. But I'm sure that wasn't Liam's intent.
Rusty Feb 1, 2023
Considering all of the code is reverse-engineered and all the assets are extracted from a ROM, there's not really much Nintendo can do here. The case law isn't on their side. This is why we have projects like sm64pc and Ship of Harkinian.
legluondunet Feb 1, 2023
Considering all of the code is reverse-engineered and all the assets are extracted from a ROM, there's not really much Nintendo can do here. The case law isn't on their side. This is why we have projects like sm64pc and Ship of Harkinian.

If only you could be right, remember Rockstar GTA 3 and Re3 github project...
MadWolf Feb 1, 2023
Considering all of the code is reverse-engineered and all the assets are extracted from a ROM, there's not really much Nintendo can do here. The case law isn't on their side. This is why we have projects like sm64pc and Ship of Harkinian.

If only you could be right, remember Rockstar GTA 3 and Re3 github project...
that project did not get clean room reverse-engineered but Rockstar has failed to take down the code for that project HA HA
Luticus Feb 1, 2023
Works very well on a Steamdeck. Controls worked out of the box. If you run this, adjust the ini file to enable extra features like 16:10 res and other nice things.
tpau Feb 1, 2023
Now we just need a few modders that create higher resolutioon textures of the same visual style
legluondunet Feb 1, 2023
I just compiled it and play a little with it, it's very nice.
Habitually I prefer to play retro games in their native ratio, here 4:3.
But I tried 16:9 feature for Zelda 3 and I have to say it looks good, it's not shocking.
Adding a Shader like crt-royale and it's not far from perfect.
seanbutnotheard Feb 1, 2023
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It would be cool if this engine became the centerpiece of a Zelda-Classic-like modding community. ZC yielded some really neat fan-made game projects and high-quality reusable game assets but for a long time seemed limited by the engine (which started as a Zelda 1 clone).
jrgiacone Feb 1, 2023
Is it better to compile on the desktop and move the folder over to the steam deck, or would it be best to compile on the steam deck?
olaf Feb 2, 2023
It's playable on PC?
Luticus Feb 2, 2023
Is it better to compile on the desktop and move the folder over to the steam deck, or would it be best to compile on the steam deck?

That's what I did. Just compiled it on my Debian machine via the make command and created a directory ~/zelda3 then moved the zelda3 binary, the zelda3.ini file, and then created a ~/zelda3/tables directory and moved the zelda3_assets.dat file into it. Those are the only 3 files you need to make it work, everything else seems to be unnecessary. Then I made a tarball by moving to the home directory and used tar cvzf zelda3.tar.gz zelda3. Then I used scp from my steam deck to transfer with:

scp username@computername:~/zelda3.tar.gz .

Note the dot (.) at the end.

Next I extracted the tarball to my memory card via tar xvzf zelda3.tar.gz /run/media/memorycardmountpoint

Finally I added it to my steam setup as a non-steam game, and used steamgriddb plugin in decky loader to grab artwork and such for the game.
Luticus Feb 2, 2023
It's playable on PC?

yes
const Feb 2, 2023
Nintendo are no doubt warming up their lawyers.
That makes Nintendo's lawyers sound somewhat robotic. But I'm sure that wasn't Liam's intent.

Damn, I bet one could make a nice Nintendo-like rpg about a person who developed a Nintendo fan-game and then fights their way through thousands of lawyers. CEO bossfights and all.
Jpxe Feb 2, 2023
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I hope they make a Flatpak sometime for easy installation
legluondunet Feb 2, 2023
I hope they make a Flatpak sometime for easy installation

Or an AppImage.
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