This Unofficial Zelda PC Port Is About '90% Complete', Say Devs - Nintendo Life

A fan-made PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is in the works, and it's apparently almost done — and could be out as soon as next month.

"We actually started putting down code in the middle of December last year.

The N64 game was decompiled in November 2021 by the Zelda Reverse Engineering Team, which allowed Harbour Masters to almost immediately set to work on their port, using new code that reproduces the entire game while also allowing them to stay on the right side of the law.

Harbour Masters' version uses technology that was created to bring Super Mario 64 to PC, which allows it to support widescreen "out of the box".

And boy, does widescreen Ocarina of Time look good:.

Harbour Masters are dedicated to their craft, too — they've begun to code a library alongside the Ocarina of Time port, called "librultraship", which will make the N64-to-PC pipeline much easier for future developers, including themselves: “We expect this and our processes to result in a port of Majora’s Mask shortly after it reaches 100%,” they told VGC!

Formerly of Official Nintendo Magazine, GameSpot, and Xbox UK, you can now find Kate's writing all over the internet.

Only they think it's legal, just calling the game, the Legend of Zelda and/or Ocarina of Time is already copyright infringed.

Maybe mirror the whole adventure too so certain locations don't fall in place with the original but still had that familiar feeling, I'm sure Nintendo wouldn't catch that.

@nessisonett It is provided it is completely reversed engineered and they do not provide any copywritten code or assets.

But if they are just providing a decompiler and recompiler for a PC port...

This is how projects like Skywind and Skyblivion stay in the clear from Bethesda's legal teams despite using parts of the original game's assets?

I wonder when people will put Majoras Mask or Ocarina of Time on the gameboy.

So when is Nintendo going to take this down!

It's legal as long as they do it like SM64 PC port - you HAVE to do it yourself, with a Rom that's not provided by themselves.

@KateGray Is this like when Super Mario 64 became playable in a web browser about a year ago or is this something different.

@nessisonett Not really, because painitngs from Degas and other classic painters are not protected by copyright, Ocarina of Time only loses its copyright in the year 2094.

@nessisonett I don't understand how people cannot comprehend that this is more similar to how emulators work rather than a traditional port in regards to copyright.

They are just providing the software to decompile and then recompile it into a native port.

If it's anything like the Super Mario 64 PC port, this'll be a huge deal.

I am using a Retrode2, so i am providing the original Game.

The Game provides the copyrighted Stuff, the original Code on the PC is not copyrighted, as they wrote it themselfs.

@Azuris That would require Nintendo to release their software on PC?

And we know Nintendo has zero intention to do that for as long as they can?

Though it would be nice someday for them to release a Super Collection and give us a bone on the PC side?

It seems to me that if they where really that talented, they could come up with their own original game.

@Ravenmaster I'm not sure they can, since the creator wrote the code himself from scratch!

It's technically his code, and since he's not providing any of the assets from the game, there's no leg for Nintendo to stand on!

This is them showing love to the original work and to the community surrounding it.

By that logic, fans making art with pre-existing characters are untalented, and should strictly make original work, rather than doing what they like.

And it take TONS of talent and skill to reverse engineer a video game, written with your own code to match it perfectly.

Everyone saying "THIS IS DEFINITELY ILLEGAL" - this is super well established already

There are lots of reverse engineered software products out there like this

I know this is a Nintendo community, but it's really funny to see people want free restoration projects like this to be taken down, while Nintendo themselves put out the N64 version of OoT on their online service looking the way it did (I know they fixed the water now, but the fog still isn't there)

Reverse Engineered Code =/= IP or level design

Hope the hud elements adjusts seamlessly to the screen size like mario 64

@Ravenmaster The Super Mario 64 PC builder is still up, so if this is similar, I doubt they can do anything about it

Right now I wouldn't know where to start when it comes to working with roms like this, but considering I have experience in the overall field I could probably learn to do that as well if I sit down and do my research

But OK, I could buy ressources like this from someone who knows what he is doing

Can I write a good story (if the game is supposed to have that)

None of this matters when I want to port a game from one system to another

That is not saying a port like this is easy, in fact I could see this being very very hard in it's own way

But the point is that the skill set required for a project like this is different from the skillset you need to make your own game

I hope Somebody do a render96 for Ocarina of time

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