We all know that, outside of some Japanese Hudson Soft ports, Nintendo never supported PC’s. Officially, themselves, I do not believe they have at all. That is why this reverse engineered port is so interesting. Yep, reverse engineered, this is not using emulation which is very controversial and could be troublesome.
Link goes 16-bit
Released in the United States in April 1992, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past by Nintendo, was the first 16-bit outing for the adventurer (beating out the CD-i crap by a year or so). The last time we saw Link’s adventures in Hyrule were in Zelda II: The Adventures of Link on the Nintendo Entertainment System. A slight departure from what fans were used to coming from the first game. With A Link to the Past, it was clear that the franchise was returning to its roots, ever so shallow as they were as this was only the third game in the series at this time.
Everything was more detailed, bigger, while remaining very familiar to fans. Gone were the side scrolling action stages, everything was handled on the overworld view, just like the first game.
Fans were happy.
Fans doing what fans do
How do you top, arguably, the best 2D Legend of Zelda entry? Well, if you are xander-haj, then you would put in the work to reverse engineer the game. This makes the game potentially possible to release on platforms it was never meant to run on natively.
According to Neowin.net, this rebuild of A Link to the Past is over 80,000 lines of code. That is a lot.
Unfortunately, right now, this rebuild requires an emulator called LakeSNES to work properly. Once the code is separated from this emulator (needing PPU and DSP libraries to work), we could see A Link to the Past ported to the Sony PlayStation, Sega Genesis or even the Sega Game Gear among other platforms.
Why this rebuild matters
It would not be all that interesting if this was just another “enhanced for X” emulator port of the game. No, there are a few changes made.
One being a secondary item slot has been implemented in this version of A Link to the Past. Yep, according to NintendoLife swap between two items instead of one. No longer having to visit the inventory screen to swap items.
Graphical additions and modifications have been made already. Faster transition times, speedier text, widescreen support among many others.
Not a bed of roses here
Over on Kataku.com, the legality of this rebuild is brought up. Considering you still need a copy of A Link to the Past to get assets from, the developer can argue a level of separation from emulation needs. This is because once you have the necessary files, you no longer need the cart/ROM.
I don’t know, this sounds amazing so grab it while you can. Nintendo is not above unleashing lawyers on things like this. We all know independent developers don’t have the money, or legal prowess, to defend themselves in court long.
Are you a Zelda fan? What is your favorite entry? Let me know in the comments below. I am partial to the SNES A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds on the Nintendo 3DS.