Developers have achieved a real technical feat by bringing the mythical Zelda: A Link to the Past to PC and Switch. And this, without an emulator! On the program: all the content of the original game and many bonuses.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a video game that has become cult over time and, for many, the favorite game of the famous Nintendo franchise. As fans of the license eagerly await the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which will arrive on Switch on May 12, 2023, fans of retrogaming will be able to dive back into this universe with delight. Indeed, as reported Neowin, a team of developers, under the direction of a man named Snesrev, managed to rewrite – in code – the game released in 1991 in Japan on Super Nintendo to bring it to PC and Switch in an improved version, all without an emulator ! This is a true technical feat resulting from incredible reverse engineering work. The code works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Nintendo Switch – after that, nothing prevents a motivated coder from looking to run it on another platform – and is available on GitHub.
Zelda A Link to the Past: an improved version of the 1991 game
No less than 20 developers have tackled this titanic work of reverse engineering. Snesrev and his team were able to get the information about the build of the original game through the disassembly project called Zelda 3 JP, which aimed to turn the entire ROM of the game into raw code, which allowed them to to better understand how the original game was put together, and thus ensure that the reimplementation would be as accurate as possible. They then completely rewrote the game in C – a programming language – using over 80,000 lines of code. However, you must use several libraries of the SNES LakeSNES emulator to read them.
The port contains all the content, from puzzles to enemies, of the original game, but it goes even further by integrating some more than welcome new features. Thus, the game supports modern widescreen rendering, which gives players a wider field of view and makes the game more immersive. Audio has also been improved. Text transitions and scrolling are faster, while the world map is much more detailed. Players can also access their items faster with the X button – on an Xbox controller – which allows them to use an item faster. The L/R keys allow you to move from one object to another, and thus no longer waste time going back and forth with the inventory screen. Still, in terms of legality, a project of this type is quite limited, especially since Nintendo generally sees this kind of achievement with a dim view. The PC port of Super Mario 64 had, for example, quickly disappeared from the Internet at his request. Not to mention that you have to own the original game to enjoy it and comply with the legislation in force – which no one does –, otherwise it is a violation of copyright…