The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is now playable on PC, thanks to a fan project
Friends, 2022 is the year of Zelda on the PC. Not because Nintendo has had a Scrooge-like change of heart, but because dedicated teams of engineers have seen fit to give us both a fan-made PC port of Ocarina of Time(opens in new tab) and, now, a «reverse-engineered clone» of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.
The clone comes courtesy of Github user snesrev(opens in new tab), and comprises a cool 70-80,000 lines of code covering every inch of the original game. If you have a (legal!) copy of the original's ROM lying around, you can play the whole thing on your PC from start to finish right now. You'll have to extract the levels and images and compile them with the clone's code yourself, though. The authors can't include them by default because that would be tremendously illegal.
Playing A Link to the Past right there on your PC is pretty neat, but we've been able to emulate these old Zeldas for years and years at this point. The really interesting part of this project is the space it opens up for weird modding efforts.
The fan-port of Ocarina of Time has been equipped with all manner of upgrades(opens in new tab) since it debuted earlier this year: there's high-res textures and widescreen support, of course, but also gyro aiming, adjustable climbing speed, and a mod that turns every interactable item into a volatile high explosive. Naturally.
The potential of a native PC port of A Link to the Past is plain to see. The game already has a very popular randomiser that's become a staple of events like Awesome Games Done Quick(opens in new tab), but using it means futzing around with your ROM every time you want to change the randomisation. A PC port could have a randomiser built-in, making the process as simple as
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