Featured Image Credit: Nintendo
Topics: The Legend Of Zelda, Nintendo, PC, Free Games
A PC port for another game in The Legend of Zelda series has been confirmed following a new teaser.
As the decompilation scene progresses even further, we’re seeing more and more unofficial PC ports arise out of these passion projects.
We’ve covered other Zelda PC ports in the past, including Ship of Harkinian, which is based on Ocarina of Time, as well as the ports for Twilight Princess and Link’s Awakening DX.
Video Game Esoterica has shown off a new decompiled port of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, with the game running natively on PC.
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The video, which I’ve embedded below, shows off around ten minutes of gameplay from a “WIP build” of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap running on PC.
Altogether, the footage that has been shown off so far is pretty much identical to the original game, with very few glitches and issues that come as a result of decompiling the game’s code.
However, while there is a Github repository that allows you to download this right now, there isn’t a finished build ready yet. As Video Game Esoterica notes, “this is definitely one where you want to wait for an actual finished build because it really is just for testing.”
There’s no word from Video Game Esoterica on when this port will release, though they do say that the full version should allow for alternate aspect ratios such as 4:3 and 16:9, taking advantage of modern screens.
For now, we'd recommend waiting on the full release instead of grabbing the in-development version.
For those who don’t know, decompilation refers to the process of recreating a piece of software from encrypted code to something that is readable.
It’s a painstaking process that can take a long time to complete, but once it’s finished it allows you to take that code and do more things with it. In particular, developers have been able to create PC ports out of retro games for consoles like the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64.
It essentially gives you a lot more options to improve performance, graphics, and controls over doing something like using an emulator.
In addition to The Legend of Zelda series, unofficial PC ports of games like Super Mario Bros., Animal Crossing, Sonic Generations, and Driver 2 have been pretty popular in the past, and also have a thriving modding community.
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is the 12th entry in Nintendo’s popular action-adventure series. Released exclusively for the Game Boy Advance in 2004, the game was a prequel to Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures.
It retains the top-down perspective that games like A Link to the Past had, and also includes new features and mechanics.
It was received well by critics, with a Metacritic score of 89/100 and ending up selling 1.76 million copies worldwide by 2006. To this day, it remains a popular game among fans of the franchise.
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