Game code for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has been decompiled, and can now run natively on PC.
Based on the details stated regarding the project on Github, this is a reverse engineered clone of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past that runs natively on PC. It’s around 70 to 80 thousand lines of C/C++ code that re-implements all parts of the original game. The game is fully playable from start to end. Additionally, it can be configured to also run the original machine code side by side.
How To Run The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past On PC
- You’ll need a copy of the original game ROM to extract game resources, including levels and images
- Put the ROM in tables/zelda3.sfc
- Install python dependencies: pip install pillow and pip install pyyaml
- Run python extract_resources.py to extract resources from the ROM into a more human readable format
- Run python compile_resources.py to produce .h files that gets included by the C++ code
- Build the .sln file with Visual Studio on Windows
In addition to being able to run the original machine code side by side, this decompiled port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past also supports snapshots. The joypad input history is also saved in the snapshot. It’s also possible to do run a replay of your playthrough in turbo mode to verify that the game behaves correctly.
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The third game in The Legend of Zelda series was released in 1992 in North America and Europe after debuting in Japan in 1991.
The events of the first two Zelda games take place many years before the story begins. Link is portrayed by the player as he sets out to save Hyrule, vanquish Ganon, and save the Seven Sages’ offspring. It does away with the side-scrolling gameplay of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and returns to a top-down perspective akin to that of the first The Legend of Zelda. It introduced series mainstays like parallel universes and special items like the Master Sword.
