Nintendo’s action-adventure game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, has been fully decompiled, opening up the possibility of a native PC port.
Twitter/X user and modder TakaRikka_ and their team have been working on a decompilation project for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess since September, 2020, for over 5 years, and they have now fully decompiled the US version of the original GameCube game, opening up the possibility of a native PC version. This essentially means that every compiled function has now been matched with the original code.
The Github repository for the project can be found here. The developer mentioned that the project wouldn’t have been completed without the help of the zeldaret and GameCube/Wii decompilation communities. They have personally put in more than 1000 hours into its development, and there’s still other work to be done. Regardless, they said that this i a major milestone for the project.
Development was started by The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess speedrunning community, and the most common version used by them is GameCube USA version. As such, it was the version chosen for decompilation. However, the project’s FAQ mentions that the long-term goal is to produce a highly documented and complete C++ codebase for every version of Twilight Princess. It is also stated that having clear and readable source code will aid speedrunners, glitch hunters, and modders in learning how particular parts of the game work.
For the uninitiated, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was originally released on November 19, 2006 for the GameCube and Wii. It is the second entry in the Child Era of the “Victorious Hero” timeline, which follows an alternate outcome in which the Hero of Time triumphs over Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time and then returns to his original era. Using the knowledge he gained, he alerts the young Princess Zelda to the grim future awaiting Hyrule.
