A fan-made The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time PC port is nearing completion and may release as early as next month, bringing one of the most popular Zelda games to a new platform.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the best-known (and most beloved) games in The Legend of Zelda franchise. Fans of this Nintendo 64 classic have worked on porting the game to PC and recreated a long-lost demo -- now, yet another project to bring this classic game to PC is nearing completion.
What We Know About the Fan-Made The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time PC Port
As VGC reports, a group of modders known as "Harbour Masters" has reverse-engineered the inner workings of this classic game to make The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time PC port -- a move that will hopefully avoid any potential legal issues from Nintendo.
You see, making a fan game is a complicated business -- if you make use of copyright assets, game code, or trademarks, you could soon find yourself on the business end of a cease & desist letter and/or a DMCA takedown. Many gamers have gotten their hopes up over a fan project only to have their hopes dashed by the closure of a project like we saw with The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link romhack.
Harbour Masters, however, may manage to avoid many of those issues simply because its The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time PC port is an entirely original creation. The files they intend to distribute will have none of the in-game assets, nor will it use any of Nintendo's code (leaked or otherwise). Essentially, they've recreated the game from scratch.
"[...] we packed assets into an external archive," a Harbour Masters developer told VGC. "No assets are linked into the exe. Our belief is that this will prevent a DMCA takedown from Nintendo as [a Super Mario 64 PC port] linked all of the assets into the exe file."
This does mean, however, that you won't be able to just download and play it -- you'll need something to supply the necessary textures to make the game world come to life. You could use a ROM of the game, but Harbour Masters is also adding support for modding and texture packs. This means that other parties could conceivably recreate the graphics and sound for the game from scratch and add it into Harbour Masters' PC port, effectively bringing a close simulation of this N64 classic to PC without actually using any of Nintendo's copyrighted content.
This The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time PC port is expected to arrive sometime next month (sans sound). Whether or not this PC port will survive any legal challenges, however, remains to be seen.
Would you want to play The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on your PC? What's your favorite fan game that never came out? Let us know in the comments below!
