Fans Ported “The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past” to PC

The Legend of Zelda is one of the longest-running franchises in the history of video games. Which means, in turn, that some of its earliest games are unavailable to modern players because the hardware they were made for gets obsolete. Do fans want to live with it? If no, they do something – for example, bring some old installment to a modern platform.

The ported version of the game is now available on PC as a fan-made remake. Of course, it’s absolutely unofficial (given how Nintendo watches its IP, it’s no wonder). But to avoid any legal actions by Nintendo, the developers made sure that the original ROM is necessary to run the game. With the application, you can extract all the levels and recompile it, so the game becomes playable on PC.

Not that it’s something completely new: enthusiasts have been porting games from obsolete consoles for decades. But this port is great because it opens possibilities for modding. The potential of this ability can be seen if you look what fans have made for Ocarina of Time, another Zelda installment of 1998, that has also been ported to PC. Now we see improved hi-res visuals, widescreen support, and some wild modes that make everything explosive or allow for adjusting the climbing speed.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the earliest Zelda games. Released in 1991 in Japan and in 1992 elsewhere, it was developed for Super NES, a console which was discontinued in 2005 – 17 years ago, imagine that! Finding a working SNES is a quest in itself now, so there are various emulators, and iconic games for it are rereleased, but fans are still yearning for more ways to play their favorite games.

What are your favorite old games? Have they been ported to PC or modern consoles, or are they still the undug treasure? And have you already tried this port of A Link to the Past (with the original ROM, or course)? Share your impressions with us in the comments section!