A talented fan group has successfully reverse-engineered the source code for The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, paving the way for potential mods and fan ports in the future. Ocarina Of Time was released for the Nintendo 64 way back in 1998 and is widely considered by many to be one of the best installments in Nintendo's long-running dungeon crawler RPG series - if not one of the greatest video games of all time.
The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time has naturally been remade and re-released on several of Nintendo's systems in the decades since its initial launch. It was ported to the GameCube as part of the Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition compilation and as a pre-order bonus for 2002’s The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, made available as a Virtual Console title for the Wii and Wii U, and was even given an enhanced rerelease on the Nintendo 3DS in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D. Most recently, Ocarina Of Time was ported to the Switch in October, but this version has been criticized for missing some of the technical features that helped make the original Ocarina of Time a classic in 1998.
Enter Zelda 64 Reverse Engineering Team, a talented group of fans that has been working to reverse engineer The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time’s source code for the past two years. VGC reports that ZRET has successfully converted this source code into a parsable C code that can be read by modern computers. This would allow for PC-based mods and ports of Ocarina Of Time, though ZRET has stated that it will not be involved in any efforts to use the Ocarina Of Time source code this way. Still, ZRET expressed excitement and gratitude to its team for its work in decompiling Ocarina Of Time’s source code. “We thought for a time that we may never be able to match every function completely, so this is an incredibly exciting accomplishment,” ZRET told VGC yesterday. “Dozens of people helped work on this project, and together we were able to achieve something amazing.”
Zelda 64 Reverse Engineering Team began this project back in 2019, using the Nintendo GameCube Master Quest version of Ocarina Of Time as a base due to its helpful debug commands. Still, ZRET plans to work on other versions of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, as well as reverse-engineering other Zelda titles like Majora's Mask and The Minish Cap. It is worth noting that ZRET’s work in reverse-engineering Ocarina Of Time is legal because the team isn't using any leaked content, such as the source code that was released as part of last year's infamous Nintendo Gigaleak.
Although Zelda 64 Reverse Engineering Team has successfully converted The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time’s source code into a readable format for PCs, there is still more work to be done before it can be used to create mods or ports. Even then, ZRET has stated that it won’t be involved with such projects. Given how protective the company is over its IP, and how many legal challenges it's issued in the past to similar fan projects, an unofficial PC port of Ocarina Of Time is at considerable risk of being issued a cease-and-desist order by Nintendo. Still, being able to completely reverse-engineer The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time’s source code is no small accomplishment, and ZRET has shown an impressive level of dedication as it continues to look inside one of the most iconic video games of all time.
Source: VGC