Ocarina Of Time PC Port Has A Release Date
It's all going in on Hyrule, and if saving the calamitous kingdom all over again in 2022's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 wasn't enough, how about finding a whole new way to play Ocarina of Time? That's right, for the first time ever, the 1998 classic is finally coming to PC.
Not just held by many as the best in the long-running Zelda series, but as one of the best video games of all time, we all danced along to Link's merry tune on the Nintendo 64. More than just being the franchise's first foray into 3D, Ocarina of Time was held as revolutionary for the time. Sadly, it's been locked to Nintendo for the past 24 years.
Is Ocarina Of Time Coming To PC?
Click to enlargeUpdate: The Ocarina Of Time PC Port was released on March 22, 2022.
According to VGC, the previously announced PC port of Ocarina is 90% complete. We already knew progress was going well, but the new bit of information is a potential remake. Harbour Masters is a group of Zelda superfans who've built the cult classic from the ground up.
The port is affectionately dubbed Ship of Harkinian - which is a cute reference to a line from the infamous Zelda CDI spin-offs. Explaining how things have developed, Harbour Masters said, "We actually started putting down code in the middle of December last year. Currently, all of the game logic runs pretty much flawlessly.
"We have a few assets that aren’t packed correctly in the archive, most specifically skyboxes, and there are still a few graphical errors we are working through. Audio is also not yet decompiled." As for a release date, the team confirmed, "We’ve been hoping to be complete by the middle of February and use a month or so until April 1st to refine the game before release. We’re hoping to have a public repository available in late February."
Will Nintendo Pull The Ocarina Of Time Port?
We've previously seen the impressive PC port of Super Mario 64 that was reverse-engineered a few years ago. The important thing to remember about getting these Nintendo favourites to run on PC means we can mod them. When Super Mario 64 released, someone modded it to give the old pixels a Super Mario Odyssey-style update.
The team also has plans to do the same with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. They need to wait for a different team to reverse-engineer the code - which is apparently sitting at 37% right now. Just imagine a proper Unreal Engine build of Ocarina or Majora's Mask.
There's a legally grey question mark over whether the PC port will be allowed to go ahead. Nintendo's lawyers are faster than Samus Aran when she turns into a ball. The difference is, Harbour Masters presumably pre-empted this and built the PC port using completely new assets. Instead of using any of Nintendo's original code, it's brand-new.
Only recently, we covered a gritty Pokemon FPS shooter, and in just a matter of days, Nintendo scrubbed it from existence. The Zelda teams might've been careful to try and exploit the legalities, but still, this one has Ocarina of Time splashed all over it instead of Magic Fairy Song Adventure.
