Hey Zelda fans, have you ever wanted to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess on PC or mobile devices? Ever wanted to experience Link’s GameCube and Wii era adventure with useful quality of life features, like time changing, fast transform and no rupee returns?
Well, if so, you’re in luck! Because now a PC port for the game is available online, courtesy of the folks at Twilight Realm! Named Dusk, it implements just about everything from the GameCube, Wii and Wii U versions of the game, and can be downloaded here:
With a trailer viewable below:
And to say it’s an upgrade over the original game is probably the understatement of the century. Indeed, with a huge laundry list of extra features included and easy support for things like custom models and textures, this is basically Twilight Princess the way it was meant to be.
Here are just some of the additions mentioned in the trailer:
- Enhanced Resolution
- Uncapped Framerate
- Gyro Aim
- Console Accuracy (all glitches and speedrun tech function as expected)
- Bloom Presets:
- Classic Bloom
- Dusk Bloom
- Bloom Disabled
- Custom Colour/Intensity
- Shadow Resolution
- Free Cam (like in the Wii U version)
- Mirror Mode (like on Wii)
- Steam Deck Support
- Android Support
- iOS Support
- Custom Model Support
- Quality of Life Features:
- Fast Climbing
- Hold B to skip text
- Fast Transform (R + Y)
- Instant Tears of Light
- Sun’s Song (change time)
- No Rupee Put Backs
- Achievements
- Cheats:
- Moon Jump (R + A)
- Super Clawshot
- Fast Spinner (R button)
- Fast Iron Boots
- Texture Pack Support
Along with a Randomizer in development. So, yeah, it’s quite the list to say the least, and this is just the first version of the port.
But you may be wondering something. What’s the legality of this project? What are the chances Nintendo will just shut down the project now everyone’s talking about it?
Well, it’s always kinda ambiguous with these projects, but the team has done exactly what’s needed to minimise any legal issues here. For example, you can’t just download the project and run Twilight Princess there and then. You have to extract the assets from a copy of the original ROM, like in every other PC port under the sun.
So, at least theoretically, there’s no copyrighted content here. Nintendo owns nothing in the Dusk project itself, and hence has no legitimate reason to go after the project.
And given that other projects with similar setups have been just fine the last few years (Super Mario 64 and its PC ports, Ocarina of Time and Ship of Harkinian, Star Fox 64 and Starship: Centauri Alfa), it’s unlikely this will be any different. They’ve done everything they can to minimise legal concerns, and that’s about it.
Star Fox 64 has also been ported to PC without any legal issues
What’s more interesting though is what a generational leap this seems to present for PC ports and decomps. Since well, the majority of them up until now have been for N64 games. Or occasionally, older systems like the NES and SNES.
But decomp projects aren’t just limited to the N64 era and earlier. No, efforts to decompile and port later games have been in the works for a while now, with Mario Party 4 being the first to reach completion. So, we’re gonna see more and more of these projects reach completion, and more Wii and Wii U era games brought to other systems because of that.
Like say, Super Mario Galaxy, which is currently about 48% decompiled. Or Pikmin, which is 99% decompiled. *
* Amusingly, Pikmin might not even need this, since the original developers left a debug PC version of the game in the original source code.
So, yeah. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is now natively available on PC, with a whole myriad of useful quality of life features. Definitely check it out if you’re a die-hard Zelda fan, or want to get this game running at its very best.
Sources: