zelda classic

March 22, 2005 5:50 PM

Zelda Classic is a tribute to (what we think is) the greatest video game of all time: Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda. It has been developed into an exact replica of the NES version that we all know and love. For windows and DOS.
posted by crunchland (22 comments total)

I've been playing this for a few weeks. It is great fun. Glad to see it posted here.
posted by sciurus at 5:59 PM on March 22, 2005

I think this is only the beginning - with these tools you can make your own quests. There are tools and hacks for many nintendo games, though most use roms and emulators so this is different. But I think that with the resurgence of interest in classic gaming, there will be a new wave of content for said games. There are track editors for Super Mario Kart, total conversions of Final Fantasy 3 (look around at zophar's domain), and of course things like Grand Theftendo. Homebrew as its called is not a new thing, but normal people like us are beginning to reap the benefits of a dedicated, talented community of hackers, coders, artists, and players.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 6:11 PM on March 22, 2005

Wow, excellent. I am playing this right now.
posted by blacklite at 6:29 PM on March 22, 2005

oh and uh, note to anyone else: get the 'for dummies' installer; you need the stuff in it.

signed, dummy
posted by blacklite at 6:30 PM on March 22, 2005

How is "Zelda Classic" legal?

Answer me that, and I'll make "Andrea Shubert's Zelda CCG" later this week.
posted by andreaazure at 6:49 PM on March 22, 2005

It's totally illegal, especially since Nintendo recently released the original game for Game Boy Advance.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 7:01 PM on March 22, 2005

Sweet I didn't want to do anything this week anyway.
posted by Arch Stanton at 7:06 PM on March 22, 2005

Its a shame its only for windows and DOS, I'd love to see this on my cell phone (I'm quite sure it has the power).
posted by SirOmega at 7:09 PM on March 22, 2005

sweet. this project was dead for a long time, i guess someone picked it up or the creator got back into it or something. unless there were two similar projects.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:44 PM on March 22, 2005

*waves goodbye to the Blue...see you in Hyrule.
posted by schyler523 at 7:51 PM on March 22, 2005

Huh. I downloaded and installed, and it is so screwed up I can't read it. It also loops over and over again n the start screen. Too bad. I have yet to find a video game I can play and enjoy all at the same time since Atari's Adventure.
posted by oflinkey at 7:59 PM on March 22, 2005

I've been playing around with this for a couple years now, I have to admit it's pretty freakin fun.
posted by MrBobaFett at 8:15 PM on March 22, 2005

Oh sweet Christ, crunchland, thank you. All of the third party quests are making me drool...
posted by still at 8:33 PM on March 22, 2005

related AskMe question
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:54 PM on March 22, 2005

And there was much rejoicing in the land...
posted by kmmontandon at 9:45 PM on March 22, 2005

i'd like to see this ported to my pocket pc
posted by nickerbocker at 9:49 PM on March 22, 2005

SirOmega, that's a really good idea, and it might be just the reason I've been looking for to finally get around to learning Java/J2ME. I'm worried about what kind of copyright laws I'd run into if I were to actually write up something worth releasing.
posted by Venadium at 10:28 PM on March 22, 2005

You'd have to re-write the whole thing to get it to run on J2ME, and then only probably on newer phones. From personal experience, programming a game for a mobile phone is a headache; and until MIDP2 there was no way to directly access the video hardware, so everything was slow.

Anyway, the site explains that it will be coming for OSX and Linux soon. If only it was open source :)
posted by adzm at 11:36 PM on March 22, 2005

This is so sweet, I wanted to get something done this week, I swear!
posted by TungstenChef at 4:30 AM on March 23, 2005

nickerbocker, you might want to check out MorphGear.
posted by Otis at 6:02 AM on March 23, 2005

Last year there was an FPP about a project to redesign Ocarina of Time to match the graphical style of Link to the Past.

Within days the site was shut down by Nintendo's legal team.

Not wise to publicize this if you really like it, crunchland.
posted by Epenthesis at 12:59 PM on March 23, 2005

Yea I figured it wouldn't be easy and I'd probably never be able to come up with an exact replica, but it might at least look pretty close to the original. And yea, it'd probably run slow as well.
posted by Venadium at 8:50 PM on March 23, 2005