For those who grew up in the era of the Nintendo 64, there are some notable titles that will always be fondly remembered, namely the likes of Goldeneye 64, Mario Kart, Mario 64, and, of course, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The N64 era was known for having memorable worlds, including winter locales, as well as inspiring a sense of whimsy in players. Given how popular the likes of Ocarina of Time was, and still is in many ways, it's perhaps not surprising that a group of fans has managed to reverse engineer their own version of the influential RPG.
According to a recent report, a community of developers appropriately called the Zelda Reverse Engineering Team, or ZRET, have done just that, they have reverse engineered the N64 classic Ocarina of Time. The team has been working on the project for almost two years, with a graph on the developer website indicating that the reproduction is now just over 98% complete.
Something like this may be a concern for some, due to the potential for lawsuit and copyright infringements being thrown at the team's way, in a similar way to Take-Two suing GTA fans for reverse engineering Grand Theft Auto 3 and Vice City. However, according to the report, ZRET have rebuilt the entire game from scratch, supposedly without using any assets copyrighted by Nintendo, including graphics and sound. Using modern programming languages, the community-based team was able to "painstakingly" recreate all assets without using any leaked content.
This is also similar to another fan-made project from a couple of years ago. In this instance, modders were able to reverse engineer the classic Super Mario 64 back in 2019. At the time of writing, it seems that this project is still available to download. This means that the Zelda 64 "decompilation" may not get taken down by the likes of Nintendo once the project becomes 100% complete. In any case, let's hope that ZRET are able to complete the recreation and make it available for fans.
With players continuing to challenge themselves in Ocarina of Time, the game is still proving popular, particularly among older gamers who remember the original. The fact that ZRET have dedicated nearly two years to rebuilding the game from scratch is a testament to just how beloved this entrance in the long-running franchise is. It remains to be seen what other projects will come to the fore, but according to the website, it looks like work has already begun on reverse engineering Majora's Mask and The Minish Cap.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is available on Nintendo 64 and 3DS, as well as the Nintendo Switch.