The Nintendo 64's catalog featured several of the most highly acclaimed titles in video game history as many of Nintendo's popular IPs made their way from 2D to 3D. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was one of its many titles that players consider one of the best games of all time, released in the middle of the Nintendo 64's lifespan.
While The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time had received a GameCube port in the past and a remastered version on the 3DS, the game has yet to appear on a modern console for almost a decade. Fans of the 1998 classic had recently begun to take apart the game and rebuild it from the ground up with original code, an ongoing feat that dates as far back as last year, showing near completion with its own unique possibilities involving potential PC ports.
The fan community project that is known as the Zelda Reverse Engineering Team, or ZRET, as the name suggests, is currently decompiling Ocarina of Time into a parsable C code that would allow fans to potentially develop a working PC port for the Zelda title. While the intentions of ZRET do not include a working PC port, as the process in doing so is not as easy as "compiling a working code for Windows," this type of reverse engineering was what ultimately led to the working PC Super Mario 64 port released last year.
On the ZRET website, the progress of the decompiling project appears to be 78% according to the last report made on May 30th. Since the beginning of 2021, the project has seen a 25% increase in its completion rate, from 53% on January 1st. At the rate of progress, the project is poised to be completed sometime before the end of the year, leaving the possibilities of further development to fan developers who wish to use the code as base work. As popular as mods have become for many PC games, there is a possibility that this happens.
Fans concerned about the project being hampered by Nintendo's infamous copyright protection methods against fangames and Switch hackers alike can put some of their worries at ease, as this method of reverse engineering is made legal for several reasons. Those involved in the project recreate the N64 code use as a base rather than using leaked source code from existing properties. This allows developers who wish to create a working PC port a chance to breathe easier, knowing their hard work won't be cut abruptly short by Nintendo's interference.
Source: ZRET Project Website