The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time debuted on the Nintendo 64, was reworked for the GameCube, and has been ported to every Nintendo console since. Now it’s reportedly been fully recreated in the C programming language by the Zelda Reverse Engineering Team (ZERT).
ZERT told VGC that a contributor known as “Fig” successfully “matched the last-remaining function in the project” on the night of Nov. 26, which “means that all compiled code in the game has been turned into human-readable C code.” Now the group will review Fig’s latest contribution to determine if it’s ready to be moved from the development branch to the core project.
This work is supposed to help make sure Ocarina of Time isn’t lost as technology continues to advance. (Assuming, of course, that Nintendo ever stops re-releasing it to new consoles.) ZERT’s efforts could also help bring the game to other platforms or make it easier for other developers to mod, but the group won’t directly contribute to those projects.
VGC notes that ZERT’s work on the project won’t end after Fig’s latest contribution is vetted. In addition to work intended to make it easier for other developers to view the project’s code, the group is also said to be planning to take on additional versions of Ocarina of Time in a bid to preserve as much of the storied game’s history as possible by way of reverse engineering it.
That’s a daunting task. VGC reports that ZERT’s project is based on the Master Quest re-release for the GameCube because it “features some debug commands” that proved useful during the reverse engineering process. ZERT says that “Ocarina of Time has over a dozen other versions, which we plan to also decompile and support in the project,” after the current version is finalized.
ZERT isn’t exclusively focused on Ocarina of Time, either, which means it will remain busy even after those other versions of the title are successfully reverse engineered. The group’s website indicates that it’s about 25% of the way through decompiling The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, which was also released for the Nintendo 64, and about 48% done with The Minish Cap.
