Legend of Zelda Work in Progress Shown, Source Released, on Commodore Amiga

Who wants to see what The Legend of Zelda could have looked like on the Commodore Amiga? Well, thanks to an independent home brew developer named Tukinem, we can see just that. What is even cooler is, the source has been released for anyone wishing to tinker with it, or complete its development even.

Do not tell Nintendo

While it is clear Nintendo were fine with 3rd parties releasing their NES games on PC, Nintendo themselves never partook of this. Early on, prior to their launching the Nintendo Entertainment System, they did develop, and license, their games for many platforms.

In Japan, Hudson Soft were able to license and release a few Nintendo owned properties to computer platforms of the time. Unfortunately, the results were less than ideal. That may be a reason Nintendo did not expand on this. Now, why they didn’t just program the games themselves, I will never know.

Nintendo is also quite litigious, going after projects like this on the regular.

That fear may be why the source was released and the developer has moved to other projects.

The start to a great port

While it is great to see almost a perfect port in the works, I would rather see new things done with these types of releases. I want more than just the original game with slightly better graphics, animations that feel off now, etc.

Differences include a slightly different walking animation for Link, he now looks like he is riding an invisible wooden pony. Screen transitions are near instant flips versus scrolling affairs of the original. Also, as of this writing, there are no enemies in the game, no items, etc. Simply walk around the game world without fear of being attacked.

Head over to Indie Retro News for a few snippets from Tukinem translated to English. Discussion is around this port and limitations they faced.

The question now is, will someone pick this up and continue development?

Source: Indie Retro News