Zelda fans are making a 2D version of Ocarina of Time for PC

It's a tricky balancing act, making a fan project based on a copyrighted game. On the one hand, you want to tell everyone about it; on the other, telling everyone about it is a good way to attract the attention of some joyless legal department. The cat's well and truly out of the bag for OOT 2D, so I thought I'd link to it while it's still available to download and play. It's a 2D remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, made using a mixture of assets from previous top-down Zeldas, but with new graphics and music included too. There's quite a bit of placeholder and unfinished stuff in this very early demo, but it's a surprisingly faithful recreation of the opening to the N64 classic.

As you can probably imagine, remaking a 3D, polygon-filled game as a 2D, pixel-art-based adventure is one hell of an endeavour, and the team behind it are currently around 10% of the way into the development process, according to the counter on the game's page. The early demo, linked above, is worth a play if you remember the original, and you're particularly prone to bouts of nostalgia—everyone else will be wondering what all the fuss is about.

Here's the opening cutscene, in 2D form. Maybe we'll get an official Zelda on PC someday? (Ta, Eurogamer.)

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.