ROM Hack Original "The Legend of Zelda" for NES ported as a native SNES game

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The original title that started the beloved Zelda franchise, "The Legend of Zelda" on the NES, has been the imprint to which almost all subsequent games in the franchise would follow suit, mostly those in 2D, but almost every title afterwards followed a similar structure to that of the original. The original NES title has been a beloved title for years, though some don't see themselves going back to it due to some of the hurdles found in it, like the sword stab, lack of direction, non-existent overworld map, secrets seemingly placed at random, etc., but it still is remember by many fondly.

This very game was the main focus for renowned romhacker, infidelity, which has worked before on porting NES titles as native SNES games, like porting Megaman 2 and Megaman 4 to the SNES before it, making "The Legend of Zelda" his 3rd game that he has successfully ported over from the 8-bit NES console into the 16-bit SNES. The porting process is quite the hurdle, as not only does the logic and coding of the game need to be reimplemented into the SNES (which uses 65816 assembly, compared to the NES' 6502), but the way in which graphics work would also need to be reworked to work with the hardware and technicalities of the SNES.

The process was quite a hefty one, and infidelity has been really active over at his Twitter account, showcasing the many aspects of the game in which he has encountered interesting things to tackle and resolve during the porting process, from getting the game to load the title screen graphics properly to start with, to then have the game load the music adequately, and then handle the game save/load, having the proper Link movement working, to then working on all of the game's mechanics, slowly but steady, to reach the point of a stable release. Not only that, but infidelity has also worked on getting MSU-1 support working for the game (for those unaware, MSU-1 allows a SNES game to have CD-quality audio tracks).

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The amount of work put into the porting process is nothing short of a technical wonder, from beginning to end, and the game has also been tested to work on real hardware, so those with flashcarts can find the ROM and try it out on their own SNES systems! Those wanting to try it out might have to search around for the ROM online, but it shouldn't be hard to find. It hasn't been confirmed yet if infidelity will work on Quality of Life features for his port or not, hopefully something similar to what The Legend of Zelda Redux romhack does for the original NES title could be possible, but not known if infidelity himself would work on that.