The impressive mod reportedly runs on original Nintendo 64 hardware
Nintendo is officially working on a remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but a modder is already bringing a whole new perspective to Hyrule — literally.
Modder Reonu has revealed a new mod for Ocarina of Time that remakes all the game’s pre-rendered 2D scenery in true 3D.
“I’ve been working on this for over a year,” he writes. “The provisional name is OoT unJPEG.” While Ocarina of Time on 3DS does exist, he wants to match the original game’s style. To make the mod even more impressive, it will be released for the Zelda 64 Recompiled project as well as a ROM hack that runs on real Nintendo 64 hardware. Getting the project running on original hardware has not been easy and required Reonu to write custom CPU culling code.
A video showing off the mod may give players a better idea of exactly what Reonu is doing. Ocarina of Time utilized a lot of 2D images as backgrounds due to the Nintendo 64’s hardware limitations. It’s a lot like how old movies would use matte paintings to show a city skyline or gorgeous vista without needing to actually be in those places. OoT unJPEG is removing all those 2D images and replacing them with fully rendered 3D environments. In some comparisons, the original 2D images occasionally look better, though that is largely down to the placeholder textures the mod is using at the moment. Reonu admits he isn’t great at making textures and has put out the call for any texture artists to assist on the project.
Another impressive aspect of OoT unJPEG is the performance optimizations. As mentioned, Reonu has written original code to get the project running on the original hardware. The fact it runs as well as it does in the teaser video is impressive enough, but Reonu has taken it one further. Ocarina of Time‘s market area has been combined into a single environment, removing all the original game’s load screens. If Reonu adds similar revisions to the full mod release, it’ll be a fascinating way to replay the classic Nintendo 64 title. There is no release date for OoT unJPEG yet, but interested fans can follow Reonu’s social media accounts for updates.
Nintendo itself will release a new version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a full remake of the N64 classic for Switch 2.