Fan games

Fans who have grown up playing Zelda often begin to miss that feeling that they felt the day they played their first game of Zelda. It is often these people who pursue a quest to create a fan game that achieves this sense of awe again. Fan games can either be entirely new creations or hacks of an old game to create something new.

Original Fan Games

 * The Legend of Zelda: Hall of the Undead is a fan game utilizing original art and remixed music. The entire game takes place in one dungeon, and is considered to have fairly high quality for a fan game.


 * The Legend of Zelda: The Fallen Sage is a fan game made by undyingnephalim and Cosmic Revenues. Despite it being a fan game, they give credit to Nintendo. The game is reported to be released at www.zeldadungeon.net on December 25th 2007. A forum to the Fallen Sage can be found at this link http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/gaming-discussion/the-legend-of-zelda-the-fallen-sage-completed/t.31750931/, though it hasnt been updated in some time and only features beta screenshots of the game. This game appears to be made in RPG Maker XP.


 * The Legend of Zelda: The Shadowgazer is a fan game made using Minish Cap graphics and has been in development for over three years, the second longest (known) of any fan game. The game uses a 3-day cycle similar of the one found within Majora's Mask but at the end of the cycle it simply starts over again instead of the moon crashing into the ground. This 3-day cycle gives a routine to follow for the NPCs in the game. It also has a horseback combat system. There are currently 2 demos available and a trailer for this fan game. A mini site for the game can be found in the link below

Link to the Past Hacks

 * The Legend of Zelda: Parallel Worlds is a complete overhaul using A Link to the Past as a starting point for its construction. Originally titled The Tower of the Triforce, a demo was available around 2003 that had used the basic graphics from ALttP but revolved around a drastically different storyline. In the years following the release of the demo, the completion of the game was in question until New Years Eve 2006 when version 1.0 (a full game with completely different graphics) was released after several years work. Since that time the game is still being worked on and has been given a 1.1 patch release and updates on several drastic changes have been made public on one of the creator's websites. Overall, this take on ALttP is a much more difficult affair than any other fan edit and as such is also the fan game that has been longest in production (currently 4-5 years). According to the official site for the game, adjustments are still being made and "[you] can think of this current version as open beta..." An FAQ and game information can be found at the official Parallel Worlds site


 * The Omega Hack is another LttP overhaul, albeit not quite finished. This game features new music, new sprites but also has what seems to be many glitches, bugs and unfinished sprites running about in the world. A query for "The Omega Hack" will often turn it up in most search engines.

Remakes of Existing Games

 * Ocarina of Time 2D (Barras version) The game creator Daniel Barras (who posts under the name "TheRealMethuselah" on the Zelda Universe forum) has stated: "Well, I'm actually still working on it... Nintendo did not shut me down... Yahoo shut down my site stating that they were worried about copyright infringrement [sic]... but I assure you It's still very much in development..." An overview and screenshots can be found at the game's new website which can be found in a discussion at Zelda Universe


 * Ocarina of Time 2D (Dampe' version) During the course of the development of OoT2D, the game's creator, Richard Denton (net handle "Dampe") was alleged to be killed in a car accident and within hours his website was taken down by his family. A Digg article had a "friend" of Denton's claim that he can verify his death, yet another Digg article points out the inconsistencies in the story and broke the news that Denton faked his death online to escape from the pressures of the game creation and all it's entrapments. As of 2008, the game is still unreleased but a demo can can found where his site used to be