Modder shows native The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Nintendo 3DS port with stereoscopic 3D support planned

Nintendo fans love the idea of cult classics being ported to retro hardware, and a new project is aiming to achieve exactly that, with the homebrew community quite impressed. A dedicated developer who goes by Game of Tobi is working on a native port of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo 3DS, and he’s made a fair bit of progress using the game’s recently decompiled PC release.

He showcased the work-in-progress 3DS Twilight Princess port in a new video titled “For Real This Time!” In the video, Tobi shared gameplay of Link exploring an in-development Hyrule, with basic exploration nailed down. While the project is far from over, the proof of concept shows that the port is at least technically achievable. Game of Tobi, or Brendan Tobias, explained:

“It is already recognisable; it can already be played in some areas. What it comes down to right now is just the work of fixing the bugs and actually optimising the game. Because so far, I haven’t done a lot of optimisation work, and there are incredible things you can accomplish if you actually do the optimisation work.”

For now, the native homebrew 3DS Twilight Princess port has no specific release window, as Tobi stated he will release it “when it is ready and I feel like it.” This isn’t the first time Tobi has pushed handhelds with retro ports. Previously, he ported Super Mario 64 to the Game Boy Advance.

He managed to fine-tune and optimize the original N64 engine and Super Mario 64’s source code to run on the much weaker GBA hardware, achieving a somewhat playable frame rate of 5-15 FPS.

A more powerful console to the rescue?

However, bringing Twilight Princess to the 3DS seems much more feasible on paper, given that the 3DS has modest hardware including 128MB of RAM and a capable processor, making it suitable for porting the game with extensive optimization.

The most exciting aspect of this port is that, if Tobi nails the 3DS version, 3DS owners might get to play The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess in stereoscopic 3D. Tobi noted, “If this project advances further, we will be able to play Twilight Princess in a very unique way that is not possible on other platforms.”

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