Over the past few months, games are being decompiled, recompiled, demade, remade, and ported every day. It’s pretty awesome to see, frankly, as these provide new and different ways to enjoy those classic games we grew up with. However, sometimes a project crops up that blows you away, and that’s what we have with this Breath of the Wild Demake for the Nintendo 3DS.
Evidence of such a demake first randomly cropped up over a year ago, with someone discovering a BOTW demake on an AliExpress flash cart. A few days ago, another Breath of the Wild demake for the 3DS surfaced over on the 3DS Homebrew subreddit. According to the post, “it’s unknown who the developer is of this ambitious port,” as it came into the hands of u/Standard-Brick-2776 by way of “someone I met on a server.”
Not only did we get a few screenshots of what the Breath of the Wild demake looks like, but you can also download the .app and .CIA files over on Reddit. As an added bonus, 64iOS posted a playthrough video of the game to give a better idea of what to expect.
It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, but you’re not likely not going to have the best experience trying to play this. The demake is clearly unfinished, with random bugs and graphical errors quickly dampening the mood.
Although it’s not known who the developer was, a post over at GBAtemp points out that it might have been an “internal demo created by big N themselves. The title page Japanese text translates to ‘For internal playtesting purposes only. Distribution prohibited.‘”
The post goes on to say that “other evidence points to homebrew tools used for development, what a mystery.” What a mystery, indeed.
What makes this exciting isn’t just that there’s a port of the game for the 3DS. It’s that with the files now available for download, there’s a chance that someone (or many people) in the community might pick up the mantle and continue working on this demake to bring Breath of the Wild to the 3DS. At the very least, perhaps we’ll eventually be able to play this on an actual 3DS, instead of needing to rely on emulation. Or, you know, just grab an AYN Thor and fire it up.
