A Zelda fan has 'demade' Breath of the Wild to run on 3DS hardware, and the results are pretty incredible.
Fan Demake Shows 3DS Potential
In one Nintendo fan’s attempt to see how far they can push the 3DS console, they’ve retooled The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild to run on the older handheld console – and the results are pretty wild.
Uploaded by the YouTube channel ‘64iOS’, the Breath of the Wild demake surfaced earlier today in a 25 minute video. It shows a version of Breath of the Wild running on emulated 3DS hardware, with the assets, physics and animations of the game toned down accordingly.
Impressive Features Despite Limitations
In the video, we see the opening 25 minutes of Breath of the Wild running at a reasonably playable frame rate, albeit a far cry from the 60fps patch we saw on the Switch 2. Everything from the polycount of models to the texture resolution and of course the lighting are toned down massively, and it looks nowhere near as pretty as it does on the original Switch console.
However, the fact that the developer has managed to get the game running at all is impressive. They’ve even managed to get the map to appear on the second screen, showing the live location of Link in Hyrule. They’ve even managed to get the shrine puzzles working with Link’s Magnesis and Bomb abilities working pretty flawlessly, albeit with some slightly janky animations.
Limited Scope and Availability
Sadly, the demo only runs up until the end of the Great Plateau area, with the current demo build running into invisible walls when you try to leave. This makes sense given the 3DS’s modest hardware would likely struggle to contain the massive open world of Hyrule.
The Nintendo 3DS launched back in 2011, predating the Switch by six years. Seeing what Breath of the Wild might have looked like shows just how far Nintendo’s handheld hardware came in such a short space of time.
Sadly, the Breath of the Wild demake isn’t available to play on any old 3DS device. In fact, it’s not even running on a proper 3DS in the first place. Instead, the developer is using an emulator running on PC to simulate what it would be like if the game were to run on 3DS. They’ve included a link in the comments of the YouTube video if you want to give the game a go for yourself.
“The game is super buggy and a lot of things currently don't work but its insane seeing BOTW on the 3DS,” their comment reads. It’s unclear if they plan to keep working on the demo or if the Great Plateau is the limit of what the 2011 handheld can take.
