Homebrew Homebrew game Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 3DS Port

probs-rohan · Jul 19, 2026

Hi everyone!

I have ported snesrev's ALTTP C reimplementation (or rather the updated fork from xander-haj called Z3R) to the 3ds. It's probably more accurate to say that I have updated an existing outdated port from wikiblog0/JeffRuLz, but regardless, its now possible to play ALTTP natively on 3ds. The port runs fine on n3ds and is untested on o3ds, however runs quite poorly with n3ds features disabled so I'd say its unlikely to perform well - though if SDL2 gets hardware rendering support that may change in a future update.

Screenshots:

(Only top screen is utilised at the moment)

qr for cia file - hosted on github releases

Source/Releases: https://github.com/ProbablyRohan/Z3R-3ds

Fyrus · Jul 19, 2026

Oh man, I thought it was Samyost's fork for a moment sadly for the second screen

It's still nice, thank you for your work

masterz81 · Jul 19, 2026

Nice work, man!

Flame · Jul 19, 2026

Thank you. Also added release link.

probs-rohan · Jul 19, 2026

Fyrus said:
Oh man, I thought it was Samyost's fork for a moment sadly for the second screen

It's still nice, thank you for your work

Oh I've never seen this fork before, that's certainly something that I could look in. No promises tho...

Flame said:
Thank you. Also added release link.

Thank you!

Fyrus · Jul 20, 2026

probs-rohan said:
Oh I've never seen this fork before, that's certainly something that I could look in. No promises tho...

To be fair it's pretty new, I think I saw it like a week ago only

MintFerret · Sunday at 2:14 PM

probs-rohan said:
if SDL2 gets hardware rendering support that may change in a future update.

Why not make a citro2d renderer?

SpaceGameJunkie · Sunday at 6:16 PM

As someone who's never really dabbled in a Zelda game before, would this be a good one to start with? If not then which, on the 3DS of course?

Beware · Sunday at 6:31 PM

SpaceGameJunkie said:
As someone who's never really dabbled in a Zelda game before, would this be a good one to start with? If not then which, on the 3DS of course?

ALTTP is one of the great ones, but can be a bit obtuse for someone not accustomed to the old games. OOT3D is a great starting point. Link’s Awakening or the Oracle games are great intros because they’re a bit stripped back. ALTTP is a fine place to start though as long as you have patience.

Can’t wait to try this out. Any plans for any QOL stuff or randomizer? I’ve been loving the OOT3D randomizer for its built in tracker on the bottom screen.

SpaceGameJunkie · Sunday at 9:09 PM

Beware said:
OOT3D is a great starting point.

Got it, thank you.

probs-rohan · Wednesday at 8:19 AM

MintFerret said:
Why not make a citro2d renderer?

It is increasingly looking like that is going to have to happen, especially as the second screen works, just is unplayable even on the n3ds. Problem is that I am not super experienced with citro2d

Beware said:
Can’t wait to try this out. Any plans for any QOL stuff or randomizer? I’ve been loving the OOT3D randomizer for its built in tracker on the bottom screen.

The randomiser that is in the repo should work since it just modifies the data files that you have to bring yourself anyway (but it my understanding that its very WIP), the instructions are in the original readme. As for QOL, the features already included in the port should all work if you just enable them in the config. I am not planning to add anymore myself but I'll try keep the port up to date with upstream. I am planning to add a second screen (which is QOL ig lol) but that is proving to be challenging as the existing port is very unoptimised, especially for the 3ds' screen (the danger of AI assisted "code"). No promises at how good the second screen will be but I'm reasonably confident I can produce something (and AI free too!)

MintFerret · Thursday at 2:33 AM

probs-rohan said:
It is increasingly looking like that is going to have to happen, especially as the second screen works, just is unplayable even on the n3ds. Problem is that I am not super experienced with citro2d

I've took a look at the OpenGL renderer and it doesn't seem to be very complicated. It just sends the final picture as a textured rectangle and updates it from there. I'll see if I can get it to work with citro2d, if you don't want to implement it yourself.

linkenski · 2026-07-31T23:47:08+0100

I will play the shit out of this after you make an update that fixes the pixel scaling

ChronoCrossfangirl2002 · 2026-08-01T00:38:54+0100

SpaceGameJunkie said:
As someone who's never really dabbled in a Zelda game before, would this be a good one to start with? If not then which, on the 3DS of course?

Any to be honest with you, the only one's i'd have a hard time reccomending is zelda 2 and majora's mask for different reasons
but to be brief: the latter can be quite difficult for newcomers, while the former can feel repetitive and a bit confusing given it's gameplay loop, both are great but have some aspects that may scare newcomers away.

probs-rohan · 2026-08-01T10:25:54+0100

MintFerret said:
I've took a look at the OpenGL renderer and it doesn't seem to be very complicated. It just sends the final picture as a textured rectangle and updates it from there. I'll see if I can get it to work with citro2d, if you don't want to implement it yourself.

I'd appreciate that if you are able to, probably more than I'm willing to commit myself to at the moment. But if you aren't able to I might do that eventually who knows.

linkenski said:
I will play the shit out of this after you make an update that fixes the pixel scaling

Is it displaying any differently for you than in the screenshots? Because they look fine to me. Also try changing the aspect ratio to 4:3 and/or removing the extend y option, and changing the linear filtering option to see if those help. Other than that it'll probably be reliant on upstream to add options to fix it I'm afraid.

Post automatically merged: Today at 12:33 PM

I have commited a very early port of the second screen fork of zelda3 to the dual-screen branch of the git repo. Build instructions same as main. I haven't created a release it is very early fork, basically impossible to play since the game is very slow (software rendering and all) plus the icons are unreadable since it was presumably intended for higher resolution screens. Haven't decided whether I will try and rework this bottom screen or write one for scratch yet.

Homebrew Homebrew game Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 3DS Port

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