Fan Project Aims To Remaster Twilight Princess In HD — Again
Nintendo recently announced a remastered 1080p version of their 2006 Wii launch title/Gamecube abandonment title The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Meant to bridge the gap between now and whenever the latest Zelda is completed, it’ll be sold in two forms: regular and packaged-with-amiibo.
But before this product was even rumored, a fan was working on his own HD version of Twilight Princess, and the announcement of an official version hasn’t dissuaded him. Tomoya Hamasaki is his name, and since early October he’s been posting lengthy videos of his progress converting the adventures of Wolf Link to modern visual standards.
https://youtu.be/HSDVY6Q9pfk
Hamasaki is performing more than just a resolution upgrade: he’s redoing the textures and enhancing the colors, and as you can see in the pictures and videos, the results are stunning. How complicated is such an endeavor? According to Hamasaki, not very: with his own texture mapping experience, it’s actually rather simple.
“Gameplay and engine changes are done through C+ and Assembly. Texture work is done using Photoshop CS6 for environments and PaintTool SAI for characters. The upcoming HD models and animations are done through 3DS Max and Blender. Ishiiruka is the emulator that emulates the Twilight Princess GameCube ISO and provides the modern graphical enhancements.”
Hamasaki says he’s not anticipating a cease-and-desist from Nintendo because his project is an add-on that requires a Wii or Gamecube disc to work (as well as an emulator for those systems). But he does plan to modify the game itself once the HD conversion is done, adding new enemies and possibly a new dungeon. That might be pushing it….