The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is up there as one of my favorite Zelda games, and judging by how fondly people still talk about it more than 20 years later, I’m certainly not alone.
So naturally, seeing the GameCube classic receive a native recompilation for PC is pretty exciting, even if this particular project still has a few kinks to work out.
Wind Waker Recomp brings some huge improvements
This one is simply called Wind Waker Recomp, with the project recompiling the original GameCube game’s PowerPC code into native x86-64 code for Windows, with Apple Silicon Mac support also available.
You can play in 16:9 or 16:10, increase the internal resolution up to 4x, use compatible Dolphin HD texture packs, and enable Smooth Motion for 60 or 120 FPS. There’s also an experimental proper 60Hz gameplay mode, modern right-stick camera controls, and several Better Wind Waker improvements including the Swift Sail, instant text, and faster traversal.
All of this sounds amazing, right? Well, it is, but at this moment in time, performance isn’t quite up to scratch yet.
The developer notes that Smooth Motion effectively doubles the rendering workload, integrated graphics can struggle, initial visits to areas can hitch while pipelines compile, and 120 FPS can dip in busier scenes.
The latest 0.2.2 release has already fixed a fullscreen crash affecting some Windows systems, showing just how early this project still is.
Just like a lot of these projects these days, the repository openly states that development uses substantial AI assistance across coding, testing, debugging, and documentation.
That makes it starkly different from the separate zeldaret Wind Waker decompilation, which is still unfinished and takes a deliberately human-focused approach. Its contribution guidelines specifically reject submissions that are primarily AI-generated.
While the Wind Waker Recomp might not be the definitive way to experience the game just yet, seeing one of my all-time favourite Zelda games getting this kind of treatment is still brilliant.
In an ideal world, I want the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess double pack for my Switch 2 to become a reality, but that is seemingly a pipe dream.
