Fan remake: Legend of Zelda from 1986 shines in the Unreal Engine 5

Zelda fan Lloyd Empty is working on a modern version of the almost 40-year-old Nintendo classic. A gameplay video now shows what is possible with time, patience, and dedication. Other players are excited, but also concerned.

Fan recreates Zelda game

The release of The Legend of Zelda on the NES can be described as a significant moment in video game history from today’s perspective. Alongside Mario, the franchise about the eponymous princess and the hero Link is probably Nintendo’s most well-known.

Now a French fan of the game named Lloyd Empty has created his very own version of the classic. He recreated parts of the original in the Unreal Engine 5. A 20-minute gameplay video impressively demonstrates how beautiful a modern remake of the now almost 40-year-old NES game can be.

Further project progress uncertain

As you can see in the video, the project is still in the beta phase. It seems as if Lloyd Empty wants to expand his remake even further. Unfortunately, there is no information about how this will happen. It is also uncertain whether the Frenchman plans to make his remake available for other fans of The Legend of Zelda to play.

Concern about Nintendo lawsuit

Underneath the video on YouTube, in addition to comments from enthusiastic game lovers, there are also numerous messages from concerned users. They fear that Nintendo could immediately call in its lawyers after the video is published and force Lloyd Empty to stop the project.

“Lloyd, buddy, BUDDY, rule number 1 for fan games: don’t tell anyone until it’s released,” writes lol_no_man. “You should just keep quiet until it’s completely finished and publish it on the Internet to give Nintendo no chance to send you a warning,” says averagecarpentryskills7148.

Nintendo is actually known for taking extremely tough action against all kinds of mods and emulators. A few months ago, the Japanese brought about the end of the previously popular Switch emulator Yuzu . It is doubtful whether such an approach would be successful with a private, non-commercial hobby project such as the current The Legend of Zelda remake.