Romhacker SePH has just posted a patch for SNES Zelda that’s being called ‘A Link To The Proto’. It’s an interesting hack, as it’s not an official, existing prototype release; Its actually a compilation of assets found in different prototype versions that have been previously leaked. The goal is to give a glimpse of what could have been, if the original developers made slightly different decisions regarding the final release.
The patch is available for download here: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5630
Some of the features of ‘A Link To The Proto’ are as follows:
- Overworld, Dungeons, Items and Sprites graphical changes
- Brand new overworlds based on the earliest World Map
- All prototype dungeon rooms implemented
- Implemented prototype HUD
- Health as been reduced to 16 hearts
- Jump Shoes to jump over large gaps
- Armos Knights Prototype AI
According to SePH:
“There is a lot of changes, I tried to add as much prototype assets into the game, but unfortunately due to the multiple iterations of the same tilesets and a rather limited space for graphics, only a few select ones made it into the reconstruction. But still, there is a lot of places to explore and many unseen things to discover from the proto content that was cut from the final vanilla release from Nintendo.!“
I think many fans of the original game will appreciate a new-yet-familiar version of one of the best games from the Zelda series! Also, a list of differences found between the prototypes and official release can be found here: https://tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_A_Link_to_the_Past
