Someone Is Remaking Classic Zelda… in First Person 3D… in Virtual Reality

Ready for a trip down memory lane? A nice little hike up Mount Nostalgia?

Someone has set out to rebuild The Legend Of Zelda. As in, 8-bit, 1986, “It’s Dangerous To Go Alone” Legend of Zelda. But with a twist!

These guys are recreating the game in 3D. And, in one of the world’s finest examples of “because we can” hackery, they’re building it for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. Strap on a Rift, and you’ll see the game from Link’s perspective.

The end result ends up looking like something straight out of a bizarro universe, where we’ve figured out things like 3D physics and virtual reality headsets, but for some reason are still using 8-bit sprites for all of our graphics. It’s not always pretty, but it’s still by all means worth seeing for yourself.

The developer behind the project has only finished select parts of the world (the main overworld, and the first dungeon), but estimates that the full game should be ready to go by March of 2014. If you’ve got an Oculus Rift handy, you can find the current beta release right over here — otherwise, you can see a good chunk of what’s in the game right now in the playthrough videos (by Youtubers Vaecon and Martyn) below:

Overworld:

Dungeon 1: