AI slop is taking over the retro PC port scene, but these Zelda ports remind me how good it still is

Published Oct 25, 2026, 8:30 AM EDT Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto. Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more. Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University. The PC port world has been absolutely exploding thanks to tools like Anthropic's Claude Code, a popular AI-powered coding assistant. While plenty of solid AI-assisted modern and retro PC ports exist, many are best described as AI slop, and it's hard to keep track of them as projects get abandoned and forked. A glance at the popular r/decomps subreddit reveals a never-ending stream of AI-assisted retro video game recompilations, making it difficult for the average person to know what's actually worth checking out. Over the past few weeks, I've done my best to pull out a few key AI-assisted projects that caught my attention and offer my impressions of their overall performance, including the lackluster LASRecomp, a static recompilation of the Switch remake of Zelda: The Link's Awakening, and a far more solid port of Zelda: Wind Waker, ZeldaWWHDRecomp (I'm hoping to do more stories like those). But before this wave of AI-assisted ports (and don't get me wrong, some of them are great), several excellent, human-made PC ports built from decompiled retro games were released. They're well worth checking out, especially if you want to revisit the games you loved as a kid in a way that stays true to the originals. It doesn't get much better than playing Zelda: Ocarina of Time on PC with mods Harbour Master's Ship of Harkinian is still one of the best native PC ports out there I know an official flashy-looking remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is just around the corner, but a few months ago I spent a lot of time tweaking Harbour Master's Ship of Harkinian to get the Nintendo 64 classic running like an absolute dream on my PC and ROG Xbox Ally X. Do you want HD or 4K textures? OoT Reloaded can make that happen. Maybe you want full camera control and 60fps? That's just a settings change, too. Ship of Harkinian isn't a full remake of Ocarina of Time, but that's part of its appeal. Built from the game's decompiled code long before the current AI-assisted port boom, it preserves what made the N64 classic special while adding the modern features I've always wanted. It offers an authentic, decompilation-based way to revisit the Great Deku Tree in all its glory. Ship of Harkinian If you're looking for something a little weirder, take Zelda: Majora's Mask for a spin One of the Zelda series' most oddball entries feels surprisingly modern in 2026 Look, I know I'm on the record as not the biggest The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask fan out there (the whole time limit thing doesn't work for me), but even I can acknowledge there's something special about this extremely dark, very weird entry in the Zelda series. Thanks to 2ship2harkinian, you can easily revisit the game on PC through a decompilation-based port, complete with HD/4K texture packs like MM Reloaded, full camera control, and a blisteringly smooth frame rate. There aren't as many mods out there for 2ship2harkinian, and the game doesn't run quite as smoothly as Ship of Harkinian's Ocarina of Time, but it's still an impressive and very faithful PC port of one of the early-2000s' oddest games. It also comes from the reputable Harbour Master's team, so you know it offers an experience authentic to the N64 classic. 2ship2harkinian This Zelda: Twilight Princess PC port is nearly perfect Dusklight helped me revisit my least favorite entry in the series and gain a new appreciation for it If you're interested in revisiting The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Dusklight is by far the best way to do that. The decompilation-based port of the GameCube version of Twilight Princess looks absolutely stunning in 4K/1080p with an HD texture pack (and if you know where to look, you can even hunt down the Wii U remaster's HD textures). In the mid-2000s, Twilight Princess just didn't land with me. Something felt off about its visuals that, looking back, was likely tied to the ample bloom that the game featured. With Dusklight, you can turn off bloom entirely for crispy, clear visuals. It also adds quality-of-life features like resolution scaling, ultrawide support, and frame rates up to 120fps on powerful enough hardware. If you're itching to revisit the Twilight Realm, Dusklight is the best way to do it. Dusklight Zelda: The Wind Waker is an impressive PC port of the Wii U remaster Not every AI-assisted retro game port is slop-filled — ZeldaWWHDRecomp is one of the good ones I'm not huge on AI taking over the world, but when it comes to retro and modern PC ports, it makes a lot of sense to me. A lot of these projects would take years to create otherwise and, in many cases, probably wouldn't exist without Claude Code's help. Also, since they're fan-made, they aren't really taking any real jobs away from anyone, and in a way, they're encouraging big video game publishers to improve the quality of their own ports. With that in mind, ZeldaWWHDRecomp is a solid, recently released AI-assisted port. The static recompilation features an interpolated 60fps mode, support for fan-made quests, internal resolution scaling, and controller-specific on-screen button prompts. More importantly, it runs pretty smoothly, though I encountered slowdown during shader compilation. The human team behind the project is also heavily involved in its active development, with plans to improve the port's stability. It's not quite the definitive way to revisit The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but if a few of ZeldaWWHDRecomp's key issues can be ironed out, it might be soon. ZeldaWWHDRecomp