A Zelda Clone For The C64

Posted on 4th December 2020

By Kodiak

I know I'm not the only Commodore 64 fan who has fantasised about a Zelda clone for the platform, so why hasn't one been attempted?

And by that I mean a game that meets the following criteria:

Full colour multidirectional smooth scrolling.
Buildings that can be entered and interacted with.
Genuinely immersive, Zelda-like gameplay.
Console standard graphics, such as those in Sam's Journey on the C64.

Speaking as both a C64 games coder and gfx designer, the greatest challenge would be attaining the requisite graphical standard rather than the technicalities of a full colour, multidirectional smooth scrolling landscape, not that the latter is by any means a stroll in the park in programming terms; for that, one would probably have to consider some kind of special scrolling approach, such as AGSP (Any Give Screen Position), which was apparently employed in the Fred's Back series.

Happily, though, a very advanced prototype / technology demonstrator of just such a Zelda clone for the C64 exists, attaining the said target levels of quality, in the form of the stunning Mythos demo by Crest which you can download here.

However, the coders of that demo have expressed no intention of ever developing it into a workable game, so Zelda on the C64 will only ever happen if someone else takes up the mantle.

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