The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild began life as a two-dimensional prototype, with an aesthetic borrowed from the original The Legend of Zelda on NES. That version of the game never made it past the testing phase — so a fan has fixed that, bringing a 2D version of Breath of the Wild to the masses.
Breath of the NES is a free game for Windows PC that draws inspiration from that 2D prototype, which Nintendo showed off at this year’s Game Developers Conference. Designer Winterdrake uploaded the demo to itch.io so that fans can test out how Breath of the Wild’s gameplay translates to a two-dimensional environment.
This latest version of the project has a day and night cycle, interactive environment, and collectibles and enemies familiar to players of both classic Zelda games and the recent Breath of the Wild.
The teaser above shows that Winterdrake did a pretty bang-up job capturing the Zelda aesthetic — although we’re eager to see translations of more Breath of the Wild-specific areas and characters.