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Following last week’s Donkey Kong ROM hack, where a father tinkered with the 8-bit game so his daughter could play as Pauline and save Mario, two hobbyists have been inspired to swap the roles of Link and Zelda in the original Legend of Zelda.
Kenna Warsinske and her boyfriend Simon Travis have modded the 1986 version of Zelda to allow them to play as Princess Zelda, fulfilling a childhood wish of her’s.
“I played my first Zelda game when I was pretty young, and at the time, I thought the game did star Princess Zelda. I figured I’d get to play as a magical battle princess that saved her kingdom,” Warsinske wrote on her personal blog.
“The game was fun, but I was bummed out that I never got to play as Zelda.”
Now grown-up, Warsinske explained how she and her boyfriend went about creating the mod in three days.
Having completed the mod, Warsinske reflected on her creation: “It feels really good to play as Zelda. I feel like I connect with her character better and it makes me feel like a big damn hero. It’s so nice to be swinging around a sword as Zelda. I can’t describe it. You really should try it for yourself.”
Warsinske hasn’t been able to publish the full code to her blog, due to some copyright issues. But if you are able to get hold of a Zelda ROM, she has an explanation of how to download and install her character-swapping patch on her blog.
Are there any gender-swapping game mods you’d like to see? Or do some exist which we don’t yet know about?
See Warsinske Zelda hack below:
