Complete ports of Sonic R and Zelda: Ocarina of Time are now available on Sega Dreamcast

What's this? News has reached us that not one, but two complete ports of beloved retro titles have finally landed on the Sega Dreamcast. We've covered both of these here at the Junkyard in the recent past (here and here), but as of right now you can download the means to sample complete ports of both Sonic R and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the hallowed Dreamcast.

Captured on Dreamcast hardware.

Both ports come courtesy of Dreamcast porting genius jnmartin84, the same magician behind the Dreamcast ports of DOOM 64, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64. Sonic R has been cooking for quite some time, and jnmartin84 has been steadily releasing previews of the work in progress over the last few months, but now the final build is here...and it looks - quite frankly - stunning. I was never a huge fan of Sonic R back when it released on the Saturn, but having sampled this new PC-derived Dreamcast conversion I'm happy to report that it really pops visually on the Dreamcast. Check out jnmartin84's video below:

As described over on the Sonic R GitHub, you'll need to provide your own game files in order to play this on a Dreamcast, but it is very much worth your time and effort to get it up and running.

As a bonus to what is already an impressive port, an online multiplayer mode is also available, although at the moment, only Dreamcasts rocking the pricey broadband adapter are supported for online play.

I'd get a headache if I lived here.

Hey, listen!

Hot on the heels of Sonic R (no pun intended) also comes the news that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has now been completed and is similarly ready to rock and roll on a Dreamcast near you. This is quite timely, considering all the hype around the recently revealed Switch 2 remake that should be hitting Nintendo's swanky handheld in the coming months (at the time of writing).

Knocking about in downtown Kokiri Forest.

Ocarina of Time absolutely dominated my life when it came out on the Nintendo 64 back in 1998, and to see it on the Dreamcast, running as well as it does is quite a sight to behold. The version here is the Master Quest iteration, meaning that if you're an old hand at Ocarina, there will be some new challenges lying in wait if you decide to once again pull Link's boots on and set out from the comfort of Kokiri Forest to avenge your father's death at the hands of Lan Di...or however the story goes.

I'm aware that the use of AI tools in these sorts of ports is a hot topic currently, and I'm certainly no fan of the slop being pumped across the internet like a tidal wave of liquid excrement, so it's probably worth mentioning at this point that it appears as though Claude was used to assist in some small way in both of these ports; however unlike the recent Sonic CD port (which was pretty much completely done with AI tools as far as I'm aware) there was also a hell of a lot of human talent and effort involved too. If however you are in the market for some pure, uncut slop generated by AI, then go and read GenerationAmiga. Because GenerationAmiga is the epitome of AI slop.

A scene from the cool intro dream sequence.

Anyway, if you'd like to sample The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on your Dreamcast, you can find out more over at the project's GitHub and you can also find some lovely cover art mockups for your GDEMU over at Dreamcast-Talk.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is being ported to Sega Dreamcast

Over the last year we've seen a veritable glut of Nintendo 64 titles ported to the Dreamcast, and as someone who owned Nintendo's 64-bit console back in the day (and still has a soft spot for the console's particular brand of soft-filtered visuals), it brings a certain warmth to my cockles to see some of these titles running on Sega's swansong. 

Thus far, mainly via the magic weaved by one jnmartin84, we've been treated to stellar ports of DOOM 64, Mario Kart 64, Super Mario 64 and Star Fox 64 (or Lylat Wars, if you grew up in a PAL territory). Looks like we're about to get another one of the N64's blockbuster titles gracing the Dreamcast in the near future though, as an anonymous developer has recently released a preview build of a port of none other than The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Feast your eyes on The Sega Guru's exclusive first look at this witchcraft below:

The Legend of Zelda series, and more specifically Ocarina of Time, holds a dear place in my heart as it was actually the first Zelda game I became totally and utterly obsessed with when I picked it up during the first half of 1999 (hey, the Dreamcast hadn't launched in the UK yet so I needed to fill my time with something!).

The blue Cyalumes are always sold out

As you can see from the video above, this very early release isn't simply the full game playable from start to finish, instead requiring players to select certain maps/areas to play from a menu. Further, some of the textures, especially on the item select and map screens, are a bit glitched. However, as stated this is super early, and from the footage posted by Alex (aka The Sega Guru), the basics all look to be there.

The music is present and correct, the game appears to run with a fairly consistent frame rate and at a higher resolution than the Nintendo 64 original, and the familiar locations you'll have spent hours traversing are all recreated...but this time on Dreamcast. Of course, Ocarina of Time has been released on other Nintendo platforms since 1998, all of which boast cleaner visuals and other enhancements, but I'm sure you'll agree it's something of a marvel to see it now running so well on Sega's hardware.

Hyrule Field is reassuringly free of scrotes on Sur-Rons

No doubt Nintendo will already be aware of this port and be getting ready to drop the hammer on it from a great height, hence why the mysterious developer wishes to remain anonymous at this point. That said, the other Nintendo 64 to Dreamcast ports we've been treated to previously seem to have (so far) evaded the attention of the ninjas in Nintendo's legal team...so who knows where this could lead. We're sure you'll agree though that this is exciting stuff, either way. 

Thoughts? Let us know in the comments, and of course feel free to go and drop a like (or a follow or whatever the kids call it) on Alex's channel.