The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons

Native macOS, Windows, Linux and Android versions of Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons (Capcom, 2001), rebuilt from the games' own code in C. There is no emulator underneath: the games run as native programs, which is what makes widescreen, save states and save sync across your devices possible.

No game data is included. You need your own Oracle of Ages and/or Oracle of Seasons (USA) ROM. The app reads it once, keeps the graphics, sound and data, and never needs it again.

What this port adds on top of the original games:

• Widescreen (16:9) — see the rooms around you, not just the one you're in
• Save states — 4 slots with thumbnails, plus a Resume state from wherever you last quit
• Save sync — your saves and states follow you between desktop and phone, no passwords
• Remappable controls — every button, for keyboard and gamepad
• Fast-forward — hold Tab, or the right trigger
• Screen filters — sharp, scanlines, LCD grid, CRT, or the xBRZ and hqx pixel-art scalers, and true Game Boy Color colours
• Fast text and faster menus — optional, off by default
• Quick swap and 4 item slots — optional, off by default
• Mods — small Lua scripts that read the game and draw on top of it; see MODDING.md

The gameplay toggles are all off until you turn them on, so the default is the game as it shipped.

AI DISCLOSURE

This native implementation has used help from generative AI, specifically Claude Opus.

If you don't want to use it for that I completely understand.

Get the latest build for your system from the nightly release, rebuilt automatically on every change:

Each desktop download is a single self-contained file; nothing else needs installing.

The app opens on its main menu, with a tab each for Ages and Seasons. A game you have no ROM for yet shows Not installed and an Add ROM... row — choose it and the file picker opens. Do the same on the other tab to add the second game. Nothing is asked for before the menu appears.

The ROM can be a plain .gbc/.gb file or a .zip or .gz holding one, so a freshly downloaded archive works as it came. From a zip the .gbc/.gb file inside is taken, otherwise the largest one. .7z isn't read — extract it first.

Your ROM has to be the USA release of either game; the app checks it and says so if it isn't. On Android, copy the ROM to the phone's Downloads first so the picker can reach it.

A game's tab leads with Resume (the state from when you last quit) and its four save-state slots, each with when it was saved and the newest marked Latest; choosing one starts from it. Below them, Save files opens the game's own three files (name, hearts, essences) — choosing one boots straight into it — and Title screen starts the game from the beginning. Every menu works with a keyboard, a controller, the mouse, or by tapping its rows.

Every button, including Pause, Fast-forward, Swap and the item buttons, can be remapped in Settings > CONTROLS: pick a row, then press the key or controller button (triggers included) you want for it. Quick swap and the item buttons only do something once their gameplay toggles are on. The window resizes in whole-pixel steps.

From the launcher or the pause menu: volume, screen filter (sharp, scanlines, LCD grid, CRT, and the two pixel-art scalers XBRZ and HQX, which round off jagged diagonals instead of turning each pixel into a square — they are two different algorithms, so it is worth trying both), scale (pixel for whole-pixel steps, fill for the largest size that fits), Game Boy Color colours, fullscreen and controls.

There are also quality-of-life toggles, all off by default:

• Fast text and faster menus
• Quick swap: C swaps the A and B items
• 4 slots: A/S become two more item buttons — highlight an item in the inventory and press one to assign it, then hold it in play to use that item. In widescreen they get their own X and Y boxes at the left of the status bar, so all four items are on screen at once

Esc pauses the game: Resume, Save state, Load state (4 slots, each with a thumbnail and the time it was saved, to the second) and Quit to menu, which saves a Resume state and returns to the main menu. Cmd+S and Cmd+R are shortcuts for slot 1. Messages like Saved to slot 2 or Sound off appear at the bottom of the picture; after a save the message offers Undo, which puts back what the slot held before.

Save states work across every platform — all 64-bit builds share one layout, so a state made on your desktop loads on your phone.

Settings > WIDESCREEN widens the picture to 256x144 (16:9 at the game's own 144 lines). The game's original 160 pixels stay in the middle, untouched, with 48 pixels either side showing the rooms around you, decoded from your ROM: the overworld grid (with the right season in Seasons) and, in dungeons, the rooms through a doorway once you've visited them. Large dungeon rooms simply show more of themselves.

The status bar runs the whole way across rather than sitting in a box in the middle. With 4 slots on, the X and Y items get their own boxes at its left end and the game's own bar slides right to make room, so the four item slots read across as X, Y, B, A. Holding X or Y then leaves the B box showing its own item, instead of borrowing it to display the one you pressed.

The sides scroll along with every room change. Nothing moves in them — the game only runs the room you're in — and they show each room as the ROM describes it, so a chest you opened or grass you cut won't update until you walk back there. Houses, caves and cutscenes use the game's border colour instead, while a menu fills them with its own colour and keeps the status bar across the top. DIM SIDES (on by default) draws the sides slightly darker than the live room.

Settings > SYNC keeps your saves in step across devices, with no passwords: CREATE ACCOUNT gives you a 16-digit code, and ENTER CODE on another device joins the same account.

Synced: each game's save, the save-state slots with their pictures and item buttons, and your settings. Never your ROM or anything derived from it.

It syncs when the launcher opens, before a game starts, and when you leave a game or the app; SYNC NOW does it by hand. A sync that fails because you're offline is retried automatically, and again the moment the app comes back to the foreground. If the same save changed on two devices, a KEEP WHICH? screen shows you both — the files and hearts, or the state's picture — and you pick. The copy you turn down isn't thrown away: it stays in the game's folder as <name>.bak (a save state's picture too), until the next KEEP WHICH? about the same file replaces it.

Touch controls sit under the game in portrait and at its sides in landscape: D-pad (diagonals by touching between the arms), A, B, Start, Select, Pause and fast-forward (>>, hold), plus X and Y when 4 slots is on. They hide when you use a controller or keyboard and come back on the next touch. The back button pauses, and goes back in menus. In the menus, tap a row to choose it and drag a long list to scroll it; while a menu fills the screen the on-screen controls step aside.

Pressing a control or tapping a menu gives a short tick, the same one as the keyboard, and follows your phone's touch feedback setting. Settings → Vibration (Android only) turns it off for the game. Volume has − and + either side of its bars, and tapping a bar jumps to that level.

Leaving the app saves the game and a Resume state; coming back opens the pause menu.

Everything — the data read from your ROM, your saves, save states and settings — lives in one per-user folder:

Deleting that folder resets the app; you'll be asked for your ROM again.

Please open an issue with your system, which game, and what you were doing. Never attach a ROM or a save made from one. On Android, adb logcat -s oracles shows the app's messages.

Every routine the games run is readable C: all of Ages, and 99% of Seasons (shared with Ages where the two games agree, hand-written where Seasons differs; the rest generated from the disassembly). The native build runs both games with no CPU emulator and no ROM code at all — on first launch the app takes the graphics, sound and data out of your ROM and zeroes the code bytes, because it no longer needs them.

Behaviour is checked against the original ROM by replaying full playthroughs and comparing every C routine with the original code it replaces.

To build it yourself, or work on it, see DEVELOPMENT.md.