Classic Gaming with Zelda Homebrew

Belgarath writes "Zelda Classic is a free homebrew clone of the original Legend of Zelda for the NES. Additionally, it allows people to create their own zelda quests and games using the handy editor (called z-quest) included in the software. Until now only windows versions have been available but there are beta test groups for the Linux and Apple platforms."

Comments

Why do we celebrate clones?

[Temporal]

Honestly. Why re-make Zelda when you could be creating something completely original? I mean, if people want to remake Zelda, copyright violations aside (and yes, they are violating copyrights), it's up to them how to spend their time. But, honestly, the tendency for open source game developers to spend massive amounts of time simply copying something we already have disappoints me. I would be far more interested if someone had created an entirely original gameplay engine and an entirely original game to go with it. And really, it isn't that hard. In my experience, inventing your own gameplay mechanics is far easier and more fun than implementing them.

Re:Why do we celebrate clones?

[skadus]

I'd imagine if you knock ZClassic, you probably don't play any Doom or Quake mods, do you?

It's not just a 'remake' of Zelda, it's a remake with an editor.

Yeah, it's not quite the same as making a whole new game, but think of it less as a game and more of a toolset with a demo game, like Neverwinter Nights or some of the id game engines (I've heard people before say games like Quake 3 were less of a full game and more of a starting point for mods). What better way to show off a Zelda toolset than with a tile-by-tile remake of the game the engine is based on?

People have made tons of quests for ZClassic, from plain old Zelda quests to MegaMan X quests, and everything in-between.

And the point behind using an editor to make a game rather than building from scratch? You can just jump in and *create* rather than coding every last bit of it first.

Re:Why do we celebrate clones?

[Mornelithe]

I've never personally understood why a man would want to have sex with another man, or why some people like the taste of straight gin. Apparently there are a variety of people in this world with different likes and dislikes, and some of them aren't exactly the same as either you or I.

By the way, are your games really completely new? Are you inventing new genres that aren't at all based on any existing game genres (fps, puzzle, rts, rpg, etc.)? Truly original ideas that aren't related to/derived from other existing ideas are hard to come by.