Two widescreen ports of Zelda's Oracle games arrive, one rebuilt in C and one built around an emulator

oracles-decomp runs Oracle of Ages and Seasons as native C with no emulator underneath. The Oracles Project keeps the original code in SameBoy or mGBA and adds a widescreen view, item hotkeys and f...

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Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons, Capcom's two Game Boy Color Zelda games from 2001, now have two separate widescreen versions for PC and Android. Both were shown on Reddit on 8 and 9 October, both ask for your own USA ROM and ship none, and both say they were built with AI help. Under the hood they take opposite routes.

Rebuilt in C

oracles-decomp, created on 25 September and released as a nightly build last updated on 10 October, runs both games as native programs for macOS, Windows, Linux and Android 8 or later. Its README says there is "no emulator underneath". Every routine is readable C, it says: all of Ages and 99% of Seasons, with the rest generated from the disassembly. On first launch the app takes the graphics, sound and data out of the ROM and zeroes the code bytes, and its behaviour is checked by replaying full playthroughs against the original.

Widescreen widens the picture to 256x144, with the original 160 pixels untouched in the middle and 48 either side showing neighbouring rooms decoded from the ROM. Nothing moves in those side areas, since the game only runs the room you are in. Around that come four save-state slots, save sync between devices through a 16-digit code, remappable controls, CRT, LCD and xBRZ or hqx filters, and small Lua mods. The project is GPL-3.0, and its AI disclosure says it "has used help from generative AI, specifically Claude Opus."

The original code, in an emulator

thibautbus's The Oracles Project goes the other way. "Nothing of the game's code is rewritten", its README says: the ROM runs in an unmodified SameBoy core, or in mGBA's Game Boy core on smaller devices, while a native host reads the game's state and draws around it. Its widescreen Enhanced mode shows neighbouring rooms that "the game itself computes in a second instance of the core", with a smooth camera.

Version 1.1.0 arrived on 9 October, ten days after 1.0.0, adding the mGBA core and Near, Medium and Far widescreen levels. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and Android 10 or later, and adds four item hotkeys that use or equip an item without opening the menu. It can also load three fan games from their BPS patches: Gifts of Kinomi 1.1.2 and Moonrise Regalia 1.0.6, built on Ages, and Temple of Seasons 1.073, built on Seasons. The project is MIT-licensed, and its README says every change, AI-written or not, goes through the same tests, including a suite of recorded routes replayed on the real games.

Sources

Image: thibautbus

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