A few weeks after its release, Nintendo has taken the plunge with the fan-made PC port of the classic Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening!

Nintendo has issued a takedown notice for yet another fan project. This time, it’s an unofficial PC port of the classic Game Boy game The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. There are tons of fan-made games for The Legend of Zelda. Some are remakes of older games. Others can be seen as improvements to existing games. However, any fan project based on an iconic Nintendo IP always runs the risk of being shut down by the Japanese gaming giant. This has already happened, for example, with Another Metroid 2 Remake or Pokemon Uranium. The PC port of the classic Zelda game is no exception.

Titled “Link’s Awakening DX HD,” the PC port of Link’s Awakening was released in early December, and it seeks to improve upon the original game with several quality-of-life tweaks and revamp it to run natively on modern PCs.

This includes high framerates, widescreen support, and other ways to make the game feel polished. This can already be seen in the release trailer. (See the end of the article.) Many things in the game have been reworked to adapt to the new dimensions. Although the game was free to download on itch.io, Nintendo has since taken it down.

A post on Link’s Awakening DX HD on itch.io states that the game’s files have been suspended due to a copyright or trademark claim. Looking at the notice itself, it appears that an authorized legal representative of Nintendo of America filed it. It claims the fan-made dust infringes on the company’s The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening copyright. As a result, game files and downloads have been suspended.

The news of the game’s discontinuation took a toll on the Zelda community, although many expected this inevitable outcome given Nintendo’s historically very protective nature of its IP.

The company previously re-released Link’s Awakening on Switch. Both through the 2019 Grezzo HD remake and the re-release of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX as part of the Nintendo Switch Online service in February 2023. Both versions were referenced in the recall notice. This is probably why the company took legal action against the fan-made port.

This isn’t the first time Nintendo has taken legal action against fan-made projects. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last. At the beginning of the year, for example, the game maker requested the removal of the Dolphin emulator from the Steam platform. Similar to the shutdown of games like AM2R, fans are trying to preserve this Link’s Awakening PC port after the downloads have been removed.

Source: Itch.io