linksawakening-portable

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX, statically recompiled to C and built for game consoles, handhelds, Android and the browser. It's the console side of LinksAwakening: the same game code and runtime, with one platform backend per target. You supply your own ROM; no game code is distributed here.

Part of the sp00nznet recomp projects, built on the gb-recompiled toolkit and following the same house style (generated code is never committed).

Status

v0.1.0. Every target below builds from your ROM with one command (the installer, Setup.cmd or setup.sh), tested end to end on 2026-10-20. "Last seen running" is the most recent time someone actually ran that build; a target that has only been built says so.

Target	Backend	Builds (2026-10-20)	Last seen running
Windows	SDL2 (LinksAwakening)	✅ 23 MB exe	Plays through dungeons; headless run checked 2026-10-20
PlayStation 4	SDL2 (OpenOrbis)	✅ 19 MB .pkg	Real hardware
PlayStation 3	platform_psl1ght.c	✅ 23 MB EBOOT.BIN	RPCS3, ~56 fps, title + gameplay
Nintendo 3DS	platform_3ds.c	✅ 20 MB .3dsx	Azahar and a real New 2DS XL, gameplay
Nintendo Wii	platform_wii.c	✅ 22 MB .dol	Dolphin, title + intro
Nintendo GameCube	platform_gamecube.c	✅ 22 MB .dol	Not run yet
Sega Dreamcast	platform_dreamcast.c	✅ 14 MB .elf (-Os)	Flycast, title screen; not full speed
PlayStation 2	platform_ps2.c	✅ 22 MB .elf	Not run yet
PSP	platform_psp.c	✅ 20 MB EBOOT.PBP	Not run yet
PS Vita	platform_vita.c	✅ 9.4 MB .vpk	Not run yet
Android	SDL2 (NDK)	✅ 10 MB .apk (x86_64)	Android emulator, title screen
WebAssembly	SDL2 (Emscripten)	✅ 14 MB .wasm	Browser: loads, renders, plays audio
Xbox 360	platform_libxenon.c	✅ 22 MB .elf32 (XeLL)	Never: Xenia can't run libxenon homebrew; needs RGH/JTAG hardware
Original Xbox	SDL2 (NXDK)	✅ 13 MB .xbe	Hangs at the Xbox logo in xemu

Tested ROM: Legend of Zelda, The - Link's Awakening DX (USA, Europe) (Rev 2), SHA-1 1c091225688d966928cc74336dbef2e07d12a47c.

Multiplayer isn't part of these builds; it lives in la-mp.

Screenshots

3DS — title (Azahar)	3DS — name entry	3DS — gameplay

PS3 — title (RPCS3)	Wii — title (Dolphin)	Android — title (emulator)

Sega Dreamcast — title (Flycast, stock 16 MB)

Getting Started

Every route builds all 13 consoles from your ROM inside Docker, so the only thing to install is Docker itself: Docker Desktop on Windows and macOS, or Docker Engine on Linux. Start it before you begin. The first run downloads about 20 GB of toolchain images and takes 1 to 2 hours. A rerun skips everything already built.

Installer (easiest)

1. Download the installer for your system from the latest release: LinksAwakening-Consoles-Installer-windows-x64.exe, -linux-x64.tar.gz or -macos-arm64.zip. It isn't signed: on Windows, SmartScreen asks first (More info, Run anyway); on a Mac, open it once, then Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
2. Choose the folder your ROM is in (the .gbc, or a .zip with it inside), and press Build.
3. When it's done, Console builds opens the folder with one subfolder per console. builds/README.txt says which built and what's known to work.

The installer is recomp-launcher with launcher/launcher.json; all it does is run the setup script below with your ROM folder.

Setup script

1. Get the source, with submodules:

   git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/sp00nznet/linksawakening-portable.git
   cd linksawakening-portable
   

   Trip-up: on Windows, Filename too long means the nested submodules hit the 260-character path limit. Run git config --global core.longpaths true (or clone to a shorter path), then git submodule update --init --recursive.

2. Run the setup, giving it your ROM's folder:

   • Windows: double-click Setup.cmd (it asks), or tools\setup.ps1 -Game <folder>
   • Linux and macOS: ./setup.sh --game-dir <folder>

   Add -Targets wii,psp (--targets wii,psp) to build only some consoles.

3. The builds are in builds/<console>/, with a summary in builds/README.txt. Each console's full log is in build-logs/.

What it runs, step by step: docs/BUILDING.md. It turns your ROM into C once in the devkitpro/devkitppc image (scripts/recomp.sh), then runs each line of scripts/targets.tsv in that console's toolchain image. You can run any one of those lines by hand.

Usage

Each build is a normal homebrew package for its platform: copy it over and launch it the way that platform runs homebrew (BUILDING.md has the details per target). Saves go to a linksawakening folder on the target's storage (sd:/linksawakening/ on Wii and GameCube, ms0:/linksawakening/ on PSP, and so on), so they're kept when you rebuild.

Building from source

• Setup: setup.sh (Linux, macOS) and tools/setup.ps1 (Windows) do the same thing: check Docker, run scripts/recomp.sh (ROM to C), then every line of scripts/targets.tsv. Android's toolchain image is built from docker/android.Dockerfile.
• Build scripts: scripts/build_<target>.sh. They find the repo through scripts/env.sh, so they run from any checkout, under WSL or inside Docker with the repo mounted at /src, and skip recompiling rom.c when its object file is newer.
• The game and runtime: the LinksAwakening/ submodule. It holds rom_main.c (one entry point for every target) and, inside it, gbrecomp/runtime/ with every platform_*.c backend.
• Porting notes: docs/PORTING.md (the platform contract), docs/ENDIAN_AUDIT.md (big-endian targets), docs/PAL_AUDIT.md.

.
├── LinksAwakening/   submodule: entry point, gen/ (your ROM's code), gbrecomp/ (runtime)
├── scripts/          build_<target>.sh, env.sh, PS4 packaging, WASM shell
├── android/          Gradle project (SDL2 is staged in at build time)
├── xbox/             NXDK Makefile
├── docs/             BUILDING.md and the porting notes
└── screenshots/

Credits

• Recompiler and runtime: arcanite24/gb-recompiled, with our changes in sp00nznet/gb-recompiled
• Game knowledge: the LADX-Disassembly contributors
• Toolchains: devkitPro (Wii, GameCube, 3DS), PSL1GHT (PS3), OpenOrbis (PS4), KallistiOS (Dreamcast), PS2SDK and gsKit (PS2), pspdev (PSP), VitaSDK (Vita), libxenon (Xbox 360), nxdk (original Xbox), Emscripten, the Android NDK, and SDL2

License

The code in this repository is MIT.

That covers the build scripts, packaging and documentation. It does not and cannot cover The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX: the game's code, art, audio and data belong to Nintendo, are not distributed here, and you need your own legitimate copy. The C generated from your ROM is a derivative of the game and is never committed. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo.