Ocarina of Time - Spaceworld '97 "Experience" released (ROM hack)
A group of enthusiasts known as the sw97-team have attempted to recreate the renowned Ocarina of Time demo that was made playable to attendees of the 1997 Nintendo Space World event.
Using known video footage from the event as well as leaked content from one of the recent Nintendo gigaleaks, the team have today released their project which can either be patched onto an existing compatible ROM file or built from scratch alongside the Ocarina of Time decompilation project.
The project aims to be as faithful to the target demo as possible but as the team have stated - 100% accuracy is impossible. They have compiled a list with more details for those looking for specifics.
You can watch the trailer of the Spaceworld '97 Experience below and follow the links to find out more.
To celebrate both the anniversary of Ocarina of Time and Spaceworld 1997, today we are finally releasing Ocarina of Time - Spaceworld ‘97 Experience! We are very thankful to all of you for patiently waiting through this long development cycle and excited for you to finally experience what we have worked so hard on!
This project aims to be a mostly accurate representation of the Nintendo Spaceworld 1997 demo of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Since this project aims to restore an experience that was originally a demo, it cannot be completed from start-to-finish like the final game. Instead, three gameplay "tours" featured in the original Spaceworld 1997 demo are available to choose from, each showcasing various unique flavors of gameplay.
In early 2021, a 32 MB development cartridge of F-Zero X was discovered and dumped by Forest of Illusion, a well known video game preservationist. F-Zero X is only a 16 MB game, so half of that 32 MB development cartridge should have went unused. As it would turn out, however, something was taking up the extra cartridge space at the end. Upon further inspection, exactly half of a 32 MB Ocarina of Time prototype dating back to 1997 was discovered. It is likely that this cartridge originally held the Ocarina of Time demo showcased at Spaceworld 1997, but the first half was overwritten by F-Zero X afterward when the development cartridge was reused. This extra data, now dubbed the "overdump," provided the basis for this project's conception.
Additionally, the "Gigaleak" that occured in mid-2020 provided both a significant amount of insight and assets that were used within this project.
Areas, dialogue, and most textures come from the F-Zero X overdump. The dialogue was translated from Japanese by GlitterBerri and has been formatted so it will fit within text boxes when using the English font. This translation attempts to be as faithful to the original dialogue as possible.
Project GitHub page
Release Trailer (YouTube)
Source