Even just one year after The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's launch in May 2023, its story, cutscenes, and music have already reached legendary status among fans. Heck, even the pre-launch trailers gave us all kinds of goosebumps. Honestly, though, we never would have expected a Game Boy 'demake' of the title to illicit such a similar response.
Alas, a selection of cutscenes from the game has been given a stunning Game Boy treatment alongside its iconic music, courtesy of YouTube channel, uh... 'it'. We get to see the opening sequence of the game in which Zelda and Link stumble across... something... alongside a look at some of its closing moments. So just be wary if you've yet to finish Tears of the Kingdom - this is pretty spoilerific.
It's beautifully done and is remarkably faithful to what you might have actually seen on the Game Boy back in the '90s. The animation is limited to a few frames of movement here and there, but the way characters pan across the screen is wonderfully effective. The music, however... goodness, what a treat.
There are a few other videos from 'it' over on YouTube, so be sure to check them out if you enjoyed this one. It's very Zelda-focused, with one posted in March 2024 featuring a 3-minute rendition of the final BOTW battle with Dark Beast Ganon. Very cool.
What do you make of this Tears of the Kingdom 'demake'? We'd love to see some animated gameplay next. Leave a comment with your thoughts down below.
[source youtube.com]
Comments 20
Love the work they put into this. I stopped watching after the intro, because I still haven't fully played the game yet. If they would've gone for the real Game Boy treatment, however, they would've gone with green and 1:1 resolution. Yes, I'm gonna be that guy today.
Also didn't watch the whole video as I haven't finished Tears of the Kingdom yet, but the ones I saw are great so kudos to the creator!
That's so good. I'm still so rooted in that era that this gives me goosebumps.
Can't fully watch it though, as I still have to finish the game, once I'm over my BotW/TotK burnout.
Can't finish sure to not having beaten the game yet, but the intro is lovely!
I gotta agree with Pillowpants: the resolution in these seems to be too high for them to be real Game Boy cutscenes. There's more pixels than what the GB screen could show. They're still nicely done, but what's the point of making faux Game Boy graphics, if the quality is too high for the actual Game Boy?
It looks and sounds so amazing, never would have thought that I would see Yunobo in GameBoy graphics but here we are. Thanks for showing me this!
@Polvasti @Pillowpants Both of you underestimate the GB's true power.
Had something like this ran on real GB hardware, it would display the cutscenes in all their all glory... for about 2 seconds before catching fire and blowing up.
@DripDropCop146 You're forgetting that the batteries would run dry before that could even happen.
I was watching this at work while drinking my coffee. Halfway through I almost choke, spit my coffee, all the while trying to hold sobbing.
Well done! I loved it
wow, I didn't remember that the gameboy had 8 billion pixels and wide screen.
That is brilliant. Very well done.
I also think there's way more details than a GameBoy would be able to display, but just for the MIDI version of the music is the video worth watching. Really cool. I love all the new musical themes in TotK.
Quite impressive, although it would have been nice if they included some "gameplay" in it, maybe in the style of Link's Awakening. As it is, there does exist a Link's Awakening-style demake of Zelda's Adventure for the Philips CD-i, so it would have been interesting to see that for TOTK.
@Polvasti @Pillowpants At the very least, it's nice seeing the direction and editing of the scenes follow the general rules of the GB era faithfully, as well as color coordination and sound editing.
These demakes always make me wish Nintendo would fund official demakes to be playable on their respective NSO app, even if it's just a short prototype with a fraction of the content from the original source. Even if it was just around Super Mario Land in game length would be a treat to experience from our favorite Switch games.
Like a SNES, Chrono Trigger -esque demake of Xenoblade shadow dropped onto the NSO app! How fun would that be?
They’ve done a great job. Very much a spoiler warning for this in case people come to the comments before watching.
That was impressive! And the music? A+
Awesome work. It looked like something you'd see on a Playdate at times, which isn't a bad thing (and makes me want to see something like it on the device).
dang this is so cool
Dude….you guys need to beat this game!
*elicit
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...