About
A decompilation-based native PC port of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past for SNES, produced by the snesrev GitHub organization. The zelda3 project reverse-engineers the original SNES binary into annotated C source that compiles and runs natively on Linux. It supports MSU-1 CD-quality audio, widescreen patches, and frame rate improvements over the original SNES hardware.
Requires building from source with a plain Makefile (make -j$(nproc)) and SDL2, plus a valid USA SNES ROM (renamed zelda3.sfc) for the one-time asset extraction step. The snesrev organization also maintains decompilation ports of Super Mario World and Super Metroid using the same approach.
Identity
Launch
- Binary
- zelda3
- Needs files
-
- A Link to the Past USA SNES ROM, renamed to zelda3.sfc (must match the SHA256 the project expects) — used for asset extraction only
Runtime
- Runs as
- Native Linux
- Proton
- not needed
The one thing to know
Supply your own copy: You must supply a USA ALTTP SNES ROM (v1.0) for asset extraction — deckport links nothing.
Build required: A tagged v0.3 release exists on GitHub, but it is Windows-oriented; for Linux / Steam Deck the practical path is to compile zelda3 yourself from github.com/snesrev/zelda3.
Steam Deck: The recommended path is to open a Distrobox Ubuntu container in Desktop Mode, install build dependencies (make, gcc/clang, and the SDL2 dev headers — libsdl2-dev), clone the repo, run the asset-extraction step against your zelda3.sfc ROM, then make -j$(nproc). The project uses a plain Makefile (no cmake).
Install: After a successful build, add the zelda3 binary as a non-Steam game.
Audio: MSU-1 audio packs are community-made and provide CD-quality music; download and configure them separately.
Community guides
Write-ups and threads from people who got this (or a similar) game running. deckport links to them — it doesn't reproduce them.
Get the artwork
deckport never hosts game images. Open this game on SteamGridDB, pick
the cover / hero / logo / icon you like, and drop them into the
game folder under .deckport-art/ before you push it to the
Deck. The importer files them under the right names automatically.
Run it on your Deck
Two files: the one-time importer (deckport.py) in your
Deck's home folder, and this game's install helper. Copy the game
into ~/Games and run the helper with Steam closed — it
writes the recipe (binary, launch options)
and registers the shortcut with artwork.