Patrick O'Rourke is XDA's News Editor and Entertainment Segment Lead. Previously, he was Pocket-lint's Editor-in-Chief, the Editor-in-Chief of Canadian tech publication MobileSyrup, and earlier in his career, he worked as the technology editor at the Financial Post and Postmedia. He's based in Toronto.
Over the past 15 years, he's written thousands of articles. Patrick has also interviewed dozens of tech industry executives and covered GDC, E3, Gamescom, WWDC, Apple keynotes, Samsung Unpacked events and more.
Patrick has a BA in journalism from Toronto Metropolitan University.
Thanks to AI, the number of retro and modern game PC ports dropping right now is through the roof. Recent examples include PC ports of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a Mac port of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and even a PC port of the Pokémon: Let's Go games.
One port that recently caught my attention is ZeldaWWHDRecomp, a static recompilation of the Wii U's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Android. With so many recompilations releasing these days, it's tough to tell what games are total AI slop and which are solid, AI-assisted static recompilations. After all, if a recompilation sucks, you're better off just emulating whatever game you're trying to play.
Thankfully, ZeldaWWHDRecomp is pretty solid, though it's far from perfect. The recompilation's main draw over emulating the Wii U classic with Cemu is mod support and 60fps through interpolation (there's an experimental true 60fps mode, but it doesn't run well right now), a substantial jump over the original game's 30fps. In my experience, The Wind Waker HD runs very smoothly on my ROG Xbox Ally X20, though I get occasional stutters when shaders compile as I enter new areas. Thankfully, updates over the past week have made this issue less frequent.
Watch Toon Link slice-and-dice enemies at 60fps
Mod support adds fan-made quests to The Wind Waker HD
While Zelda: The Wind Waker HD runs silkily-smooth for the most part, seeing Toon Link's timeless art style at 60fps is a bit jarring at first. Thankfully, I quickly got used to the fluid motion, and I don't think I could go back now. Everything from running to swinging Link's sword looks impressively smooth and far more modern, running at a higher frame rate.
Mod support adds extra features like fan-made story quests, including extra Treasure Charts, a Story Notebook, and quest mods that appear in the Rito postboxes you'll find throughout the game's world. All of these mods are optional and can be turned off in the game's menu if you want a more authentic experience.
Other quality-of-life upgrades include save states, internal resolution scaling up to 3840x2160 (I played at 1920x1080), picture scaling, and controller-specific button prompts. In my case, I used Xbox buttons, which show up in the game's UI, and switched them to By Label to make the controls less confusing on the ROG Xbox Ally X20. You can also change joystick deadzones, open the Wii U's GamePad screen in a separate window, and even turn on HDR (The Wind Waker HD looks incredible with high-dynamic range on).
Like all recompilations, ZeldaWWHDRecomp doesn't include any The Wind Waker HD Wii U game files. This means you need to supply your own dump of the game's disc image, or acquire it elsewhere. Once you supply your own game files, the setup process translates The Wind Waker HD's PowerPC code into C and compiles it for your system.
You can even import The Wind Waker HD save files from Cemu, which I really appreciated since I'm already several dungeons deep in the game through the popular emulator. That said, it takes a bit of work to hunt down the save files on Windows 11. It's also worth mentioning that updates for ZeldaWWHDRecomp drop almost daily, so if you're running into stability issues, keep an eye on the project's GitHub page.
I manage all the decompilations and recompilations I play through Quiver, a port-focused Windows 11 launcher that makes it easier to track what you have installed and update the games in your library.
The art style that divided fans in 2002 looks incredible today
Back in 2002, at 13, I was just too cool for The Wind Waker's cel-shaded graphics. I was out here playing super mature games like Halo: Combat Evolved and Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey, and I had no time for kiddie games like The Wind Waker. Adding to that vibe at the time, the game's cartoony visual style felt like a slap in the face to fans after the realistic-looking Zelda Space World demo in 2000.
Fast-forward to 2026, and The Wind Waker still looks absolutely stunning, especially the 2013 HD Wii U remaster this static recompilation ports over to PC, while games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a darker, grittier entry in the series that was a direct response to the Toon Link backlash, just looks okay to me now. That said, the recent Dusklight Twilight Princess PC port includes an option to remove the bloom Twilight Princess is known for, which cleans up its blown-out visuals a lot.
I wouldn't go so far as to say that ZeldaWWHDRecomp is the definitive way to play The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker since the game still runs a bit more reliably when emulated in Cemu, but if the team behind the project can iron out some of its shader loading issues, I can see that changing, mainly due to the native PC port's 60fps support. With the Ocarina of Time remake just around the corner, now is a great time to dive back into one of the long-running series' best entries.