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'The Legend of Zelda' hacked to make the princess playable

'The Legend of Zelda' hacked to make the princess playable

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zelda (kenna w)
zelda (kenna w)

As prominent a character as Princess Zelda is in Nintendo’s 27-year-long The Legend of Zelda series, you’d think she’d at least have her own game by now. Motivated by the story of father Mike Mika hacking Donkey Kong so that his daughter could play as Pauline, animator Kenna W. decided to try her hand at modding the original 1986 NES title. In a blog post she lays out the whole process, which (in its earliest incarnation, at least) didn’t take a whole lot more than re-drawing the handful of tiles needed to animate the game's hero, Link. The most difficult part seems to have been figuring out what to do with him after making Zelda the heroine. "When you take away the sword, who is he?" asks Kenna. "Just some guy that can’t get out of a room?"