Wind Waker HD gets a native recomp port, no Cemu underneath

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD now runs as a native port, with no Cemu underneath. ZeldaWWHDRecomp is a static recompilation of the Wii U version, USA or European, and it runs on macOS (Apple Silicon), Linux, Windows and Android. On Android you build it yourself.

The trick is simple. The game’s PowerPC code gets translated to C ahead of time. The Cafe OS libraries are reimplemented natively. Graphics go straight to Metal on macOS or Vulkan everywhere, with no GPU command emulation. It’s not an emulator in the usual sense, and the repo already has 207 stars and 271 commits.

The notes cover v0.2.11, the next release, plus a few fixes from v0.2.9 and v0.2.10. The highlights:

• A one-file AppImage for Linux, next to the zip. It keeps saves and settings in ~/.local/share/wwhd.
• Face buttons by label, so on an Xbox pad A accepts and B goes back.
• Menus stay centred on ultrawide, 16:10 and 4:3 screens.
• The European version gets its own setup path. It can build from the European game alone (v0.2.9).
• Code mods written in C, built on your machine when you install them. Off by default.

There’s a fix worth knowing about. The v0.2.9 cheats were writing to the wrong place in save data and could damage saves. That’s patched in v0.2.10. Medli missing on Dragon Roost after the Master Sword cheat is fixed too (issue #85). Saves already hit can be repaired with tools/savegame/wwsave.py repair-medli.

How to try it on Linux:

1. Grab the AppImage, make it executable, run it.
2. On Ubuntu 24.04 or newer without libfuse2, start it with –appimage-extract-and-run.
3. Want another folder for data? Use –data-dir.

Limitations: Android needs a source build, and the notes cut off before the driver details. Shader caches rebuild after the update, so expect a stutter on the first start. If you see flickering geometry, try WWHD_VK_BUFFER_CACHE=0 and report it.

My take: this is what recomp looks like when it works. The game ships as native code, not as a bundled emulator. Watch the Mod SDK v2 next. If people actually write mods for it, this becomes more than a port.