A fan-made demake of The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild has gone viral online after appearing on a flashcart sold on AliExpress.

Online retail sites are no stranger to weird bootleg cartridges, many of which typically aim to copy major modern titles. This Breath Of The Wild flashcart for the DS was first highlighted by GBATemp and Youtuber JustJasen, and features a low poly recreation of Breath Of The Wild’s Hyrule that can be explored by a similarly low-poly Link. The video initially sparked wild theories about its origins, such as it being the work of a particularly ambitious developer from China.

However, the truth turned out to be a bit more mundane. Ermelber, one of the rom’s developers, took to social media to clear the air, revealing that it was a fan project he worked on with one of his friends. Ermelber animated Link, while his friend created the impressive terrain engine responsible for the map.

It seems an old ROM of a project I was working on with friends leaked online, it's so funny seeing people speculate about this as some sort of obscure piece of media by a mysterious Chinese dev, while it's simply just something we made several years ago. LMAO https://t.co/DzGAZczZQd

— Ermelber (@ermelber) October 20, 2024

UPDATE: A few news outlets have talked about my tweet and credited me as the main creator, however my involvement in this was minor compared to my friend who made the entire terrain engine, I worked on Link's model animations and Link's state machine code.

— Ermelber (@ermelber) October 22, 2024

The terrain engine is handcrafted and written in pure ARM assembly for best performance. It pulls out many tricks out of the hat you can't even imagine. I don't like that I've been credited like this.

— Ermelber (@ermelber) October 22, 2024

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