Through a roundabout method, a resourceful and rather ingenious individual has the first-party Nintendo mega-hit, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, playable on a PlayStation Vita. We didn't expect today to go in this direction, either.
Caveats had to be made, of course, and it's technically not running on the Vita. Rather, Nintendo's latest hit is being emulated on PC and streamed to the plucky little handheld through a program called Moonlight.
Despite what OP says, input lag looks quite brutal, and the whole thing seems more like a cool brag than an ideal way to play one of the most universally acclaimed games ever made. The nitty-gritty technical details can be found in the embedded post below for those so inclined.
We can't imagine the aptly named CEO of Nintendo, Doug Bowser, will be as psyched as we are to see Zelda running on Vita. He's known to breathe fire (in a litigious sense), after all. Does this make you want to dust off your old friend (or unseal that mint one, hidden away for a rainy day)? Let us know in the comments section below.
[source reddit.com, via thegamer.com]
Comments 30
Alright. The switch is already portable so i don't see a point. Neat though.
People have it running on Steamdeck via YUZU also
Moonlight sounds like it would be great but is fairly abysmal in practice. Relies on the shoddy Shield streaming and I had certain games straight up refuse to work.
I'll stick to playing it on my docked Switch with a Pro controller.
PS Vita, pashaw, let me know when they get it streaming to a PS Vita TV.
And so we have come full circle. The Vita walked so the Switch could run. The Switch is what the Vita would’ve been if, y’know, it was actually supported with games by the company that made it. And now the Vita can (sorta) play its successor’s games. How poetic. 🙃
@Impossibilium I don't think it would have been successful even with more games. It would have surely sold more, but never enough.
Yeah, playing with less essential buttons must be great!
I mean, I love my Viti but I have another handled with a bigger OLED screen and all the actual required buttons that'll play this a lot better and cheaper......
Resolutions the same though 😂
That's a lot of effort to go through just to play it on a smaller OLED screen with horrific input lag
@naruball Yeah, the games were only part of the problem.
The lack of built-in storage, with expensive proprietary memory cards needed to download anything. The useless back touchscreen (and, to a lesser degree, the front touchscreen) that also jacked up the price. And the growing prevalence of smartphones as a portable entertainment medium.
All things that contributed to the poor initial sales, which caused Sony to stop making games for it, which was the final nail in the coffin for the device.
The support of indie developers was the only thing that kept it going as long as it did, but it was only propping up a shambling corpse. They all jumped ship as soon as the Switch arrived.
That's very neato, but I'd just play the game on my Switch.
@Impossibilium vita had huge support! It’s own call of duty/resistance/motor storm/lbp/ uncharted to name a few first party titles. The problem was nobody brought it because it launched during a recession
Vita means life <3
I wish the vita was more successful. To dream that of playing a Vita 2, or whatever they would have called it.
Instead we get that weird handheld thing coming out. I'm sure some people will love it and I probably would too if I brought it, but I get a creeping feeling it'll flop.
Also I miss old Zelda. Ocarina of time, windwaker, those two are my faves. Don't like the new direction they've headed in. But that's personal preference =)
People find negativity in anything I swear.
@Mikey856 2012 was not a recession... in fact, we all had Olympic Fever, baby.
@kyleforrester87 we were certainly very much in the tail end of it pal
@Mikey856 yep, then we had some pretty good years, through Vitas lifespan. Only 2 years later the PS4 sold like hotcakes, by which point the Vita should have been well established and in its prime. At the end of the day, Sony squandered the potential Vita had.
@kyleforrester87 how long into vitas lifespan did killzone mercs launch. It was already finished by that stage yet Sony were still making first party titles for it . I just think they, like everyone else, knew the writing was on the wall for vita
@Mikey856 The recession would be an additional reason why the pricing of the Vita was such a big deal.
And unfortunately, most of those games you mentioned — while probably enjoyed a bit by fans of those series — got mediocre or bad reviews, mostly because they were compared to the rest of the games in their series (whether that was fair or not), and usually had forced touch controls shoved into them. They just weren’t the system sellers they needed to be. (Call of Duty was the most anticipated, and ended up being one of the worst reviewed games on the system.)
Sony had marketed the Vita as a portable home console, but the games didn’t live up to that hype. The best games on it were new IP (eg. Tearaway, Gravity Rush) that also didn’t sell enough because the mainstream buyers weren’t familiar with them (ie. the Call of Duty and sports game bros didn’t show up), and the best reviewed game on it — Persona 4 Golden — released before it became more than just a niche title (with the popularity of Persona 5).
And you’re right, by the time Killzone came along, the Vita was already on its last legs (I looked it up, it was less than two years after the Vitas launch). And the Killzone series had also lost its shine by then — Shadow Fall released a couple of months after Mercenary and didn’t receive many accolades.
Indies were the only games that sold well on the Vita. But that was because they were drowned out by bigger games on home consoles, whereas on the Vita they stood out because anyone that had a Vita was starved for content, and the games had less competition. That kind of visibility transferred over to the Switch when it released — at least until Nintendo let the floodgates open and let any piece of trash on their storefront (a practice that Sony eventually adopted a few years later 🤮).
@Impossibilium absolutely there were a whole load of differently factors at play. And it is a tragedy as it’s still a brilliant piece of kit to this day. I’ve had two of them myself.
@ManifoldCuriosity what is this nintendolife now? ha
@Nem So it'll run at 60fps and not vaguely 22 to 30, and also have anti-aliasing and even raytracing. Same with BotW - though personally I'd rather keep it on the PC and not a tiny screen.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g2a5PmIhryA&pp=ygUWYm90dyBjZW11IHJheSB0cmFjaW5nIA%3D%3D
Brave individual to show a hacked ROM running on PC with Nintendo's lawers about.
I have a mint Vita but can’t find anything I want to play on it. I might have to jailbreak it I think
@Boucho11 best thing you will ever do.
@Vader82 any guides you recommend?
@Boucho11 Not them, but google "cfw guide." The first or second result will tell you what to do with the Vita. It's probably one of the easier systems to hack.
I mainly use it to play rips of my PS1 games that weren't already on PSN and translated imports, but you can do so much with a jailbroken Vita.
@Boucho11 I just scoured YouTube and found a fair few good ones. It can be daunting at first. Need a large sd card too. We'll worth it though
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