The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, running natively on iPhone and iPad.
A static recompilation of the GameCube original, with Metal rendering, touch controls, controllers and mods.

Questions or bugs? Join the Discord or open an issue.

BlueWake translates the game's PowerPC code, the main executable and all 415 of its modules, into native arm64 code ahead of time, on your Mac. The app runs that code with a compatibility runtime for the GameCube's hardware: memory and timing, disc and memory card, controllers, DSP audio, and graphics through Metal. Nothing is compiled on the device while you play, so it needs no JIT; the few rare instructions the translator does not handle fall back to an interpreter.

The runtime is derived from Dolphin and keeps an interpreter fallback, so BlueWake is a static recompilation with a hardware compatibility layer, not an "emulation-free" rewrite.

• Tested areas and features: the opening and prologue, Outset Island, sailing the Great Sea, Windfall, a late-game Hyrule save, menus, and saving and reloading through the game's own memory card
• Developer build: 30 FPS at full speed on an iPad Pro (M2), the game's native frame rate, with stereo audio
• Touch controls with a layout editor, opacity and size settings
• Game controllers and keyboards, with camera inversion and button remapping
• The ⋯ menu: FPS display, render resolution up to 4×, texture filtering up to 16× anisotropic, aspect ratio, mods, save backup and restore, and Report a Problem
• Mods: 16:9 widescreen, Dolphin-format HD texture packs and Better Wind Waker

Later dungeons and boss fights are still largely untested. If you find a problem there, please report it.

These measurements come from the developer build. Much of its speed comes from an optimization profile: a record of which parts of the game's code run most, which the compiler uses to arrange that code for speed. That profile is made from the game itself, so it cannot be published. Instead, the builder makes your own: it runs the game briefly on your Mac, records the same kind of counts, then compiles your app with them. On the Mac, an app built this way ran the same test route slightly faster than the developer build; iPad frame-rate tests of it are still to come. Without the profile (--no-train), the game runs at about 27.5 FPS instead of 30 at the Outset Island pier on the iPad Pro (M2).

In the measured slow scenes, the CPU is the main limit, so lowering render resolution alone has not recovered full speed. Other scenes and HD texture packs can have different limits. Performance on smaller devices is active work.

You need:

• a Mac with Apple silicon, Xcode, CMake and Ninja, and at least 12 GB of free disk space (25 GB recommended)
• your GZLE01 revision 0 disc image
• an A13 or newer iPhone or iPad on iOS/iPadOS 17 or later, with Developer Mode on
• an Apple ID for signing (a free one works; its apps expire after seven days)

The easy way: download PadMint, unzip it, double-click PadMint.command, choose BlueWake and drag in your disc image. PadMint gets the tools it needs and the app from the latest release (which contains no game code), builds your game module from your disc and adds it, and saves your BlueWake IPA in your Downloads folder.

From this repository, one command builds your own app from a fresh checkout:

scripts/builder/build.sh "/path/to/The Legend Of Zelda The Wind Waker.iso" --ipa build/BlueWake.ipa

It fetches the pinned runtime and translator, checks your disc, translates the game from it, tunes it on your Mac, compiles it for iOS and writes an unsigned IPA. Install that with Sideloadly, AltStore, SideStore or Xcode, then copy the same disc image to your device (Finder › your device › Files › BlueWake); BlueWake imports it on first launch. Expect a first build of well over an hour on a fast Mac, longer on smaller ones; the terminal shows each stage and its elapsed time, and completed work is reused if you stop and rerun the same command. Run it with --source-only first to check your tools and disc in a few minutes.

The IPA you build contains code translated from your disc: it is yours alone. Never share or upload it.

Step by step, with updating and troubleshooting: Build your own BlueWake. Signing with your own identity and other options: docs/status/DEVICE_BUILD.md.

Open ⋯ › Mods. Each mod applies the next time BlueWake starts and never changes your saves.

Code mods cannot be applied to a statically recompiled game at runtime, so they are translated and built into the app. Details are in docs/MODS.md.

• Saves live in the app's memory card file, On My iPad › BlueWake › BlueWake › GZLE01.card in Files.
• ⋯ › Game Data & Saves › Back Up Saves… exports a copy; Restore Saves… brings one back and keeps a copy of your current saves in a Backups folder first.
• Install updates over the existing app. Deleting BlueWake deletes its saves, so back them up first.
• Remove Disc Image… frees the space used by the disc and the files made from it. Saves, mods and settings stay. You must import your disc again before playing.

• Loading hitches. Changing areas can briefly stall; remaining loading and rendering costs are still being investigated.
• First visits to new areas. A bundled cache covers the areas tested so far; elsewhere, some objects may take a moment to appear the first time.
• Busy scenes on iPhone drop below 30 FPS on chips older than the M-series iPads.

• Discord: discord.gg/xwHfUD2bxW for questions, testing and updates
• Bug reports: ⋯ › Help & Feedback › Report a Problem on GitHub opens a prefilled issue. Say which device, where in the game it happened and what you saw, and attach the session log (Share Session Log, same menu). Please do not attach game files or disc images.

The app is on the latest release, without the game code. The game code is translated from the game, so everyone makes their own from their own disc: PadMint does it on an Apple silicon Mac and adds it to the released app (see Getting started). Without it, the app opens and shows "Translated game code: Missing".

The game's code is translated from your disc during the build, and the game's graphics, sound and world data are read from your disc on the device. Neither is included here.

Only the GameCube USA release, GZLE01 revision 0. The build checks the disc and refuses others. The Wii U Wind Waker HD is a different game and is not supported.

Not in the usual sense. The game's code is translated to native arm64 ahead of time and there is no JIT; only a few rare instructions fall back to an interpreter. The hardware around the CPU (graphics, audio, memory card, timing) comes from a Dolphin-derived runtime.

That is the game's own frame rate on the GameCube. BlueWake targets that frame rate at 100% game speed; raising the speed would make gameplay run faster too.

Yes, on an A13 or newer. The touch controls sit in the black bars beside the picture. The busiest scenes dip below 30 FPS on an iPhone 14; see Performance.

Yes. Controllers that iOS supports work, with camera inversion and button remapping under ⋯ › Controller, and the game's rumble is passed to the controller.

Yes, as long as you install over the existing app. Use Back Up Saves… before anything else, and never delete the app to update it.

Yes. Export the save from Dolphin (Tools, Memory Card Manager, or the .gci file in its GC folder), copy it to your device, then open ⋯ › Game Data & Saves › Import Dolphin Save…. Pick the quest log you want and the BlueWake slot to put it in; your current saves are backed up first. USA saves only.

• Current status: the engineering log, newest first
• Build your own BlueWake: the player's guide
• The Builder: how the build works, and reusing it for other ports
• Device build: signing, installing and build options
• Mods: the three mods and how code mods are built
• History: the project's earlier README, from macOS prototype to iPad
• Porting history and legal and provenance

• Dolphin: the compatibility runtime, DSP audio and texture-pack format come from it, and its GZLE01 game settings supply the widescreen code
• RecompCore and DolRecomp, forked for BlueWake, with the Aurora renderer and Dawn
• zeldaret/tww, the Wind Waker decompilation, for research
• Better Wind Waker by WideBoner
• HD texture pack authors, including Hypatia
• SunPad, whose touch control overlay BlueWake adapts

BlueWake is licensed under the GNU GPL, version 3 or later, the license its Dolphin-derived runtime and SunPad-derived touch controls allow together. See RIGHTS_AND_LICENSES.md for the details and for game content.

BlueWake is an independent fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda, The Wind Waker and GameCube are trademarks of Nintendo. You need your own legally obtained disc and are responsible for following the laws that apply to it.