My Experience in Ship of Harkinian

…or, How to Play Ocarina of Time in Widescreen at 240 Frames Per Second

Ship of Harkinian has been out for a few years now. For those unfamiliar, it’s a fan-made PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Apparently, this was no easy task—hats off to the team for pulling it off. The port itself contains no copyrighted data, so you’ll need to provide your own ROM file to keep things legal. That said, the setup is remarkably straightforward. Once I provided a ROM, the game ran instantly. It even recognized the Xbox controller I had plugged in, allowing me to jump right in.

There’s a menu with various options—some basic, others more technical (levers and switches I didn’t dare touch). But two features immediately stood out: First, the game runs in native 16:9 widescreen. Second, and most impressive, you can unlock the framerate. The original Nintendo 64 version was locked at a choppy and unstable 20 FPS. On a modern PC, you can push the framerate up to your monitor’s maximum. I happen to have a machine that can handle 240 FPS, and Ocarina of Time runs at that speed without issue, thanks to the excellent optimization.

Playing Ocarina of Time at 240 frames per second is a transformative experience. Sure, I’m using a flatscreen monitor—and yes, CRTs arguably still offer superior motion clarity (some claim a flatscreen would need to run at 1000 Hz to match a CRT’s fluidity). But even so, 240 FPS brings out animation details that simply get lost at 20 FPS. Link rolls more smoothly, and Epona’s movements feel more precise and lifelike. Visually, it’s a feast.

Another thing that stands out is resolution. Running the game on a 1080p widescreen monitor makes it clear just how limited the original visuals were. The Nintendo 64 maxed out at 480p (and likely less in Ocarina’s case), so the jump in clarity is dramatic. It also makes the game’s simplicity more obvious: towns feel sparsely populated, and rarely do more than two enemies appear on screen at once. It’s a stark contrast to modern games filled with bustling NPCs and dense environments.

So how’s the game itself? About as good as I remember—sometimes even too relaxing. I’ve completed the first four dungeons: the three child Link dungeons and the first adult dungeon. I never finished the original as a kid, so this is a long-overdue playthrough. I did beat the Master Quest version on the GameCube, which had reworked dungeons. I remember finding the Water Temple easier in that version—though it did feature cows growing out of the walls inside Lord Jabu-Jabu, so there’s that.

Final Opinion: A classic gets nearly everything great about PC gaming (minus ray tracing).
5/5