The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess Is Finally Available On Switch

The Legend of Zelda’s current notable prominence has been brought about by the franchise’s 40th anniversary, with Nintendo and fans celebrating together over what a brilliant ride it has been in that time. A big part of that has been nostalgia for the older games in the series, which are still brilliant fun to play in 2026.

The Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack membership also gives us access to many of those games on modern hardware, with classic titles like A Link to the Past, Majora’s Mask, and The Minish Cap all available at no additional cost. Not every game from Zelda’s past is included in that offering, though, and some of the best games in the series to the date have been left out in the cold.

Now, one of those games has finally been made playable on the console, though only through the dedicated work of fans who have toiled tirelessly to make it a reality.

Though the Nintendo Switch Online Classics catalogue has a long list of Zelda games included as part of its offering, there are some notable omissions. The biggest of those is Twilight Princess, Nintendo’s response to fan demands for a darker and grittier take on the series that they had all grown up playing.

Over on YouTube, Zealous Chuck shared a video confirming that Dusk (or Dusklight), the fan-made, open-source native PC and mobile port of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, is finally playable on the Nintendo Switch.

The first thing to note is that this absolutely isn’t a case of simple emulation, with Dusk instead being a full reverse engineered software decompilation of the original GameCube release. It therefore supports high-resolution rendering up to 4K, uncapped frame rates, mouse aiming, and support for additional 3D models and texture packs.

It has been one of the best ways to play the game for a long while now, but its transition over to the Nintendo Switch is a big step for those who were hoping for something more portable than sitting down at the PC. The only slightly disappointing facet to everything we have seen so far is that the game doesn’t appear to be running too well on the Switch just yet, which is a surprise given its age.

Nintendo

It’s likely the console isn’t taking advantage of all the processing power available just yet, and further work is needed to ensure that no bottlenecks are occurring while the game is running. In any case, it’s a very cool next step for the modern port of the game, so hopefully further work can be done to get it in as good a condition on the Switch as it currently is on other platforms.

Other than that, Legend of Zelda fans also have the new movie to look forward to next year, and they can while away the hours waiting for that by playing the new Ocarina of Time Remake. That’s still set to drop in November, so let’s just hope it manages to live up to the expectations of those who played it in the 1990s.

Released

November 19, 2006

ESRB

T For Teen due to Animated Blood, Fantasy Violence

Developer(s)

Nintendo EAD

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Engine

Proprietary Engine