The PS1 homebrew scene simply never stops. We already looked back at what 2025 meant for the community and, in retrospect, it was easily one of the strongest years the PS1 homebrew scene has ever had. But surprisingly, 2026 is shaping up to be just as exciting, if not even bigger.
One of the biggest milestones for the community this year has also been the release of PSX Splash 2.0, the evolution of Bandwidth’s Unity-based toolset that allows developers to create PlayStation games directly from Unity workflows. The tool recently received its own Game Jam event, which alone produced nine brand-new PS1 homebrew titles. We’ll continue covering these projects individually, and we’re also preparing a dedicated article focused entirely on the Game Jam itself.
And yet, even with all of that happening, another massive surprise has just appeared.
Last year already gave us one of the most ambitious PS1 homebrew projects ever attempted: a port of Super Mario 64 for the original PlayStation. While still far from complete, that project already features a functional alpha where most of the game’s levels can be explored on Sony’s 32-bit hardware.
Now, the developer Bonnie Games (who previously brought Celeste Classic to PS1 using PSYQo) revealed an even more ambitious idea: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time running on the original PlayStation.
At the moment, the project is still highly experimental, but it is already playable and accompanied by early gameplay footage showing some surprisingly promising results. Much like the Mario 64 PSX project, this is clearly an early prototype rather than a near-finished conversion, but the fact that it already works at all is impressive considering the scale and complexity of the original game.
The prototype, also built using PSYQo, already includes basic player movement and collision detection, allowing players to explore a simple 3D environment. One of the most interesting technical aspects shown so far is the camera system. The camera can be rotated freely and is controlled independently from movement using both analog sticks, resulting in a surprisingly modern dual-stick control scheme that almost recalls games like Dark Souls.
Naturally, the project still has a long road ahead. Performance is currently very low, and several graphical issues are visible throughout the footage. Textures are not yet mapped correctly onto polygons, and players can see through walls, exposing parts of the map that should normally remain hidden. However, these problems are completely expected at such an early stage and mainly highlight how technically challenging it is to adapt a game like Ocarina of Time to PlayStation hardware.
According to the developer, the project is not only intended as a port attempt, but also as a learning exercise to better understand the original PlayStation architecture. The experience gained from this experiment is expected to support another ongoing project called BONNIE-32, an engine designed to reproduce authentic PlayStation-style graphics natively.
Even with all its current limitations, this prototype already represents an exciting first step. If development continues, this could eventually become one of the most ambitious PS1 homebrew ports ever attempted. Projects of this scale remain extremely rare and, alongside experiments such as Super Mario 64 PSX or Half-Life PSX, they demonstrate just how far the modern PS1 homebrew scene continues to evolve.
Check out the original post for more details, and make sure to follow Bonnie Games on his social media for future updates.
