The Legend of Zelda: A Block to the Past

Have you ever played The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past?

We're on a journey to recreate this masterpiece in Minecraft, block by block.

Wanna learn more? Choose a link from the menu above to view videos, progress, and more.

... or read some Frequently Asked Questions here to get started.

What is A Block to the Past?

We're recreating all - and more - of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past inside of (Vanilla) Minecraft. This includes the overworld, dark world, every dungeon, enemy, item, and boss. When finished, the entire map will be available for free for everyone to play. We're also aiming to add even more content than there already was. This means new items, new enemies, new bosses, new dungeons, and even completely new features.

When will this project be finished?

This is a difficult question to answer. All of us are young people who have lots of other stuff to be busy with, but we try to focus a lot of our free time on this recreation. You can always check our progress here. We don't have a release date set in stone yet, but a cool one would be November 21, 2026, because it is both realistic and the 35th anniversary of ALTTP.

What new content are you adding?

As mentioned before, the new content includes many things. First are the new items, enemies, dungeons, and bosses. Most of these will be inspired or ported from other Zelda games, especially the enemies. We don't want to flood the game with too many enemies or items, however, so we're trying to choose only the most interesting ones. New bosses and dungeons are a much larger task, so they will have to wait until far into development - perhaps if the main game is finished. Other new features include a colosseum with rounds of boss/enemy trials to fight your way through, many new quests, a bestiary, and so much more.

Will this be a multiplayer map?

Sadly not. This map was created with singleplayer in mind, just like in the original A Link to the Past. A multiplayer version further down the line would be possible, but since every line of the code is made to work only with 1 player, updating everything would take months of programming, testing, and finetuning. Some gameplay elements also wouldn't work in multiplayer.

What will I need to play this map?

All you'll need is a copy of Minecraft: Java Edition on the latest version. Our map will always be updated to the most recent stable update (1.19.4, 1.20, ...). No mods are required to play, only the world. Running this map on a low-end device might cause some lag, since a lot of code is used to make everything function. We recommend playing the map on a decently capable machine.

How can I help?

If you want to help us out by modeling or building, you can fill in this form to become a developer. If you want to test the map and give feedback, you can fill in this form to become a tester.

There are other Minecraft projects that have much more detail, animation, and feel to them. Why can't you do that?

You raise a great point. There are many videos on YouTube showcasing small portions of projects that show off insanely well-made enemies, mechanics and more. There are three main arguments I would like to raise against these "better" projects. First is the fact that over 70 percent of them use either mods or plugins to ease the creation of these features. We want to stay fully Vanilla and singleplayer (plugins require a server), so we have to do everything with just datapacks and resource packs. Second is the fact that we want to slightly limit our ambition. What we're making is hugely ambitious, of course, but we do want to get this thing finished at some point. That is why we don't make insanely complex animations for a single small enemy, items with 30 animations, etc. Third reason is that a map too large with concepts too large or complex can cause stress on (badly optimized) Minecraft. I want this map to be playable without FPS or TPS lag.