The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild now runs natively on PC, no emulator involved. A fan project called Savage Wind Recomp recompiles the Switch game's code into a Windows program, and its second alpha came out on 22 October. You can play it today at 60 FPS by default and up to 4K, but only the opening has been tested: the Shrine of Resurrection and the Great Plateau. Past that, even the author doesn't know what happens.
The download doesn't include the game. You need your own copy of Breath of the Wild updated to 1.8.2, dumped from your own Switch, and about 35 GB of free space.
What already works
The Revivedx/SavageWindRecomp repository went up on GitHub on 16 October, Alpha 1 followed on the 17th and Alpha 2 landed today at 04:55 UTC. By the evening it had more than 300 stars. Going by the README, this is past the "it boots" stage:
- Frame rate: 60 by default, or 30, 90, 120 or unlocked, with the game running at the same speed. Menus, cutscenes and conversations stay at 30, as on the console. On Switch the whole game runs at 30.
- Image: internal resolution up to 4K, or AMD FSR 1, in windowed, borderless or fullscreen mode.
- Controls: keyboard and mouse with every key remappable, plus any controller SDL recognises.
- Languages: any of the 15 text languages with any of the 8 voice tracks. Sound and saves work.
- Shaders: there's a cache, so places you've already seen don't stutter again. A new effect still hitches the first time it appears.
The author is upfront about performance: 60 FPS holds in a scripted walk at 2560x1440 on an RTX 3060 with a Ryzen 5 5600X, while real play drops to 45-50 in places.
What you need, and what's still missing
- System: Windows 10 or later, a CPU with AVX2, a GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and about 35 GB free. A Linux build compiles from source but hasn't been tested with this game.
- The game: version 1.8.2 only, ExeFS and RomFS from your own console. The project ships no keys, firmware or dumping tools, and won't tell you where to get them.
- First launch: the program checks the version and recompiles the game code on your own machine. On a 12-thread CPU that's about 40 minutes, once.
- Not there yet: DLC, mods, FSR 3 frame generation and DLSS, all on the roadmap. The author rates graphics at 75%: two glitches on the save screen and a black pause-menu background after an in-game restart.
One more thing from the README worth knowing before you download: the project was written almost entirely by AI, Claude through Claude Code, with a person directing, reviewing and testing it. The author says so in the very first line and tells anyone who doesn't trust that kind of code to simply skip it. LASRecomp, the Link's Awakening port that Savage Wind is built on, was made the same way.
My advice is simple. If you want to play Breath of the Wild on PC from start to finish, an emulator is still the safer bet. Savage Wind right now is for people happy to be the first to run past the plateau and tell the author where it breaks, which is exactly why the alpha is out. The other Switch ports, from Link's Awakening to Smash, are in our roundup of fan-made Switch ports.
Sources
Revivedx/SavageWindRecomp repository: README, status table, requirements and controls as of 22.10.2026. Releases page: Alpha 1 on 17.10 and Alpha 2 on 22.10.2026. DSOGaming, 22.10.2026: first impressions. Star count: GitHub API, 22.10.2026. Images: official The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild screenshots from the Nintendo eShop.
