Zelda: Breath of the Wild gets split screen co-op this week, unofficially

Breath of the Wild
(Image credit: Nintendo)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is getting split screen co-op this week, thanks to an impressive mod project.

The couch co-op multiplayer mod lets up to four players adventure through Hyrule together. The mod, created by Kirbymimi, alters the Wii U version of Breath of the Wild, so you'll need to use an emulator like Cemu to take advantage of it.

Right now, the mod only has a single viewpoint - meaning that additional players have to stay within the field of view of player one. That's changing, however, with a new update out on July 29, which will introduce proper split-screen support for the game. This will be a beta release, so expect a fair amount of issues at launch.

Downloads are available on Kirbymimi's Discord channel, and you can get a taste of what to expect in the gameplay demonstration below. (Beware of spoilers, though - the players run through the final boss battle in the footage.)

This isn't Kirbymimi's first Zelda multiplayer mod, either. The modder also brought four-player splitscreen to The Wind Waker, so if you can't wait to take a multitude of Links to the field, you can also get that mod via the Discord link above.

While this Breath of the Wild mod is built for local co-op only, an online version of a multiplayer mod is also in the works from an unrelated group of developers, and is set to be made available to the public sometime within the next several months.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is set to launch sometime in spring 2023.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.