Hookshot vanishes from GitHub and Team MagicBean's Longshot takes over, with its own site, git and launcher

What happened

On November 13, around 12:30 GMT according to users who saw it go, the Hookshot repository and NotRexed's account started returning a 404. Twisted Voxel attributes the removal to Nintendo and reports that the author said on Discord the problem cannot be fixed soon, although the repository should come back somewhere else. We have not found a notice naming Hookshot in GitHub's public DMCA archive. The Nintendo notice added in those days points to a different repository. The cause is therefore unconfirmed.

Hookshot was the native Ocarina of Time port for Switch 2 that we had followed since its first release, with 2.0.12 and 2.1.0 as the latest ones. Anyone who already built it keeps their game folder. We have not checked what Hookshot's launcher does when it cannot find its repository to update from.

Longshot, the successor

Longshot is a fork of Hookshot maintained by Team MagicBean. Its site says they are continuing the work with their own development, fixes and community, and it credits NotRexed and the Hookshot contributors. The team page lists the commit history of Hookshot, where NotRexed appears with 223. The code lives on the team's Forgejo, where the repository was created on November 12, under GPL version 3 or later.

You install it with the Longshot Launcher, which builds the game from your copy, starts it and updates itself against signed checksums. There is a Windows installer, a portable zip and a Linux AppImage. Its features include resolutions up to 5K, 21:9 and 32:9 ultrawide, HDR, DLSS, DLAA, FSR 3.1 and FSR 4, frame generation from 2x to 8x, a frame cap from 60 to 240 fps, Reflex and Anti-Lag 2, plus RomFS mods.

The published releases are nightly builds marked as previews. Build 132, from November 14, adds a damage taken row, hold-to-toggle on any button, a mono audio option and fixes such as the recording timing of Scarecrow's Song. The minimum requirements are a six-core CPU, Vulkan 1.3, 4 GB of VRAM, 16 GB of RAM and about 60 GB free while building. Without mesh shaders it uses a slower compute mode.

Other projects for the same game

Project ReLink, by pixl27, is another static recompilation of the same game for Windows, under GPL-3.0. It was created on November 13 and shipped 0.6.4 and 0.6.5 on the 14th. The first fixes a picture freeze after a few minutes, often near water, and the second reduces stutter while turning the camera.

Ocarina Recomp, by sostenesfreitas, has been on GitHub since November 6 and has over 1,100 stars. Its 0.3.4, from the 11th, is a test version. The project had decided to recommend Hookshot, so its README points to a repository that no longer exists. Its author says it has only been tested on one PC with an RTX 5090, in the opening area of the game.

Copies of the original code are also circulating on GitHub, such as one called Longshot created on November 7 by another user, with no releases. We have seen no link to Team MagicBean, which has its own site and git, and we do not link to those copies.

What you need

All three projects ask for your own copy of the Switch 2 remake with its update installed, as a .nup file or as romfs and exefs folders. They do not include the game or explain how to get it. Download only from each project's own site or repository, and be wary of any ZIP advertised as Hookshot.