Harbour Masters, the team behind Ship of Harkinian—a widely played PC port of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time—has acknowledged that some contributors have used artificial-intelligence tools during development. The admission has triggered a heated debate about disclosure, code quality and the meaning of “AI slop” in fan-made retro projects.
The controversy escalated on 16 September after a post alleged that thousands of lines of code across several Harbour Masters projects had been produced or modified with AI assistance. The discussion spread through retro-gaming communities and social media, including a thread shared on ResetEra and a Bluesky post that was widely circulated.
The PC Gaming Wiki discussion claimed that Harbour Masters’ runtime component, libultraship, contained substantial AI-assisted work, with similar concerns raised about individual ports. The post also alleged that AI-generated images had been used and that co-author credits connected to AI tools had been removed. One cited code change does reference Claude.
Those claims prompted strong reactions from players familiar with Harbour Masters’ projects. Some were primarily concerned that AI use had not been made clearer, while others questioned whether the ports should continue to be treated like conventional community-developed software. Discussion also spilled into the team’s official Discord server.
Harbour Masters explains its use of AI tools
Team members rejected the suggestion that their ports were built through unchecked “vibe coding”. They said the most serious claims were inaccurate, while confirming that AI-assisted development has been part of some contributors’ workflows for years.
One example involved functions converted with a script developed with AI assistance. The team said those conversions were subsequently tested for parity. Developers also described using conversational tools to investigate difficult technical problems, GitHub Copilot during its early availability and agent-style coding tools as they emerged.
The distinction Harbour Masters drew is between using AI as an aid and accepting unverified output. Contributors said proposed changes are reviewed by experienced developers, tested and assessed for suitability before entering a project. They also acknowledged that the team had not historically required every contributor to identify whether a particular change involved an AI tool.
Harbour Masters has maintained a public policy stating that code must receive human review. Its developers have emphasised that AI-generated code is not transferred directly into the codebase without checking. The team has also said it does not use or support AI image generation, has not used those tools for project artwork and does not plan to do so.
The developers pointed to the scale of the work as part of the explanation. What began with Ship of Harkinian has expanded into multiple Nintendo 64 projects over roughly a decade, while contributors have left, taken on other responsibilities or lost interest in particular games. The team says it remains small and welcomes people prepared to learn its development processes.
Questions about older versions remain
Harbour Masters could not identify a version of Ship of Harkinian guaranteed to contain no AI-assisted code. One developer said they had not personally used GitHub Copilot, but had used ChatGPT as an alternative to searching technical forums on several occasions. They could not rule out Copilot-assisted contributions from other developers, including changes made before the first 1.0 release.
That uncertainty has disappointed some players, particularly those who valued the ports as carefully maintained fan projects. It also cast a spotlight over the team’s newest release, a PC port of Paper Mario announced for Thursday. Whether that project contains AI-assisted work was not confirmed, although the wider discussion has led fans to question its development history.
The dispute reflects a broader issue for community-made retro software: even when human developers inspect and test every change, audiences may still expect clear records of where AI tools were used. For players deciding how to experience classic games on modern hardware, the debate adds another layer to the conversation around arcade and retro-gaming news, preservation and enthusiast development.
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