Is Legend of Zelda Turing Complete?

I undertook a quest to build a computer in Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and this video documents the process. We'll introduce digital logic and its applications to computer engineering and we'll learn how to create a binary adder circuit, whether it's with electronics or rolling balls. The video ends by demonstrating a 2-bit full adder within the game.

0:00 Introduction
1:46 Logic Gates
3:30 Addition in Binary
6:09 Failed attempts
8:07 Mechanical Computers
8:51 Full-Adder in Tears of the Kingdom
10:00 Conclusion

Thank you to Caleb Birtwistle for captioning!

Logic Reference: Digital Design, M. Morris Mano

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

[physicsforthebirds]

CORRECTION: as a few viewers have pointed out, I somehow managed to draw the NOT gate incorrectly every single time that it appears in the video. The NOT gate has a small circle at the output, just like the other inverting gates (NAND, NOR, and XNOR). I drew a non-inverting buffer every time I said NOT.

I want each one of my videos to not only be fun, but also to potentially act as introductions to the topics they discuss for anybody, so I hope this doesn't take away from the value too much! Let me know if there's any other mistakes you find! (there are probably a lot of mistakes related to gameplay...)

[k.r.mstudios]

Zelda: Link You must find me!

Link: Hold up, just making a computer real quick

[DBExplorer]

i guess using time bombs results in...volitle memory

[diegog]

The real promising part is whenever someone mods the game to greatly increase the maximum amount of fuse items you can have. Also maybe the distance at which items are despawn.
Then we will truly see crazy stuff.

[IONATVS]

In Gemiyik shrine, there’s an electric motor that CAN be powered by shock emitters. And you can smuggle it out of the shrine by fusing it to a weapon and then taking the weapon to a goron kid NPC in Tarrey town. so, an electricity-to-rotational motion energy conversion is possible. you can even make copies of builds containing the device using zonaite and the autobuild feature. I think that could be used to make something more substantial

[congruentcrib]

My favorite computer in a game is Rust’s Pong.
Using the electrical system pieces, someone made the game pong. It’s insane on how complex it is, and to think 1 missing wire would ruin the whole thing.

[ichbinein]

In case the max number of items glued together can be changed by simply changing some variables in the game code, it might be possible to mod TotK on a switch emulator!

[bersl]

2:22 At the risk of being That Guy... a bare triangle is just a buffer, and you need a small circle at the output point in order to make it a NOT gate.

[canofsoda]

I'm sure Nintendo knew after Mario Maker something like this would happen with TotK

[genericcommenter]

3:05 actually, just a NAND gate on its own is already a functionally complete set! You can create any digital logic using just NAND gates.

by extension, AND and NOT are also a functionally complete set

[kamishin]

Bokoblin: "my Lord, there are news regarding the hero"
Ganondorf: "so, another one of my minions has fallen. I can't wait for our battle"
Bokoblin: "that's the thing my Lord, it seems that the hero has abondend the quest to save the world and makes calculators now"
Ganondorf: "he's making WHAT?!"

[ProfDriftwood]

Look for the electric parts you can steal from shrines. There's an electric motor in the Gemimik shrine that can be activated by current, I think you could make something better with it. Plenty of conductive cubes, plates etc. Fuse the motor to a weapon and break it at Tarrey Town, or attach an apple and save it with autobuild. Good Work!

[KingJellyfishII]

Small correction, boolean algebra is not sufficient alone for turing completeness. you need some kind of feedback loops, so for example balls falling are not turing complete because they can only go downwards. same with dominoes.

[natanaelvicenteferreira]

I just wanna point out that the effort you put into this is appreciated, and the results you got are a great proof of concept! No time spent learning is wasted, regardless of the outcome, which was still decidedly impressive given the constraints you were given :)

[dr.unventor]

You could use the electricity idea. Shock emitters essentially work the same way as the electric weapons in BotW so you could use springs as the bits then have the shock emitters attached which will go into a metal weapon. Then if the electricity hits the metal it’s a 1 and if not it’s a 0

[thepuppetmaster]

People like you simply astound me. I've never understood how computers work but you demonstrate your knowledge of it so effortlessly. I know that I'll not ever be able to comprehend computers, they're just not my thing, but I admire the work you put in to understand them

[maxamillion]

"If this is your first time watching this channel I'm warning you that most of this video will be explaining the math and engineering of digital logic"
And that's it, I'm sold and now subbed.

[lilydawson]

I'll admit i didnt fully grasp half of this, but this is the first time ive had someone explain binary and computer stuff in a way that i feel i can easily understand, i have a much better idea of how it works now. thank you :D

[lo-fi]

Thanks for putting so much into your videos. They're really fun. Congratulations on the channel growth as well- can't wait to see where you go.

[geraldwheatly]

THIS HAS BEEN PLAGUING MY MIND SINCE THE GAME CAME OUT THANK YOU