I was what you’d call a Nintendo kid. My first console was a Super Nintendo, I’d stay up late playing a Game Boy under my bedside lamp and I cut my teeth playing The Legend of Zelda. A Link to the Past has always been my Zelda game, but of course I have fond memories of playing Ocarina of Time.
And so, when a remake of Ocarina of Time was first rumoured quite some time ago, I couldn’t help but get excited. I still have Navi living rent-free in my head saying “hey, listen!” on loop and I’ll never forget the first time I rode Epona across the Fields of Hyrule. An iconic gaming moment. Now it’s finally been revealed, though, I’m not sure how I feel about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. It looks… fine? But I’ve been there, and done that. Perhaps some memories are best left as memories.
It’s not that I’m against remakes altogether, but perhaps as I get older and my time to play games for pleasure gets scarcer, I’m finding myself wanting to seek new iconic moments, not simply the ones that made me feel fuzzy inside 30 years ago. Sure, I could be excited that a whole new generation will get to enjoy Ocarina of Time for the first time – but then there are thousands of newer, arguably better games that those people could be playing for the first time instead.
It looks nice, admittedly. But it looks exactly how The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time looked to me, with my 10-year-old eyes, when it released back in 1998. It’s cleaner, it’s less blocky, it has more detail, but it’s unmistakably Ocarina of Time. It’s not reimagined, it’s not reinvented, it barely offers anything new at all except the bare minimum quality-of-life changes. Link can now jump, and there’s a fully controllable camera – something we’d expect as standard today. It also has fully-voiced cutscenes, and Nintendo claims that character dialogue has been expanded.
Watch the trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time below:
Maybe a near 1:1 remake is exactly what most players want. The original Nintendo 64 release of Ocarina of Time is famously one of the best-reviewed games ever on Metacritic, with a Metascore of 99. Why mess with perfection? Why indeed. But that was in 1998, reviewed against other games of 1998. How well a game with 1998 sensibilities – albeit modern visuals – will stand up in 2026 remains to be seen.
But hey (listen!), maybe I’m just being miserly. I did love Ocarina of Time. Maybe I will love it again. Maybe I’ll climb on the back of a more detailed Epona and run across the Fields of Hyrule, admiring the grass with more clarity than I’ve ever seen before, and I’ll experience that same feeling of joy I got as a child. Or maybe I’ll simply say “oh” as a game I loved almost 30 years cannot possibly feel the same as it did all those years ago.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time will release for Switch 2 on 5th November. You can find out more about the game on Nintendo’s official website.
