When beloved art is revisited and revised, a familiar cry is often heard: \u201cYou\u2019re ruining my childhood!\u201d But with Nintendo\u2019s Switch 2 remake of Ocarina of Time, there are also livelihoods at risk: specifically, the man running the shooting gallery in Castle Town. In the original 1998 version of the game, he\u2019d rip off players as they funnelled rupees and fudged the then still novel analogue-stick aiming. But in 2026 we have more responsive frame rates and a motion-controlled slingshot that allows precision adjustments. His targets tumble on the first go, and with them his entire business model. Even in Hyrule, the death of the high street seems inevitable.<\/p>\n
Bad news for him but great news for Link, a child of the forest who, as in 1998, steps into a vast fantasy kingdom to vanquish a great evil, but now does so with a number of improvements. The boy can now sprint, preventing the ignominy of endless roly-polies to zip across grassy plains. He has a manual jump, free-rotating camera, a scrolling inventory bar that replaces menu screen faff and, crucially, a fatter wallet for holding all those gems he fleeces from struggling shooting gallery owners. Yes, we are being asked to applaud features that have been the norm for decades elsewhere, but it\u2019s undeniably striking to enter familiar territory with a hero who feels this different under the thumbs.<\/p>\n
Link can now sprint, preventing the ignominy of endless roly-polies. Photograph: Nintendo<\/p>\n
The dilemma facing any remake, let alone of a game recognised as a genre-defining classic, is how closely you hew to the past. As with this year\u2019s Star Fox revamp<\/a>, Ocarina of Time finds Nintendo in a celebratory mode. It\u2019s a polished victory lap for a game with little to prove. For newcomers it means seeing what the fuss is about without having to scrutinise the N64 original on unflattering flatscreen TVs. I doubt Hyrule Field \u2013 once a byword for video-game freedom \u2013 will ever conjure the awe it did in 1998, but seeing the sun catch in puddles and grass growing from the floor helps mask what is an obviously artificial pen, compared to Breath of the Wild\u2019s sprawling continent<\/a>.<\/p>\n For some returning fans, the more controlled shape is precisely the appeal. After the \u201cmake your own adventure\u201d ethos of Switch\u2019s open-world Zeldas, there is comfort in slipping into traditional dungeons, where every room has a characterful beast to chop up or a mechanism to unpick with a growing kitbag of tools. My great fear was that some of the puzzles are simply too iconic to be forgotten and solved again. Yet here I am, sweatily hunting ghosts around the Forest Temple, and surreptitiously peering at my neighbour\u2019s demo pod to remind myself that, yes, you have to \u2026 [redacted for your benefit]. Given that, in 1998, these were many designers\u2019 first attempts at a 3D level, it is astonishing how fiendish they are and how you\u2019re expected to hold complex architecture in your head to get the run of them.<\/p>\n Also worth assigning headspace for: the newly orchestrated soundtrack. Melodies that fought through compressed N64 instrument samples to burn into the brain are given their own galloping freedom. I love the tentative brass when you lock an enemy into a duel \u2013 the musical equivalent of gnawing your lip.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Link\u2019s look is more contentious. Where Hyrule is prettied up with expected detail \u2013 swaying nettles in a forest home, marbled sunlight on a riverbed \u2013 its hero is radically made over. His large glassy eyes, and fat cheeks which reflect the light as if varnished, have led critics to accuse Nintendo of crudely pursuing a textbook next-gen sheen. Bells and whistles for the sake of filling 4K TVs with surface detail, rather than honouring the original artistic intent. In the past, some eager fans attempted to remake Zelda in more capable game engines and were ridiculed for mistaking technological grunt for artistry, and as evolving hardware opens those graphical avenues to Nintendo itself, it would be ironic if it fell for the same allure.<\/p>\n In truth, Ocarina of Time looks coherent in motion on Switch 2. If anything, the layer of 4K specificity evokes another Zelda game, Twilight Princess, itself an attempt to apply a more mature, realistic lens to Hyrule. And could Link, with those overblown features, perhaps be nodding to another cultural pastime? As some corners of the internet scoffed at our newly \u201cyassified\u201d hero, the Nintendo veteran and former Legend of Zelda art director Takaya Imamura wondered if the character model drew from Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto\u2019s own tastes. \u201c[His] love of ningyogeki (puppet drama) is strongly reflected here,\u201d Imamura wrote on X<\/a>. Porcelain doll skin would certainly explain the uncanny sheen.<\/p>\n It is astonishing how fiendish the puzzles designed in 1998 still are. Photograph: Nintendo<\/p>\n While we can only guess at tight-lipped Nintendo\u2019s intent, writer and translator Paul McQuade explains it is not an impossible leap. \u201cIn Japan, puppetry is not considered an art form strictly for children, which is largely how it\u2019s perceived elsewhere,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a rich art and is highly respected.\u201d He thinks Miyamoto could easily have been influenced by puppet shows aired by Japanese broadcaster NHK<\/a> in the Sh\u014dwa postwar era.<\/p>\n And besides, there is something poetic about the notion. \u201cIt\u2019s doll-like and intentionally juvenile,\u201d McQuade says of Link\u2019s chubby features and blushing nose. \u201cIt captures the essence of that forest where the children don\u2019t ever grow up. Miyamoto, as a fan of puppetry, would of course draw on the vocabulary of dolls to make characters in that mould.\u201d<\/p>\n I like the idea of Nintendo honouring a community frozen in time in this way, while also acknowledging that time has moved on outside the game. With that passing comes an opportunity to tweak and massage. In an adventure where a boy can magically become a man and back again with the toot of his ocarina, it makes sense for timelessness and timeliness to be in conversation. With virtual bones this strong, it would be difficult to argue that anything has been truly ruined. Unless you run the shooting gallery, of course.<\/p>\n The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is released for Switch 2 on 5 November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When beloved art is revisited and revised, a familiar cry is often heard: \u201cYou\u2019re ruining my childhood!\u201d But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-927967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}