I Wouldn’t Dream of Playing the Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake Right Now

Published Nov 7, 2026, 1:00 PM EST

Oli Welsh has been covering the business and culture of video games for two decades. He started out writing for Edge and other publications (specializing in MMOs and Blizzard, as cover for his World of Warcraft playtime) before joining Eurogamer, where he worked for 14 years as reviews editor, deputy editor, and editor-in-chief; Eurogamer won many Games Media Awards during his tenure. At Polygon, he writes about film and TV as well as games, and provides news, analysis, and criticism on the entertainment we love and the industries that make it, all from his home in London. He loves role-playing, racing, puzzles, tactics, exploration, storytelling, Nintendo, mysteries, spies, fantasy, reality, cars, and classic cinema. He wanted to be a movie critic when he grew up, and now he’s definitely grown up, and occasionally is one. He considers this a win.

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Unlike you, probably, I am not playing Nintendo's Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time right now. I even turned down a kind offer from my editor to review it. This despite the fact that it might be my favorite Zelda game (mostly by virtue of being the first one I played) and indubitably one of the greatest games ever — as close to a Citizen Kane as the medium has.

I've read the ecstatic reviews, several of them by friends of mine, like Keza MacDonald and Christian Donlan, and of course Polygon's own Giovanni Colantonio, who I know to be people of good sense and great taste who share my reverence for this game and this series. I trust them.

I also trust Nintendo, especially now it's clear the game was developed by the in-house Zelda team and not farmed out to an external studio. I trust producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi, veterans of Zelda's golden age and architects of its great Breath of the Wild renaissance, who Gio talked to this week. I trust their decision to pass Ocarina on to younger developers at Nintendo to train and inspire them, but also to inject the aging game with youth and life.

I also know that Ocarina needs the work. I played a little of the Nintendo 64 original recently, and while I remained entranced by its strangely haunted vibe, I found that, like so many early 3D games, it is fighting a battle with clunky, barely-ready technology that it has been slowly losing over the last 28 years. I'm honestly not sure that it's still fun to play now.

And this matters to me, because my 10-year-old son loves Zelda — which, to him, means Tears of the Kingdom. He thinks Tears is the best game ever, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree. He's read the Ocarina of Time manga and fiddled about with other games in the series, including the Link's Awakening remake and The Wind Waker, but never settled into any of them. Honestly, I warned him off trying to play the original Ocarina.

So the Ocarina remake arrives at a perfect time for him. He is beyond excited about it. He will get it, and his own Switch 2 to play it on, for Christmas. Put yourself in his shoes. (Maybe you once were, and got the original Ocarina, or the 3DS version, as a childhood Christmas gift yourself.) Can you imagine anything better?

I just know that if I played the game before him, even surreptitiously, I would be stealing the magic of that moment. As desperate as I am to see the work of Aonuma and Fujibayashi's team, I can't countenance it. So I'll wait with him.

Also… If I'm honest, maybe I'm not just doing it for him. Because I'll be unwrapping my own copy on Christmas morning. I'll be playing this magical game away from work, out of step with the discourse, in the cozy, contented, quiet bubble of the holidays, surrounded by my family. Maybe I'll feel like I'm 10, too. Like I said: can you imagine anything better?

eShop game of the week: Zero Parades: Director's Cut

ZA/UM, the makers of Disco Elysium — well, some of them; it's complicated — return with another wonderfully funny, dark, and emotionally complex narrative RPG that uses tabletop dice rolls to enumerate the failings of human beings. One in particular: a not good, very bad spy who is trying to atone for a terrible betrayal.

Nintendo Classics game of the week: Mega Man 2

This 1988 NES classic from Capcom is simply one of the all-time great action platformers. It's all the more remarkable since the developers basically had to cobble it together in their spare time after the original was deemed a sales disappointment. Now Mega Man is a treasured franchise, and due for a return next year.

Nintendo Music track of the week: "Hyrule Field Main Theme" from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (2026)

I'm not playing Ocarina, but I am allowed to listen to the eight-track soundtrack sample that just dropped on Nintendo Music, and it's absolutely delicious. The exquisitely produced and performed new arrangements of Koji Kondo's immortal tunes are both a massive upgrade and resounding proof that Kondo had loaded his music with all this drama, humor, and sophistication from the start. Impossible to pick a favorite from the full flamenco of "Gerudo Valley," or the squawking penny whistles, accordions, oboes, and fiddles of "Market," or "Kakariko Village"'s plangeant harmonica. But let's go with the 10-minute "Hyrule Field Main Theme" for sheer epic sweep.