I never owned Ocarina of Time, and that’s why the remake might sell me a Switch 2

Nintendo’s rebuilt classic lands November 5, and its best audience might be the people who only ever played the original at a friend’s house.

I’ve played Ocarina of Time, technically. I never had a Nintendo 64, so the only time I got my hands on it was at a friend’s house, and I barely scratched the surface.

That’s the thing about playing on somebody else’s console. It’s somebody else’s save file. You don’t get to wander, get lost or come back tomorrow, so a game as big as Ocarina mostly stays something you hear about.

On November 5, Nintendo is releasing a full remake of it for the Switch 2. For the first time in a long time, I’m looking at a $500 console and seriously asking myself if one game is enough of a reason.

If you missed it the first time around, Ocarina of Time came out on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. You play as Link, a kid from a forest village who ends up traveling through time to stop Ganondorf, and it was the first 3D Zelda.

It’s also the game people point to when they explain how 3D action games learned to work. Its Z-targeting, where you lock onto an enemy and circle around it, solved the problem of fighting in three dimensions with a camera that couldn’t keep up. I’ve played a lot of games on stream that use some version of that system. Most of them never mention where it came from.

Nintendo already remade it once, for the 3DS in 2011, through the studio Grezzo. That version cleaned up the visuals and added gyro aiming. The Switch 2 version goes much further.

According to Nintendo’s What’s New trailer, cutscenes are now fully voiced with expanded dialogue. Link can dash and jump, the soundtrack has been redone with a full orchestra, and you can hum into the Switch 2’s microphone to play songs on the ocarina. There’s also a Hall of Fallen Heroes, where you can revisit statues of monsters you’ve beaten and fight them again.

Those changes are the reason I’m interested. Going back to a 1998 3D game cold is rough, even for someone who loves games. The cameras are stiff, the text boxes are endless, and a lot of the magic only works if you remember what it felt like back then.

I don’t have that memory. What I have is a reputation I’ve heard about my whole life, and a remake that seems designed to let a newcomer actually feel it.

The fans who grew up with the original have a fair worry here. A jump button in a Zelda game changes things. The N64 version jumped for you automatically when you ran off a ledge, and its dungeons were built around that. If Link can jump wherever he wants, some puzzles and shortcuts might not work the way they used to.

I get why that matters to them. For me, it doesn’t, because I never had the muscle memory to lose. Whatever Nintendo changed, this will be my first real playthrough.

Then there’s the price, and it’s a real hurdle. Nintendo raised the Switch 2 to $499.99 in the US on September 1, up from $449.99, citing changes in market conditions. Add the game on top and that’s a lot of money for a 28-year-old adventure, even a rebuilt one.

To be fair to Nintendo, the console isn’t a one-game machine. Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza are already there, and it plays most of the original Switch library. If I buy one, I won’t run out of things to do.

But I’d be lying if I said those were the reason. Ocarina would be the reason, and the rest would be what I tell myself afterward.

I haven’t decided yet. I want to see how the changes land with the people who know the original inside out.

If it holds up, though, I think I’m in. I’ve spent a long time hearing about this game from people who played it in their own living rooms. This time the save file would be mine.