The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of Nintendo's most revered games of all time, even by the lofty standards of a company known for making influential, groundbreaking video games. That legacy means extra care and consideration put into remaking the game for modern audiences on the Nintendo Switch 2, with a remake that is receiving a glowing reception both in our GameSpot review and across the industry. It is now the top-ranked game of 2026 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic.
It's a titanic achievement, but to hear producers Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi, it was also intended as a learning experience for both the new generation, and for themselves. In a wide-ranging interview just hours ahead of the release of the game, the two repeatedly came back to how younger staff, some of whom had never played the original game, were both discovering the craft of classic Zelda design and introducing their own bold new ideas. They talked about what needed to be modernized, and what was important to preserve, in creating what I called "definitive way to experience this all-time classic."
The interview below was conducted via interpreters. It has been edited for length and clarity.
GameSpot: In your Ask the Developer QA you said you remember the feeling of nervousness and anticipation leading up to the original launch of Ocarina. So I have to ask: How are you feeling today?
Eiji Aonuma: How am I feeling today? Well, since we've arrived in New York, we've had these really good opportunities to talk to media. These are folks who, of course, got early copies of the game for the purpose of reviews. And I got to hear about their experiences playing, and some of them talked about being moved to tears while playing, which was amazing for me to hear. And now knowing that with the official release, many more people will be able to play and share their experiences with us. So, yes, I would say that my nerves have calmed quite a bit, and I'm feeling very happy right now.
It's a very faithful remake, but it also makes some pretty notable changes. How did you decide what needed updating, what needed to stay the same--especially in regards to the jump button, which is a very big change for fans?
Hidemaro Fujibayashi: So, the staff and the directors that worked on this game are all younger, at Nintendo. And in one of the first discussions we had leading up to the full-blown development of the title was really clearly establishing what it is we were going to change and what it is that we weren't going to change. And starting with the stuff that we wanted to change was really focused on leveraging the capabilities of the Nintendo Switch 2 hardware because it's going to be developed for that hardware. So really leveraging all that capability so that we can remove any stress from the gameplay experience, so that people can enjoy the game fully. And so that leads to things like changes in how the game controls, or the graphics. Another example is the sound. All of the background music is on 5.1-channel surround sound. So all of that is an evolution of what it was from the Nintendo 64 version.
And when it comes to what we weren't going to change, we thought what was the experience that the original Ocarina of Time developers wanted to convey through the game? And that experience was what we didn't want to change. And within that, there was a lot of heavy discussion, as you mentioned, about the jump button. You might say, "a jump button wasn't there, are we going to change it?" There was a lot of discussion around that, but ultimately, we ended up in the conclusion that being able to allow players to jump anywhere will make the gameplay experience a lot smoother and allow, again, players to be really able to fully enjoy the experience that this game is trying to provide.
When you're choosing things to update, were there ambitious ideas that didn't work out? I know you referenced in the Q&A warp points as something that you tried, but then thought, "This actually just doesn't feel like Ocarina anymore."
Fujibayashi: So another thing that I can mention was ReDeads. With this remake, the graphics are a lot improved, and so the ReDead--the sound, the graphics, and the movement--ended up being very, very scary. And the staff wanted to make this in service of making a good gameplay experience. But from our perspective, taking a step back, we felt like, let's remember the experience that we don't want to change, and taking that into consideration, maybe we've gone a step too far, so let's dial it back.
Breath of the Wild marked a new era of Zelda. If you think of Zelda in three eras, like I do, it's 2D, 3D, Breath of the Wild onward. So how did it feel going back to this previous era, and probably the most famous example from the previous era, of Zelda games, now that we're in the Breath of the Wild era?
Aonuma: So I think when you're contrasting the the different styles of game design and gameplay, and you're thinking about the perhaps higher level of freedom that you have in the open-air style of games, and comparing that to the more classical feel of earlier games, what stands out for me is, how do we, underline what is good about the the classical-feel gameplay in the Zelda series?
You can look at how the two have a slightly different approach to the development of the story and the player experience. In the open-air games, you have perhaps a more gradual progression of how the story is layered on, you discover elements in different orders, and those stack up together to create something, as opposed to a game like Ocarina of Time, where there is a greater at the outset creation of a story beat that you are then going to move to another large piece of story beat.
Those chunks come on in larger pieces at a time. But in both gameplay styles, you're going to get items, you're going to get stronger as a player, you're going to see the story progress, but just perhaps at a different pace.
So what we have to think about as developers is: What do we need to provide the player with? What can we give them to increase their enjoyment of that style of gameplay that we're currently considering? And working on the remake of Ocarina of Time so close in time to the work that we have done on Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom allowed us to do exactly the kind of comparison that you're talking about, and it made us realize other things.
Like, in the classical style of gameplay, just because of the time in which those games were created and released, there were some limitations of the hardware capability. So we have this opportunity now to, using new hardware capability, new technology, make the games easier to play, more comfortable and smooth as an experience.
And that allows the narrative beats from the original to expand in a way that is perhaps more enjoyable for the player as well. So we're always looking at: What is the new play style we can bring to this kind of game to most increase people's enjoyment?
One of those major differences between Breath of the Wild style and this is the open-air exploration. Hyrule Field is that environment, but it was a prototypical version of that environment. It's relatively small by today's standards. Was there ever a consideration to expanding that, making that bigger or more dense, or did you want to preserve its original form?
Aonuma: So this hits on something that we talked about earlier in terms of that category of things that we don't want to change. Having these defined areas for exploration where you're making a more discrete, marked transition from one area to the next is something that I think brings a unique feeling from this kind of classical gameplay. You cross a border, and suddenly you are in a completely new area and you have a fresh feeling for it. So that was something we decided not to change as a structural element here.
And you can see that in the layout of the map when you look at the large open Hyrule Field in the Hylia area. There's something in the real world where if you're looking off into the distance, you might see a faraway peak and think, "Can you go there, or am I actually enclosed and that's a backdrop in the game itself?" So in an open-air style game, of course, that movement is seamless. You can walk in that direction and you will get to that point because you can see it, and that has a certain impact and feeling for the player in terms of movement. But there's a different impact here in terms of a marked transition that allows us to give a different feeling.
On the press side, it's always a guessing game for us which games are developed by a third-party (Grezzo, etc.) and which games are kept in-house. Was this one just determined from the beginning, like, "Ocarina is our baby, this one we're going to keep in-house"?
Aonuma: In this case, and when we're talking about what kind of experience we want to create in the game and talk about Tears of the Kingdom and the open-air experience, that's something that is perhaps fresh for our younger devs in terms of their recent work. But when they come to Ocarina of Time, they have this opportunity to familiarize themselves with the original game and think about how to interpret that in the remake. And this was something that, as a topic, generally we wanted to live in-house so that experience, that learning, could benefit future projects that our internal staff would work on later.
But I have to mention that we do have partners who help with the work of development on games like Tears of the Kingdom. We had some contributions from Monolith Soft, for example. So there are some examples of shared development, collaborating with outside partners also.
You had team members who had never played Ocarina before. What kinds of lessons do you think they took from developing this that will help them in development of future Zelda games or just in general?