The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a special game.
Ocarina means a lot to a lot of people, particularly millennials, who were teens or children themselves when it first released in 1998. It’s topped ‘Greatest of All Time’ lists over and over for the last 28 years. It is widely considered to be a masterpiece.
Now, it’s back in the spotlight, with the 5 November rerelease for Nintendo Switch 2 giving a whole new generation a chance to play.
ScreenHub: Ocarina of Time remake is a glorious revival of an all-time classic
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – quick links
Ocarina of Time is still a landmark game
Many of the innovative design ideas in Ocarina of Time have become ubiquitous in modern game design. Its offhand bows and arrows, horse riding, enemy targeting, opportunity combat and more can all be found in modern action-adventure RPGs.
It’s also quite unlike a lot of action-adventure games released by major studios in 2026 – it’s not technically an open world (unless you count Hyrule Field), though many of its dungeons can be tackled non-sequentially. Its dungeons are also carefully authored affairs that ask the player to pay attention, in contrast to the modern trend of near-constant handholding.
For most parents, watching their children be absorbed by a work of art that means so much to them is a full-circle moment that is both powerful and affecting. There are now multiple generations of parents who have rushed to show their children Star Wars. The Ocarina of Time remake is the latest in this growing tradition.
The Ocarina of Time remake’s point of difference, perhaps, is that it’s a game that asks something of the young audience engaging with it now – just as it did of players nearly 30 years ago.
The three triangles that make up the series’ famous Triforce represent Power, Wisdom and Courage, exemplified by villain Ganondorf, Princess Zelda and Link respectively.
What this fresh, young audience throws into stark relief is a perhaps under-appreciated aspect of Ocarina‘s design: players must find all three characteristics within themselves to succeed.
Overcoming its challenges requires marshalling one’s own power. Solving its puzzles requires the wisdom to slow down, think things through and experiment. To battle back the darkness that threatens Hyrule and keep venturing into the unknown requires courage.
What kids are learning from the Ocarina of Time remake
Power
Edmond Tran is in an interesting position. As a veteran video games journalist and now managing editor of the website This Week in Videogames, his children are accustomed to games not as entertainment, but as something their father does for work.
‘Despite my kids growing up in a household with access to virtually every videogame imaginable, my kids, two girls aged six and nine, have very rarely shown personal desire to play video games unless I’ve coerced them into trying something. I think in their mind, games are dad’s job, so they usually just watch.’
For the Ocarina of Time remake, however, he’s passed them the controller.
‘They’ve definitely taken to it all quite well,’ Tran tells me. ‘They’ve reacted in big ways to story beats, and have had their minds appropriately blown during big discoveries and moments like being let loose in the massive Hyrule Field for the very first time.’
For others, raised in the modern landscape of multiplayer titles and infinite creative sandboxes, a curated, semi-linear game like The Legend of Zelda is a first.
‘This is his first foray into a story-style game,’ mother Polly Fletcher tells me about her seven-year-old. ‘He’s well versed in Mario Kart and Minecraft.’
Used to games that put him on the stick and get him into the action quickly, Fletcher’s son is revelling in the power of fantasy, and excited to kick on with the adventure.
‘There are some challenges with attention span with some of the longer cutscenes and text conversations,’ she tells me.
I suddenly remember a younger version of myself, mashing the A button trying to skip everything the game’s loremaster brown owl had to tell me, and understand his urgency.
Communications manager Jessica Jazic is playing through the game as her three-year-old watches on. Of course, Jazic is aware that there’s only so much he can appreciate about the game at his age, but some pleasures are universal.
‘My kid likes all the monsters and the slash-and-dash stuff,’ she says. ‘Breaking pots for rupees and cutting grass.’
However, he seems drawn in by the game’s story, even if it’s unclear to Jazic if he’s actually following it.
‘He’s also interested in the cutscenes and just keen to watch all the colours and movement, but because he can’t read and there’s not a ton of dialogue, I’m not sure he knows what’s happening like in a TV show.’
Chris Yearn, senior animator at Sledgehammer Games, tells me his seven-year-old daughter is playing the 3DS version on the couch beside him, while he plays the remake. ‘She’s loving it so far,’ he says.
‘Even though she’s played some other 3D games with a third-person camera, I found it interesting that she struggled a bit with the camera, just like I remember doing when I first played it as a kid.’
‘I showed her how to use Z (or L on the 3DS) to centre the camera, which she was very happy to learn. I also needed to help her get the Kokiri Sword as she was scared of the big boulder and couldn’t find the treasure chest location.’
For others, there are bigger, more important goals to accomplish.
‘They are … keenly waiting to be able to ride a horse,’ Buru and the Old People creative director Ben Armstrong tells me.
Wisdom
Game developer Terry Burdak played the original Ocarina of Time with his young daughter ahead of the remake’s release, complete with the Switch 2’s Bluetooth Nintendo 64 controller peripheral. They reached the important milestone where Link first transforms from a child to an adult before jumping over.
‘It has made the whole experience of playing the remake something we are both appreciating together for similar reasons now,’ he tells me. ‘It’s been so cool.’
He adds, ‘She doesn’t have a huge experience with games where you control the camera, but the original OoT was great at introducing that to her.
‘It meant she got an understanding of how cameras work in this kind of game and how you’d want to position it if you did have control of it,’ Burdak says, ‘so I think that really helped her confidence.’
For other parents, it’s about managing external spoilers from more experienced players.
‘I had to keep her older brother at bay so she could figure out stuff for herself,’ Yearn says. ‘They’re all loving watching me play the remake – I’ve had to hold off on playing a couple of pivotal moments so they could be there to see them.’
Yearn says he hopes the game can teach her to read carefully and pay attention. ‘Her whole life she’s had very helpful older siblings telling her what to do in games, and a lot of modern games tend to spoonfeed information more, so I think this game is a great opportunity for her to learn how to figure things out for herself.’
For Fletcher, the concern was initially about whether the Ocarina of Time remake might prove too dense in its gameplay to keep her son engaged. That fear was quickly dispelled.
‘I can foresee some frustration when things get a little more difficult in terms of gameplay, though I’ve already underestimated his abilities,’ Fletcher says. ‘He’s figuring things out quickly on his own, like you can find rupees by cutting bushes, stuff that probably took me quite a while to figure out.
‘I love seeing the problem-solving skills he’s developing while playing. It’s such a better use of his brain than more passive screen time seven-year-olds love to consume.’
That building of problem-solving ability is an important skill, one Armstrong is pleased to see mirrored in his own children – though he’s pleased the game offers occasional hints in the form of Navi, Link’s chatterbox fairy companion.
‘They enjoy playing the ocarina and the puzzles,’ Armstrong says. ‘Navi is a really great help to them.’
He adds, ‘They play mostly by themselves, but I got them started on the path and was watching them for the first hour or so. I get daily updates.
‘The chicken attacks make them crack up,’ he adds, referencing one of the game’s most enduring pranks.
Accidentally striking a chicken with your sword once is permissible. It might have been a mistake, perhaps an experimental swipe to see what would happen.
Attack the same chicken up to five times, and you’ll meet a swift and deadly punishment for casual animal cruelty. It’s a lesson every player carries with them.
Courage
Having prepped his daughter for the game’s early challenges, Burdak tells me he got to sit back and observe as a proud dad.
‘She also did [the game’s opening] Deku Tree dungeon in the remake entirely solo, no help at all from me. Didn’t get scared once and even did the boss in one go.
‘Huge, huge, huge achievement for her. Previously, she would barely leave the starting area because she was too scared.’
Across conversations with parents, young players overcoming fear of the game’s challenges is something I hear again and again.
There’s a lot about Ocarina of Time that’s quite intimidating – its scale and stakes feel huge and important, its monsters and their designs are scary, its bosses are scary. Werewolves lunge at you. Skeletons rise up from the ground after dark. Spider-like skulltula enemies drop from ceilings. The entire Shadow Temple in the game’s back half is built to spook players.
To proceed in the Ocarina of Time remake, you have to be brave. That takes different forms, and some kids are finding workarounds.
‘They’re passing the controller back and forth, and I haven’t been giving them many tips at all,’ Tran tells me of his girls. ‘The courage they’re showing when they’re facing some absolutely terrifying enemies – this is their first game with combat in it, and some of the monsters are exquisitely rendered in the remake.’
He reflects on watching them deal with the game’s first jump scare.
‘I literally watched them cringe and squeal for 15 minutes as they worked up the courage to even approach the first skulltula in the game,’ Tran says. ‘Even after that, they would only shoot it from afar … Only after they ran out of slingshot ammunition did they work up even more courage to get close and hit it with their sword.’
Then came the game’s first major boss, Queen Gohma, a giant arachnid creature with a bulging eyeball.
‘They had to work out how to hurt it, work up the mettle and the patience to wait for that last-second window to do so, and build up the coordination and dexterity to pull it off.
‘My older daughter took the control because the youngest was too scared, but even she was tense the whole time. But she did it! Proud dad moment.’
The skulltulas come up again and again among the parents I talk to.
‘They hate the skulltulas and the skeletons that bite you, so the horror aspects are quite jump-scary for them,’ says Armstrong.
Others aren’t worried at all. For Fletcher’s son, the game can’t throw enough foes at him.
‘He’s picked up the fight and defend controls way quicker than I thought,’ Fletcher tells me. ‘He is definitely not scared of any of the monsters, but in saying that, he is a largely fearless child.’
Seeing a classic through fresh eyes
Plenty of parents have gotten their kids into video games by showing them the ones that mattered to them as children.
But the weekend of the Ocarina of Time remake’s release felt like a unique moment that broke out of the games sphere to reach the mainstream.
Everywhere I looked on social media, there were photos of kids sitting in front of the family TV, playing the Ocarina of Time remake, their millennial parents furtively snapping a picture over their shoulders to commemorate the passing of the torch.
Parents who grew up with game were now playing the Ocarina of Time remake with their kids. Parents who loved games when they were young, but had given them up as the accumulated intrusions of real life had set in, were returning to Hyrule and doing the same.
‘As someone who has played through this game as a teenager when it first released, and several times since, watching them play through it so far has renewed my love and appreciation of it,’ Tran tells me. ‘I began to take a lot of it for granted after repeat plays, and as its innovations became commonplace in the series and in games more widely.’
Reloader writer Ash Wayling says, ‘For my [nine-year-old] daughter, it’s a tale of a princess and the hero discovering his incredible destiny. For my [four-year-old] son, it’s sprawling dungeons and immense bosses.
For animator Tobi Wilson, ‘It makes me remember the sense of adventure it gave me when I was a kid.’ Wilson, though, is rueful that some of the game’s most seismic moments may not translate in 2026, where mechanics inspired by Ocarina are now commonplace.
‘It’s like he’s on the same path. But sadly it can’t be, really. He’s played open world games before, and for me it was the first one that felt like a whole real world I could go into.’
Fletcher enthuses, ‘It’s just so nice being able to share this experience with my son. I’m so excited watching him work things out in real time. He loves just noodling around and exploring the landscape, which is exactly how I play games.’
Armstrong is one of the only people I spoke to who never played the original game, but he understands its significance in the video game canon. He’s pleased that his first time experiencing the game is happening with, and through, his children.
‘It’s really interesting watching them play,’ he says. ‘I’m not sure they really grasp the cultural importance of the game. For them, it all comes down to “Is it fun?” I do wonder what will leave its mark on them more, Ocarina of Time or Pokopia. We will see by the end.’
After almost 30 years, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake proves that a great game can still capture the imagination. The call of adventure, and the thrill of uncovering Hyrule’s secrets, proves as potent today as it was in 1998.
Wilson perhaps summed this feeling up best. ‘It was so cute when he got his first skulltula jump-scare and first saw Gohma,’ he said. ‘He said to me, “Dad, Ocarina of Time is pretty great. I see why it’s your favourite game.”‘
