Days after Nintendo released its remake of “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” on the Nintendo Switch 2, speedrunners have already uncovered several glitches that alter how the game is played.
The remake, released Thursday, Nov. 5, revisits the seminal 1998 action-adventure title with visual upgrades and updated controls, most notably a dedicated jump button. That single mechanical change, combined with physics quirks, has allowed players to bypass major portions of the game in ways never seen in the Nintendo 64 original or the 2011 Nintendo 3DS version, gaming outlets Polygon and Kotaku reported.
Super jumps and midair hovering
One prominent glitch rapidly spreading through the community is known as the “actor jump.” To perform the exploit, players position protagonist Link atop an environmental movable object — referred to in game development as an actor — such as a chest or tombstone, Polygon reported. By firing an aimable tool like the hookshot, holding the lock-on button before the shot concludes, and jumping instantly afterward, Link is launched far higher than designed, enabling massive area skips.
Other players have turned open chests into launchpads, Kotaku reported, finding that standing inside open treasure boxes at specific angles sends Link shooting into the sky like a trampoline. Furthermore, rapid menu pausing and switching items midair has enabled players to float indefinitely. As social media user ORCinfo described in a post cited by Kotaku, “Once you get used to it, you can jump endlessly in midair. This is gonna break speedruns.”
Sequence breaks and distorted models
Beyond physics anomalies, runners are exploring timeline sequence breaking. Prominent speedrunner ZFG noted on social media that players can now conquer the Shadow Temple as child Link, which prematurely triggers a transformation into adult Link, Kotaku reported. Triggering adult cutscenes while playing as a child temporarily scrambles Link’s character textures into bizarre, distorted models.
Nintendo produced the Switch 2 remake alongside longtime series veterans Eiji Aonuma and Hidemaro Fujibayashi to mark the 40th anniversary of the franchise, according to an official developer interview released before launch. Neither Nintendo nor the developers have addressed the exploits publicly, and the company has not issued a patch to correct the movement glitches, Polygon reported.
Master Quest files uncovered
As runners dissect the game’s mechanics, dataminers have also searched its code. Dataminers MrCheeze and OatmealDome revealed file references to “Master Quest,” the mirrored, harder version of the game that previously appeared on the Nintendo GameCube and 3DS, Eurogamer reported.
Strings in the files include terms such as “HasMQ” and “ReleaseMQ,” with OatmealDome reporting that the modified dungeon mode appears tied to future downloadable content rather than a free standard update, according to Eurogamer. Nintendo has not confirmed whether any expansion or Master Quest add-on will be officially announced.
