No matter how much I wish it were the case, I’ll never know what it was like to have seen Jaws in the summer of 1975. Yet, I still get the joy of watching the film that changed blockbuster cinema forever 50 years later, whether that be on towering IMAX screens or wonderfully restored 4K blu-rays. The experience of being there when a film, game, or piece of music entered our culture and witnessing its impact firsthand can never be replicated, but through preservation, remasters, and remakes, new audiences get to uncover these treasures for themselves.

This is the case with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My recent playtime with a demo of the Switch 2 remake felt like digital archaeology; the unearthing of a cultural artefact that informed so much of what came after it, while remaining a gleaming treasure in its own right. A link between one era of video games and another. A sacred text. At least, that’s how it felt to me. You see, I’ve never played the original.

Well, that’s a tiny bit of a lie — I did briefly mess around in the opening hour or so of the 3DS port around a decade ago. I know, I should be subject to whatever form of medieval torture you deem appropriate. But the truth is, it’s one that simply passed me by, despite having played several Zeldas since — Tears of the Kingdom is a masterwork of open-world design in my eyes, even if Wind Waker still sits closest to my heart. I never owned a Nintendo 64, and likely got distracted by whatever was happening in my mid-20s, which made me put down Ocarina’s portable version. But now, finally, I’m ready to right my wrongs, and after playing two hours of the remake, I couldn’t be more excited to do so.

During my time with the 2026 version of Link’s most defining adventure, I got to play through Kokiri Forest, wander around Castle Town, and complete the Forest Temple. Even from this small sample size, I could see flashes of some of my favourite games within it, and the inspirational sparks it must have fired off into other game developers’ minds in 1998. But most importantly, I had a ridiculously fun time with it. From just that short session, I can safely assure you that, if you’re like me and have also somehow let this piece of history slip through your fingers, there’s plenty here for newcomers to enjoy. When it launches in November, there will be little excuse to leave it unplayed.

“Anyone who makes 3D games who says they’ve not borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying — from the games on Nintendo 64, not necessarily the ones from today,” said Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser to the New York Times. It’s a point that’s hard to argue with, and one I wouldn’t dare contest — I think one of the minds behind GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 probably knows more about game design than I.

Nintendo having created something of a lending library for game design is something I could see most clearly in the Forest Temple. I enjoyed unpicking each of its knotted series of corridors and unpacking its hidden secrets, all wrapped in a spooky mansion setting. Every room is a puzzle, whether in the more traditional sense of moving heavy stone cubes around to unblock routes or navigating combat challenges that put your tool belt to the test.

Battles are never overly challenging but wonderfully engaging, with looming sword-and-shield-wielding skeletons reacting to your actions as you, in turn, have to counter theirs with a well-timed dodge or stun. When striking them down, you can see the basic structure that would go on to influence Batman Arkham’s brawls — one of the defining melee combat systems — in the way that fights carry the rhythm of enemies reading your movements and you, in turn, having to react with the correct rock-paper-scissors response.

Outside of scraps, the structure of the whole temple can’t help but conjure memories of Dark Souls’ intertwining, shortcut-unlocking approach to level design. Every route loops back to its central chamber, in which four coloured flames need to be lit in order for the path to the boss to reveal itself. The construction of this area is masterfully done, clearly indicating what you have to achieve without ever holding your hand too much. That freedom of thought has always been prevalent in Zelda, all the way up to how Tears of the Kingdom brings out your most experimental thoughts with its building systems.

In Ocarina, breadcrumbs of clues as to how to achieve objectives are given, with tempting buttons placed out of reach behind locked gates and high up ledges seemingly unreachable. That’s until you realise you can rotate the hallways and alter the architecture of the temple completely, like some sort of prototype of Dishonored 2’s Clockwork Mansion. This mechanic is key to navigating the space, and where much of its challenge lies. Entire projects, such as Fez, have gone on to use a system like this to power a whole game. Here, it’s utilised for less than an hour. It’s a testament to the enduring inventiveness of Nintendo that these ideas still echo through gaming today.

I found great joy in the simplicity of the temple, but one that tickled my brain enough to never seem like child’s play. There’s a delicate balance when it comes to signposting without holding your hand, to the point where the temple delivered several “aha” moments over the course of my time exploring it. Some came naturally through decades of playing video games, like seeing a frozen target with a raging fire nearby, clearly indicating I needed to fire an arrow through the flames to melt it. But some did give me pause for thought, such as not realising I needed to use my bow to knock each of the temple’s four guardian sprites out of paintings in order to progress. Still, I tried it anyway, and lo and behold, it worked. It’s that sort of “let’s see if this works” experimentation that I’ve always appreciated in Zelda, so it’s no surprise to see it pioneered here in the series first foray into 3D.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the temple’s boss, Phantom Ganon, was also a puzzle, instead of a toe-to-toe fight. Some of my favourite bosses in all of gaming are enigmas to be solved rather than tests of reflexes, whether that be any of Shadow of the Colossus’ beasts or, perhaps more analogously here, Elden Ring’s Rennala. Brain over brawn is clearly Link’s preference too, with well-timed parries key to bringing down this foe once you work out which of the ones charging on horseback out of the paintings that surround you is real.

One of the more notable changes this remake introduces is a jump button. Link was grounded in the original Ocarina of Time, only able to hop over specific gaps dictated by his creators. It was a decision intended to create contrast between Nintendo’s two big series. “You had to press a button to jump when we first started making The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” explained Yoshiaki Koizumi, a designer on the original game and Nintendo’s current Senior Executive Officer and Direct host, in an Iwata Asks. “As we were making Super Mario 64, we were thinking about The Legend of Zelda the whole time, and started talking about decreasing the action element in The Legend of Zelda and increasing the puzzle elements.”

Modern Zelda, and modern adventure games in general, have tended to favour action over puzzles, so it’s somewhat natural that a jump has been introduced in the remake. It’s almost impossible not to think of Breath of the Wild, and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, when going back to any older Zelda now. This remake’s Link certainly controls similarly to how those most recent incarnations of Hyrule’s hero do. There’s a great sense of responsiveness to each of his actions, whether platforming or in combat, with the latter feeling very familiar. No great surprise really when, even 20 years later, Nintendo still utilised the same lock-on approach to duels. In fact, it was remarkable to me how second nature much of what I played in Ocarina of Time felt to me, considering I’d never explored the Forest Temple before. You can almost see through the code, one that has been comprehensively studied and iterated on by Nintendo, and practically every other game developer since.

Just as you can see the impact of Jaws rippling decades later in the likes of Jordan Peele’s Nope or Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One, Ocarina of Time can be felt in both the most recent Zeldas and adventure games in general. Of course, part of me always knew this. But as much as I enjoy those fantastic recent films, it’s still Spielberg’s shark hunt that stands tallest to me. It’s remarkable how enjoyable these pieces of history still are today. It’s far too early for me to know whether I’ll feel the same way about Ocarina, but I’d be lying if I said the fact that I’m considering that after just a couple of hours hasn’t surprised me a little. I know this is a modern interpretation, but part of me expected this remake to feel slightly archaic; this is a nearly 30-year-old collection of ideas, after all. I was wrong. It feels full of freshly conjured magic.

Of course, Nintendo isn’t without its own inspirations. I realise 3D games were appearing on consoles such as the PlayStation years prior to Link making his N64 debut, and you can see flashes of them here. Perhaps I’m making decades-old observations here, but I enjoyed the way its twisting hallways resemble the original Resident Evil’s Spencer Mansion, rebuilt for an audience that likes to laugh in the face of horror rather than be chilled by it. You can see developers learning how to create explorable open spaces through time, from Capcom’s 1996 mansion, through Nintendo’s 1998 temple, to Rockstar’s 2001 Liberty City. It’s somewhat serendipitous, then, that Rockstar’s latest world, GTA 6’s Leonida, arrives just days after the Ocarina of Time remake. Two games of wildly different scope, but equally monumental. Digital archaeology prefacing a new age altogether.

I know that this game won’t ever hold as special a place in my heart as it does for the millions who grew up with it, but there’s still more than enough to make up for that. Just from this small sampling, I can tell it’s an impeccably designed adventure that left me hungry to devour the full thing. If you’ve somehow let it slip as I did, I wouldn’t miss out this time around.

I’d never played Ocarina of Time before, yet, strangely, having played everything that it has come to inspire after, there was a comforting sense of familiarity. Now, I can’t wait to get my hands back on it and savour every moment of it for myself when it is released on November 5.