I've never played Ocarina of Time, but 2 hours with the remake proves that this masterpiece is much more than nostalgia.

No matter how much I wish it were, I'll never know what it was like to see Jaws in the summer of 1975. However, I still have the pleasure of watching a film that changed blockbuster cinema forever 50 years later, whether it's on big IMAX screens or stunningly restored 4K Blu-ray. The experience of being there when a movie, play, or piece of music entered our culture and witnessing its impact firsthand can never be replicated, but through preservation, restoration, and restoration, new audiences can discover these treasures for themselves.

This is about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My recent playthrough of the Switch 2 remake demo was like digital archeology. The discovery of a cultural artifact that informs so much of what happened next, while remaining a brilliant treasure in its own right. A link between one era of video games and another. A sacred text, at least for me, was like that. Look, I never played the original.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time preview screenshots

Well, that's a bit of a lie – I briefly messed around with the opening hour of the 3DS port about a decade ago. I know, I should be subjected to whatever form of medieval torture you see fit. But the truth is, despite having played several Zelda games since then, it simply passed me by - Tears of the Kingdom is a masterpiece of open world design in my eyes, even if Wind Waker is still close to my heart. I never owned a Nintendo 64, and probably got distracted by whatever was happening in my mid-20s, which led me to ditch the portable version of Ocarina. But now, finally, I'm ready to right my wrongs, and after two hours of playing the remake, I couldn't be more excited.

During my time with the 2026 version of Link's most defining adventure, I got to play in the Kokiri Forest, roam around Castle City, and complete the Forest Temple. Even from this small sample size, I can see flashes of some of my favorite games in it, and the sparks of inspiration that must have been fired in the minds of other game developers in 1998. From just that short session, I can safely assure you that if you're like me and have let this piece of history slip through your fingers, there's plenty here for newcomers to enjoy. When it comes out in November, there will be little excuse not to play it.

Nintendo has created something of a lending library for game design, something I can clearly see in Jungle Temple.

Rockstar co-founder Dan Houser told the New York Times, "Anyone who makes 3D games that says they haven't borrowed something from Mario or Zelda is lying — from Nintendo 64 games, not necessarily games today." That's a point that's hard to argue with and I don't dare argue with it – I think one of the minds behind GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 probably knows more about game design than I do.

Nintendo has created something of a lending library for game design, something I can clearly see in Jungle Temple. I enjoyed picking up each of its knotty corridors and unlocking its hidden secrets, all wrapped up in one spooky mansion. Each room is a puzzle, whether in the more traditional sense of moving heavy stone cubes to unblock paths or navigating combat challenges that put your tool belt to the test.

Battles are never overly challenging, but they're not surprisingly engaging, with sword-and-shield-wielding skeletons reacting to your actions as you in turn have to deal with them with a well-timed dodge or stun. When you hit them, you can see the main structure that affects Batman Arkham's fights - one of the characteristic melee combat systems - so that the fights read the rhythm of your movements and you in turn have to react with the correct rock-paper-scissors answer.

The entire structure of the temple, outside of the patchwork, fails to evoke memories of Dark Souls' cluttered, shortcut unlocking approach to level design. Each path leads back to its central chamber, where four colored flames must be lit to indicate the path to its boss. The construction of this area is expertly done and clearly shows what you need to achieve without taking too much of your hand. This freedom of thought has always reigned in Zelda, until how Tears of the Kingdom showcases your most experimental thoughts with its building systems.

It's a testament to Nintendo's enduring innovation that these ideas still resonate in games today.

In Ocarina, clues about how to achieve objectives are provided, with tantalizing buttons tucked away behind locked gates and tall ledges that are seemingly unreachable. That is until you realize you can rotate the corridors and completely change the architecture of the temple, like the clockwork mansion prototype of Dishonored 2. This is a key mechanic for navigating the space and where many of its challenges lie. Entire projects, like Fez, used a system like this to power a game. Here, it is used for less than an hour. It's a testament to Nintendo's enduring innovation that these ideas still resonate in games today.

I found great joy in the simplicity of the temple, but it tickled my brain enough that it never seemed like child's play. There's a delicate balance when it comes to marking without holding your hand, so much so that the temple provided several "aha" moments during the time I was exploring. Some of them came naturally over decades of video gaming, like seeing a frozen target with a roaring fire nearby, which makes it clear that I need to shoot an arrow through the flames to melt it. But some gave me pause for thought, like I didn't realize I had to use my bow to hit each of the four temples. The guard comes out of the paintings to progress. However, I tried it anyway, and lo and behold, it worked. It's the kind of "let's see if it works" experimentation that I've always appreciated in Zelda, so it's no surprise to see it pioneered in this series' first foray into 3D.

I was very surprised to see that the temple boss, Phantom Ganon, was a puzzle instead of a hand-to-hand fight. Some of my favorite bosses in all of gaming are puzzles that must be solved rather than reflexes being tested, be it one of the beasts of Shadow of the Colossus or, perhaps similarly here, the Rennala Elden Ring. Brain transplants are clearly preferred over brains, once you figure out which of the horsemen from the paintings that surround you are real, it's key to taking down this enemy.

One of the most notable changes in this revamped version is the jump button. Link was grounded in the original Ocarina of Time and could only jump through certain gaps dictated by his creators. This decision was made to create a contrast between the two biggest Nintendo series. "When we first started making The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you had to press a button to jump," asks Yoshiaki Koizumi, original game designer and current Nintendo COO and Direct host, in Iwata. As we were making Super Mario 64, we were thinking about The Legend of Zelda all the time and started talking about reducing the action element in The Legend of Zelda and increasing the puzzle elements.

Part of me expected this remake to be a little dated. I was wrong it feels full of freshly made magic.

Modern Zelda, and modern adventure games in general, favor action over puzzles, so it's somewhat natural that a jump was introduced in the remake. It's almost impossible not to think of Breath of the Wild and its sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, when you think back to older Zelda. Link certainly handles this remake in the same way that the most recent incarnations of the Hyrule hero do. There's a great sense of responsiveness to each of his actions, whether in platform mode or in combat, with the latter being very familiar. It's not really surprising that, even 20 years later, Nintendo was still using the same lock-on approach to duels. In fact, it was remarkable to me that, having never explored the Forest Temple before, it felt second nature to what I played in Ocarina of Time. You can almost see code, code that has been exhaustively studied and iterated by Nintendo and pretty much every other game developer.

As you can see the impact of Jaws coming decades later in games like Jordan Peele's Nope or Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One, Ocarina of Time is palpable in both the latest Zelda games and adventure games in general. Of course, part of me always knew this. But as much as I enjoy those great recent movies, I still enjoy Spielberg's Shark Attack, which is the tallest for me. It's remarkable how enjoyable these pieces of history still are. It's too early for me to know if I'll feel the same way about Ocarina, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little surprised by the fact that I'm thinking about it after a few hours. I know this is a modern interpretation, but part of me was expecting this remake to be a bit dated. It's an almost 30-year-old collection of ideas. I was wrong it feels full of freshly made magic.

Of course, Nintendo isn't without its own inspirations. I noticed that 3D games were showing up on consoles like the PlayStation years before Link got his first N64, and you can see flashes of them here. Maybe I'm making a decades-old observation here, but I enjoyed its winding corridors, reminiscent of Spencer's original Resident Evil mansion, remodeled for an audience that likes to laugh in the face of horror rather than be chilled by it. You can see how developers have created explorable open spaces over time, from Capcom's 1996 Mansion, Nintendo's 1998 Temple, to Rockstar's Freedom City in 2001. So it's somewhat strange that Rockstar's latest world, GTA 6's Leonidas, arrives just days after the Ocarina of Time remake. Two games of very different dimensions, but equally memorable. Digital archeology ushers in a new era in general.

I know this game will never hold the same special place in my heart as the millions who grew up with it, but it still has more than enough to make up for it. From just this small sample, I can say that this is an impeccably designed adventure that left me hungry to devour everything. If you've somehow let it slip away like me, I won't miss it this time.

I'd never played Ocarina of Time before, yet, oddly enough, there was a comforting sense of familiarity playing everything that inspired it after. Now, I can't wait to enjoy every moment of it when it comes out on November 5th.

Simon Cardy is a senior editor at IGN who can mostly be found engrossed in open-world gaming, engrossed in Korean cinema, or despairing over the state of Tottenham Hotspur and the New York Jets. Follow him on Bluesky at @cardy.bsky.social.