On September 8th, 2026, Nintendo revealed footage of the upcoming remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The game had been announced in a previous direct, but no real footage was shown. Here, we got to see how the early game plays out. It’s beautiful. It looks absolutely gorgeous and shows how the Switch 2 is a pint-sized powerhouse. It’s amazing to see Ocarina of Time looking this good. The last time it got a glow-up was on the 3DS, and this looks leagues above that. It did get us thinking, though; maybe companies should spend more time remaking the bad games instead.
Fixing What Went Wrong
Now, don’t get us wrong. It’s good to see a legendary game be presented with refinements and a graphical overhaul. There’s nothing wrong with taking a great thing and making it even better. But what if you took that same energy to make a mediocre thing pretty amazing? We actually discussed this topic a bit in an interview about the movie Blood Freak. Sometimes a flawed project can have some great elements to it. If that’s the case, why not remake that to bring those good parts to the forefront?
It’s hard to find a truly bad game in the Zelda franchise. There are some titles that are kind of clunky for sure, though. The first one that comes to mind is Zelda II: The Adventures of Link. The game was a semi-open world adventure with side-scrolling action segments when Link wasn’t on the world map. It’s the black sheep of the family for sure. Seems like that could be the game set to be remade. The combat was meant to be intense and hard, and you could bank or lose your experience points if you died. It’s actually the kind of game you could remake in a Dark Souls-like format today. Turn the open-world 2D map into a 3D open field with areas you need to progress through to get to the temples.
Taking Bold Swings
Link’s Awakening was given a remake for the Switch from its original Game Boy version. It’s a pretty substantial upgrade in certain ways. The graphics are much better, obviously. But the extra amount of buttons on the Switch controller also made using items and certain movement functions easier. Little things like that can go a long way. It still kept the same basic format, though. The perspective on screen was the same, just brighter and more polished. The dungeons, story, everything else was virtually identical. That’s all well and good. But maybe these remakes need to be a bit bolder in that regard.
For example, let’s take the original The Legend of Zelda. It’s lauded for being open-ended and letting the player explore without any handholding. That can also be a critique in that it can be a little too cryptic at times. This wasn’t helped by a lack of strong translations and text limitations at the time. The hints the game provided were not very helpful, but they tried to help point in the right direction. That’s certainly not a problem now. You could redo the original game with a larger map that has more secrets to uncover and better hints to guide you. Basically, you could take elements of what Breath of the Wild did but put the original game within that framework.
Refinements & Remakes
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is another one just begging to be remade. The game made the mistake of being too reliant on the gimmicks included on the Nintendo DS. It used the touch screen for virtually everything and even had you blow into the microphone at points. There was also the issue of the main recurring dungeon you had to keep going back into and progress a bit further each time. A remake could strip out the repetition, get rid of the gimmicks, and focus on the core gameplay. It would also do Zelda fans a big favor by making the game available on something that’s more accessible than an old Nintendo DS or 3DS system.
Nintendo could easily take a page from Capcom and what they’ve been doing with their Resident Evil remakes. Except for Resident Evil 3. That had some issues. But the other remakes- that’s the stuff right there. The essence of the original games is there, but the experience is different enough to be exciting again. Sometimes it’s just little things that throw off veteran players. Like in the Resident Evil 4 remake, for example. They changed the location of one of the chainsaw-wielding Dr. Salvador characters. Originally, he appeared after reaching a certain house. In the remake, he pops up earlier. Not a huge change, but enough to make you scramble when you’re not expecting it.
Still Playing it Safe
But even with Capcom’s example, they’re still remaking games that were already great. They’re not taking the time to redo something like Resident Evil: Dead Aim or Operation Raccoon City. Those are games that had good elements to them but were squandered on terrible gameplay or controls. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. We’re actually going to see one of the more problematic entries get a remake in the form of Resident Evil Veronica. The original Code: Veronica was a flawed game that tried to push the formula beyond the original trilogy but didn’t fully succeed. This is where a remake could really help elevate it by taking the characters and story but refining the gameplay with what Capcom knows works better today.
It’s easy to want to remake things that already worked. Because they’re a known entity, you remove many of the variables for predicting success. Or at least, in theory, you do. Not every remake of a successful property is successful all over again. Sometimes it was successful for things that were elements of the time, and replicating it out of that time period doesn’t yield the same results.
The Ocarina of Time Remake Looks Amazing Though
None of this is to say that The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shouldn’t get a remake, because it should. While the original game has been made available over the years in various forms, that version is based on Nintendo 64 architecture. The graphics are jaggedly polygonal, and the only real remake that made it better was on the 3DS. A better version should be available on modern hardware. Still, there are so many titles that could use an overhaul to let them shine. In a world where remakes and known intellectual properties are dominating, reworking failed ideas seems like a damn good compromise.
