The anticipated remake of the seminal Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time abandoned this week. Lifelong fans return to a familiar but modified Hyrule. The world originally rendered in 1998 has higher fidelity, better-looking non-playable characters, better-behaved chickens, and, most notably, a jump button. For the regular player, this is a marvel and an adjustment. For speedrunners, it’s a tantalizing technological playground to discover. As the weekend wears on and the racers travel across the kingdom in search of secret exploits, they hatch a potential plan for record-breaking times. Plus discovering some bizarre horrors along the way.
Say The Legend of Zelda the series has abnormal technology, to put it mildly. Ever since Link stepped out of his treehouse and into a 3D polygonal world, it was clear that the code that binds his reality had a soft underbelly. OcarinaThe boomerang can rewrite the placement of objects. Wind alarm clockThe camera can launch the little Toon Link in hyperspeed across the ocean. Sword to the skyThe opening menu appears to exist in a sort of time pocket dimension. Nintendo’s tweaked games have always run on particular physics, but for speedrunners, a return to Ocarina presents an opportunity to rewrite the playbook.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a speedrun pic.twitter.com/hRN97USavV
– Vespher (@Vespher) November 7, 2026
The most obvious source of potential running assist issues is Link’s new ability to jump. As in Breath of the WildLink no longer needs to run off a cliff to remember how to use his knees. In standard play, Link can go higher. Speedrunners want to see how far he can go. Find unpretentious geography that can serve as shortcuts. Some of the classics, like the building-bounding “Hookshot Jump,” seem viable. One of the most popular technologies is open chests. Now that Link can enter it, positioning his feet inside at just the right angle seems to spike the game, launching the player like a trampoline. Dropping a bomb in there seems to help too.
Like previous Zelda games, many glitches lie dormant outside of real-time gameplay. Remake runners are already testing start menus and inventory to see what will happen with spam and jitters. And of course, switching between items in your inventory in the air seems to make Link flutter like a leaf in the wind.
“This bug shouldn’t exist lol,” ORCinfo posted. “Once you get used to it, you can jump endlessly in the air. This will break speedruns.”
Defying gravity is obviously useful, but potential sequence-breaking exploits are what cause runtime to plummet from hours to minutes. Stumbling upon the appropriate technology could allow players to skip objects, temples, trace beats, or reroute them into a more convenient order. This is particularly prescient in a game that alternates between two different time periods. As runner Zfg1 tells it, playing with the hero of time seems to have a little butterfly effect. While unfortunately temporary, triggering cutscenes of adult Link cutting as child Link, and vice versa, momentarily confuses the remake, crumpling its texture files into a Neanderthal, or the product of the other end’s release from Amigara Fault.
We can now beat Shadow Temple as a child, which automatically turns you into an adult. We still have one more hurdle to clear before we can use it in a speedrun, but it will be huge if we can overcome it.
It also looks very funny. pic.twitter.com/s2aoTKCQyY
– ZFG (@zfg111) November 8, 2026
The times are still young in terms of how all of this can be applied. The glitches can be impressive, but if they don’t contribute to faster runs, they’re just a party trick. Likewise, seemingly innocuous exploits can sometimes turn into monumental discoveries, especially as operating conditions become more specialized. But things move quickly, even for a scene concerned with moving quickly. The focus on a speedrunning classic means new problems will hit hard and fast. And Link, poor Link, is along for the ride.
Gn tech
