I had already forgotten (even though I had played the original very recently) that Ocarina of time has a plot mini-games everywhere. There’s Bombchu Bowling (which everyone remembers for its seemingly hot assistant), a game of guessing which chest contains a rupee, a fishing game, a shooting gallery and a few other things. There’s also a simplistic chicken game that rewards you with a precious bottle filled with Lon Lon milk.
Before, you could cheat this game very easily and win it on the first try. Now in the remake you can’t.
The Cucco mini-game at Lon Lon Ranch is easy to cheat in the original version. Ocarina of time. The goal of the game is to find three special cuckoos in a large flock of identical cuckoos inside Talon’s house. Playing normally may take a few tries, as you’re given a time limit and there’s no way of knowing which Cucco is which. And it costs money to play each time, which early in the game can hurt Link’s small wallet. But you can cheat by collecting every Cucco in the house Before The mini-game begins and throws him into the corner behind Talon, next to the stairs. The Cuccos will stay there, so when Talon takes out his three specials, they’re left alone in the middle of the floor and it’s obvious which ones are which.
In the remake, this cheat is gone. Not only can you no longer jam the Cuccos in this corner (I tried throwing them all down the stairs, that didn’t work either, they just slid), but Talon actively shuffles the Cuccos all over the room when you ask him to start the game, putting each one back on the floor. Fortunately, picking up and dropping off cucumbers is a lot faster with the smooth controls of the Switch 2 version, so it’s easier than ever to simply… win this game on the first try, without cheating.
I also noticed other small changes that eliminate, if you will, the well-known little “exploits”. You can no longer climb the chains of Hyrule Castle’s drawbridge to collect Rupees: you simply fall through them.
On the other hand, a few little tips are always in order. For example, you can apparently still hit butterflies with a Deku stick to turn them into fairies. I didn’t even know you could do this in the original:
Yesss!! they kept one of my favorite features from the OG Ocarina of Time. You can turn butterflies into fairies if you hit them with a Deku Stick!!! pic.twitter.com/yYszJuB58A
– Rice. 🇵🇸 (@Rizkhalifa449) November 5, 2026
And I heard you can still do some dungeons out of order:
I haven’t gotten to it yet, but I guess you’ll still be able to use the Lens of Truth (or the Glasses, as I guess they are now) to cheat at the chest minigame. Now if only I could cheat at the shooting range too…
Gn tech
