One of the biggest changes Nintendo is bringing to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is the addition of a jump button. The original Nintendo 64 release and its Nintendo 3DS remake both had protagonist Link automatically jump whenever a player moved him along a ledge. In the latest remake, however, program director Hiroki Taguchi has said that the jump button was added for the sake of new players who got into the series with more recent entries.
In a recent edition of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer series, Taguchi, along with other members of the development team like director HokWai Ng and series producer Eiji Aonuma, discussed the project’s development and all of the changes that were implemented in the remake.
“There are many different ways to approach a remake. One common method is to port the original game’s code and data, then build on that foundation with updates and refinements to give the game a more modern feel. However, because 28 years had passed since the release of the original game, we needed to recreate everything from scratch this time,” explained Taguchi on the subject of making changes in the remake.
“So, we’d implement a feature, compare it with the original game, and then repeat that process over and over. We were mindful of rebuilding the game in a way that wouldn’t turn it into something completely different. That hard-to-describe sense of responsiveness you get from actions and the like was something we paid especially close attention to in research and development. In addition, we’ve made adjustments so that people who’ve played titles from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild onward won’t find the experience jarring as they make their way through the adventure.”
Ng further discussed the removal of the original’s auto-jump system in favor of a dedicated jump button. “In the original game, there wasn’t a button assigned to jumping. It was designed so that Link would automatically jump when players pushed the Control Stick forward in specific locations, so the places where jumping was possible and where it wasn’t were clearly defined. However, players who are used to more recent games may wonder, ‘Why is it that Link could jump over there, but not here?’ So, for Link’s jump, we carried over the controls from more recent titles in the series and made it possible to jump anywhere with a single button press.”
Aonuma pointed out that the ability to manually jump also makes the exploration aspects of the Ocarina of Time remake “much more exciting.” Interestingly, he also mentioned that the original’s auto jump system was useful for developers to make sure that players don’t accidentally reach parts of the game’s world they were never meant to see. “So, at first, we were like, ‘Are we sure about this?’ (Laughs) So, even a single change can instantly increase the number of things that need to be reviewed.”
Interestingly, art director Aya Shida also made note of the fact that the jumping distance can differ between Link’s young and adult forms. This small detail led to plenty of work for the team to ensure that it could “find the right balance in terms of making gaps just the right distance to jump across.”
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 later this week. For more details, check out our graphical analysis between it and the original.
