Eiji Aonuma lifted an ocarina to his lips and played Epona’s song. On screen, Link played it right back, note for note.
That’s the trick at the center of Nintendo’s remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo Switch 2. A physical ocarina, one you can hold and play in real life, talks directly to the game. Whatever notes you blow into it, Link performs the exact same ones.
The series producer picked the right song for the demo, too. Epona’s song is the little tune that calls Link’s trusty steed, and anyone who spent the late ’90s on Lon Lon Ranch can probably hum it from memory.
You don’t have to buy a flute to play
Nintendo isn’t forcing anyone to pick up a new instrument. You can still input notes the normal way, with dedicated controller buttons.
And there’s a third option that’s a little sillier and a little more charming. The Switch 2 controllers have a microphone, and Nintendo said you’ll be able to hum notes into it for the same effect. (Your roommates will love this.)
The remake already gives Link and Zelda’s classic Nintendo 64 adventure a dramatic new look and some quality of life upgrades. But the two biggest additions Nintendo showed off live outside the game entirely. The ocarina is one. The other is on your phone.
Zelda Notes is back, with 11 options
If you skipped the Nintendo Switch app’s Zelda Notes feature for Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom back in 2025, Nintendo just handed you another reason to download it. The Ocarina of Time version will have 11 different options to dig through. Nintendo only explained a handful of them.
Today’s Record is the most familiar. It lays out your accomplishments in chronological order, with screenshots of the moment each one happened. Think achievements, but built specifically for Zelda. It’s informational, too, tracking a running list of your stats, and Nintendo never scrolled to the bottom of it during the demo. So whatever you saw there, it doesn’t look like the full list of what the game can track.
Then there’s the photo hunt. Zelda Notes serves up a wide variety of photographs of locations you have to find in the game. Some are obvious, highly visible spots. Others are deeply obscure, down to specific rock formations. Find the place and you earn points, which you can trade for ocarina scores to play in-game.
It’s a smart way to reward exploration and get you staring at the tiny details Nintendo packed into the remake. The difficulty bends to you, too. Tap a button and you’ll get a hint about where to look.
Get ready to be rickrolled in Hyrule
One option is a digital version of the azure instrument itself, something you can fiddle around with on your phone. It offers guided playback for an entire song or just the start of a score, showing you exactly which notes to play and for how long to get a specific sound.
The better part: you can record your own songs and share them with other players through QR codes. Somebody is going to send you a Rick Astley cover within a week of launch. Plan accordingly.
The quiz is the one that’ll eat your mornings. You get questions that have to be answered within 10 seconds, each with four possible answers and an attached picture. Two of the examples Nintendo showed were “Who does this house belong to?” and “Which plant family do Bomb Flowers belong to?”
There are 2,000 questions in total, and you can take the quiz once per day. Want another shot? It’ll cost you 20 Rupees. String together enough consecutive right answers and your “Egg Level” and “Cucco Level” climb.
The six Nintendo didn’t explain
Several options flashed by during the Direct without any explanation: Map, Hall of Fallen Foes, Global Play Data, Photo Studio, Threads of Time and amiibo. A few of those explain themselves. The rest will stay a mystery until Nintendo decides to share more.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 on Nov. 5, along with a full graphical overhaul. You’ve got about a month to relearn Epona’s song.
