Update 10/5/2026 4:46 p.m.: Welp, as has been pointed out to me, apparently this mod’s code was written by genAI, specifically Claude. The article exists now, no takesy-backsies, so I’m leaving it intact below as a cautionary tale.
This was on me and I should have caught it, but I do feel it’s worth pointing out here how insidious this stuff can be. This information wasn’t disclosed anywhere obvious at all. I didn’t see it in any other articles I read about the game, or any of the social media posts or YouTube videos I watched. There isn’t an official website anywhere that might have such a thing mentioned. I even searched for “genAI” in the Discord and found nothing. I eventually saw a mention of it, about 200 comments down on a YouTube video, and found the discussion buried deep in the modding Discord when I searched for “vibe coded.”
It’s getting harder and harder to write about fan projects because of this exact sort of thing, and I’ll honestly probably just be doing less of it as a result. Anyway, I’m genuinely sorry to folks who have read my work for a long time and know how I feel about this sort of thing who felt misled by this. It’s certainly got me on even more of a defensive than I already was going forward.
Original story continues below:
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake is out next month, and that’s giving us lots of excuses to think about all the weird, funny, and unique quirks of the nearly 30-year-old original. I’ve written about its weird characters and how great the Gerudo Valley theme is already, but today a YouTube recommendation introduced me to a romhack of the original Ocarina of Time that’s one of the most clever commitments to a pun I’ve seen in a while.
Introducing…Soccerina of Time:
Ha ha, yeah! That’s the cast of Ocarina of Time playing soccer! This is a romhack developed by shonj352 that takes place in the game world of Ocarina of Time and lets you pick from eight different teams made up of Ocarina characters and then, well, do this! The teams have great names like Kakariko City, Zora United, and Kokiri FC. And there are different fields to play on, too, such as the one above in Kokiri Forest and this one in Gerudo Town:
I love the way all these little guys run around so goofily. There are some pretty clever animations in here too, such as the one shown above where a player gets injured and two others carry them off on a stretcher. God, Dampe in the goal is cracking me up, as is seeing the construction workers scurry across the field like that. Incredible stuff.
Apparently there are other features, too, beyond just little scrimmage games, like a character creator mode, a league mode, selectable difficulty options, and a manager mode where you just control player tactics instead of individual team members. And the most recent patch notes include some bizarre stuff like “trial and jail systems,” “new career ending injuries,” and even custom music. What…what can you go to jail for?!
This is still a pretty new personal project for shonj352, so the main way to get more info if you want it is via the Hylian Modding Discord. If you’re feeling in the Hyrule spirit in the lead-up to the remake release but don’t want an adventure game, this seems like a pretty funny and fun compromise to mess around with.
