The anticipated remake of the seminal Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time dropped this week. Lifelong fans are returning to a familiar but altered Hyrule. The world originally rendered in 1998 has greater fidelity, hunkier non-playable characters, wiser chickens and, most notably, a jump button. For the regular player it’s a marvel and an adjustment. For speedrunners, it’s a tantalizing playground of tech to be discovered. As the weekend rolls out, and runners dredge the kingdom for secret exploits, they’re establishing a potential blueprint for record times. As well as uncovering some bizarre horrors along the way.
To say The Legend of Zelda series has some abnormal tech is an understatement. Ever since Link stepped out of his treehouse into a 3D, polygonal world, it was clear the code that binds his reality had a soft underbelly. Ocarina’s boomerang can rewrite item placement. Wind Waker’s camera can launch little Toon Link into hyperspeed across the ocean. Skyward Sword’s opening menu seems to exist in some kind of temporal pocket dimension. Nintendo’s fine tuned games have always operated on peculiar 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 for potential run-aiding glitches is Link’s newfound ability to jump. Like in Breath of the Wild, Link 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 just how high he can go. Find unassuming geography that can act as shortcuts. Some of the classics, like the building-bounding ‘Hookshot Jump,’ appear to be viable. One of the most popular pieces of tech revolves around open chests. Now that Link can step into them, positioning his feet inside them at just the right angle seems to bristle the game, launching the player like a trampoline. Dropping a bomb in there seems to help as well.
Like previous Zelda games, plenty of glitches lay dormant outside of realtime play. Remake runners are already stress testing start menus and inventory to see what will happen when spammed and agitated. And sure enough, flipping between items in your inventory midair seems to cause Link to float like a leaf in the wind.
“This bug shouldn’t exist lol,” posted ORCinfo. “Once you get used to it, you can jump endlessly in midair. This is gonna break speedruns.”
Defying gravity is obviously useful, but potential sequence breaking exploits is what plummets a runtime from hours into minutes. Stumbling across the proper tech could allow players to skip items, temples, plot beats or reroute them into a more convenient order. This is especially prescient in a game that swaps between two different periods. As runner Zfg1 is chronicling, messing with the hero of time does seem to have a bit of a butterfly effect. While sadly temporary, triggering cut adult Link cutscenes as child Link, and vice versa, momentarily confuses the remake, scrunching his texture files into a neanderthal, or the product of coming out the other end of Amigara Fault.
We can now beat Shadow Temple as child, which automatically turns you into adult. We still have 1 roadblock to get past before this can be used in a speedrun, but it'll be huge assuming we can get past it.
It also looks very funny. pic.twitter.com/s2aoTKCQyY
— ZFG (@zfg111) November 8, 2026
The day is young as far as how any of this can be applied. Glitches can be awe inspiring, but if they don’t contribute to faster runs they’re just a party trick. Likewise seemingly benign exploits can sometimes pierce through to monumental discoveries, especially as run conditions become more niche. But things are moving fast, even for a scene preoccupied with being fast. The attention to a speedrunning classic means new glitches will be hitting hard and fast. And Link, poor Link, is along for the ride.
