Ocarina of Time Speedrunners Break Switch 2 Remake Within Days of Launch

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake arrived on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026, and within hours the speedrunning community had already started dismantling it. This is a title that spent 28 years on the market accumulating some of the most bizarre sequence breaks in gaming history, and the new version appears determined to honor that legacy. For players who have been running Hyrule since the Nintendo 64 era, the speed at which fresh exploits are surfacing is both expected and exhilarating — the remake's physics engine has handed runners an entirely new toolbox on day one.

The game introduces a sprint feature and carries a 9/10 review score. That hope lasted roughly a weekend. An Any% completion has already been posted in a little less than four-and-a-half hours, while the average player needs about 20 hours to reach the credits. The gap between intended design and player ingenuity is widening by the hour, and every new clip on social media rewrites what we thought the remake's speedrun ceiling looked like.

Metric	Value
Any% completion time	under 4.5 hours
Average playthrough time	20 hours
Review score	9/10

Physics Glitches Send Link Into Orbit

Veteran runner ZFG was among the first to demonstrate that the Switch 2 remake's physics can launch Link into the air like a firework with the right setup. The technique appears relatively easy to replicate — X user Vespher posted footage of the same stunt in the same location within hours, and other players have identified additional spots where careful positioning produces similar weightlessness. A safe landing from those heights opens immediate sequence-break potential, letting runners skip entire dungeon sections before the intended route even open ups.

"Ocarina of Time Remake speedrunning has begun"

ZFG's follow-up clip shows the practical payoff: a massive jump lets Adult Link reach the Silver Gauntlets chest originally gated to Child Link. The ensuing cutscene tries to squeeze the adult model into the child animation skeleton, producing a distorted visual that underscores how thoroughly the game's age-state logic can be confused. ZFG notes that forcing Child Link into adult-only cutscenes remains impossible for now.

"Using a glitch to get a really big jump in the remake, its now possible to get the silver gauntlets chest as adult, which is supposed to be gotten as child. The cutscene that plays after tries to fit adult link into child link model, which ends up looking like this."

"This isn't possible with glitches yet, but if we can find a way to get into an adult only cutscene as child, we'll see this."

Chest Clipping and Item-Switch Wall Climbs

Standing inside a treasure chest and triggering a few sudden movements — or a well-placed bomb — clips Link straight through the ceiling above. Japanese runner k4erup documented the bug with footage showing Link rocketing upward from specific chest positions, and the technique appears viable in multiple locations. The implications for dungeon routing are immediate: any room with a chest beneath an upper floor becomes a potential elevator shaft.

"特定の宝箱の上でめっちゃ高く飛べるバグ"

Item switching has yielded another traversal breakthrough. By swapping items at the precise moment a jump slash with the Deku Stick connects, Link gains enough height to reach ledges previously inaccessible without late-game equipment. k4erup noted the trick might work in other places as well.

"デクの棒でジャンプ斬りする瞬間に他アイテムに切り替えることで高い足場にも届くバグが見つかった"

Rolling Still Beats Sprinting

The remake adds a sprint feature, but early timing tests show rolling remains faster. YouTuber KnightPohtaytoe demonstrated a target-hop-into-roll technique that edges out sprinting by a thin margin, while Reddit user Pomps8a found an even more accessible method: canceling a roll with a quick attack. The latter is easier to execute consistently and may become the standard movement tech for Any% runs once the meta settles.

"You can roll faster in ocarina by canceling with an attack by u/Pomps8a in NintendoSwitch2"

You can roll faster in ocarina by canceling with an attack by u/Pomps8a in NintendoSwitch2

Sequence Breaks Confuse Age-State Logic

The most structurally damaging exploits let Young Link perform Adult Link tasks and vice versa. The remake's scripting simply doesn't account for progress made out of order, so cutscenes and model swaps glitch spectacularly when the wrong age state triggers a flagged event. Vespher has already showcased a Nocturne skip using a normalized setup and buffered Ocarina actor jump, while sera18171 declared the remake "fully understood" after mapping out several age-state breaks in a single session.

"Nocturne skip with a normalized setup and a buffered ocarina actor jump (ez mode)"

"時のオカリナリメイク完全に理解した"

What This Means for Players

The sprint feature was supposed to be the quality-of-life answer to decades of roll-spamming, but the community has already proven that mechanical depth lives in the gaps between intended systems. For casual players, the glitches are largely optional curiosities — the game plays beautifully as designed, and the 20-hour average completion time reflects a well-paced adventure. For the speedrunning tier, however, the remake is a fresh sandbox where every physics quirk and scripting oversight becomes a potential timesave. The Any% record will almost certainly drop below four hours within weeks, and the route will look nothing like the Nintendo 64 original's. That tension — between a polished remake that respects its source and a community that refuses to play by its rules — is exactly what keeps Ocarina of Time relevant 28 years later.

The remake is available now on Switch 2. With the community dissecting every frame of animation and collision box, the next major route shift is likely already being tested in someone's capture card footage — watch the leaderboards and the usual X accounts for whatever breaks next.

Ocarina of Time Remake speedrunning has begun