Zelda Fans Lose Their Minds Over Ocarina of Time Remake Pricing, As If They Expected Anything Less From Nintendo
Look, I get it. You’re sitting there in your nostalgia-stained underwear at 2 AM, scrolling through Twitter, and you see it: a tweet from Nintendo announcing a full-blown remake of *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time* for the Switch 2. Your heart skips a beat. You start humming the Lost Woods theme. You’re already planning your vacation time to lock yourself in a dark room and play this masterpiece for the 47th time. Then you see the price tag: $79.99. Maybe even $89.99 for the “Collector’s Edition” that comes with a plastic keychain and a digital art book that’s just 10 screenshots from the original game.
And suddenly, you’re not in Hyrule anymore. You’re in a cold, hard reality where Nintendo has once again decided that your childhood memories are worth more than your rent payment.
Let’s be real: this was always going to happen. Nintendo doesn’t do “fair pricing.” They do “what the market will bear,” and apparently, they think the market will bear a mortgage payment for a game that came out in 1998. But here’s the kicker—the remake isn’t even a ground-up rebuild like *Final Fantasy VII Remake*. No, no. This is a “remaster” with a fresh coat of paint, some QoL updates, and a controversial new control scheme that everyone will hate for the first week before pretending it’s fine. This is a $30 indie game at best being sold for the price of a night out with friends you don’t have.
But let’s dig into the actual announcement, because the internet is currently having a collective aneurysm over this. The remake promises “enhanced graphics” (read: slightly better textures and ambient occlusion), “revamped controls” (read: they mapped Z-targeting to the shoulder button), and a “new dungeon” that’s probably just a recycled asset from *Breath of the Wild*. And the price? $79.99 for the standard edition. $99.99 for the “Hero of Time” edition that includes a steelbook, a map that’s on tissue paper, and a code for a soundtrack that’s already on YouTube.
And people are actually defending this. I’ve seen takes on Reddit like, “But inflation! The original was $60 in 1998, which is like $110 today!” Okay, cool, let’s apply that logic to literally everything else. Your rent should be $3,000 a month now, but you’re still paying $1,200 because society decided that’s the limit. Plus, the original game was a revolutionary, industry-defining title that cost millions to develop. This remake? They’re just upscaling textures and adding some bloom lighting. It’s a glorified emulator with a price tag that screams, “We know you’ll pay it because you have no self-control.”
And the worst part? They’re right. You will pay it. I will pay it. We’ll all be standing in line at GameStop (or refreshing the eShop) like the pathetic little puppets we are, handing over our hard-earned cash for a game we’ve already beaten a dozen times. Why? Because Nintendo owns our childhoods. They know that every time we hear the “Secret Discovered” jingle, a tiny part of our brain releases dopamine that we haven’t felt since we were 10 years old, sitting on a shag carpet in front of a CRT TV. They’re not selling a game; they’re selling a memory. And memories, apparently, are expensive as hell.
But here’s the real AITA moment: is it wrong to be pissed about this? I mean, we’re talking about a company that sells a 10-year-old port of *Mario Kart 8* for full price and calls it a “Deluxe” edition. A company that charges $70 for a game that’s literally just *Link’s Awakening* with a claymation filter. A company that makes you buy a separate online subscription to play NES games that your grandfather could code on a calculator. And yet, we keep buying. We keep complaining, but we keep buying. So who’s really the asshole here? Nintendo for charging $80 for a 27-year-old game, or us for being so emotionally attached to a virtual elf boy that we’ll fork over our paychecks?
The discourse is already insufferable. You’ve got the “graphics snobs” arguing that the new lighting engine ruins the original art direction. You’ve got the “purists” saying that the new controls make the game “too easy” and that they miss the N64’s three-pronged controller that gave them hand cramps. You’ve got the “speedrunners” panicking because the new dungeon might break their 18-minute world record. And then you’ve got the “normies” who are just happy to play *Ocarina of Time* on a console that isn’t held together by rubber bands and nostalgia.
And don’t even get me started on the “but it’s a remake, not a remaster” crowd. Newsflash: if the game still plays the same, has the same story, the same dungeons, and the same boss fights, it’s a remaster. A remake is *Resident Evil 2*. A remake is *Dead Space*. A remake is when you rebuild the entire game from the ground up, not just slap some HD textures on Navi and call it a day. This is a remaster. Period. And if they want to charge $80 for a remaster, they better include a free colonoscopy with every pre-order, because they’re clearly trying to screw you.
But let’s talk about the elephant in the room: the “new dungeon.” Everyone is speculating about what it could be. Is it a tribute to the scrapped “Light Temple” from the original?
Final Thoughts
Having covered the industry's remaster cycles for over a decade, it's clear that the rumored price point for an *Ocarina of Time* remake isn't just a number—it's a litmus test for how much nostalgia Nintendo thinks it can monetize. While the original remains a flawless piece of game design, a full-price tag on a title many have already bought twice (on N64 and 3DS) would feel less like a tribute and more like a toll for revisiting a beloved memory. Ultimately, the success of this venture hinges on whether the remake offers genuine, transformative depth—like a complete visual overhaul and modernized controls—rather than just a higher-resolution reflection of our past.