Fans and speedrunners are already examining movement tech in the newly released Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake on Nintendo Switch 2 after Nintendo showcased the project during a recent Zelda Direct.
The franchise, developed and overseen by Nintendo teams with Eiji Aonuma as a long-standing producer on the series, traces its origins to the original Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64 (released in 1998).
The remake's updated mechanics — including a new dash for child Link — have become an immediate focus for players who specialize in shaving seconds off route times.
During the Zelda Direct presentation, Aonuma noted that the dash was introduced in the remake because many players of the original frequently used rolling to move quickly between points.
Speedrunners have since put those design changes to the test.
Analysis from the Zelda speedrunning channel Kethnaldo shows that, for Young Link specifically, rolling remains a marginally faster option in many scenarios than the new dash or standard running.
Kethnaldo demonstrated a technique the channel calls "forward hop roll-cancelling." In journalistic terms, the channel explained the move as follows: by performing a forward hop to build momentum, immediately rolling to remove the hop's end lag, and then repeating the sequence, a player can chain momentum-maintaining actions to increase traversal speed.
In a timed example running from Koriki Forest to Hyrule Castle, that chained sequence delivered a gain of roughly four seconds over conventional running or dashing methods.
That kind of optimization matters in speedrunning, where seconds — and sometimes fractions of seconds — separate leaderboard positions.
Ocarina of Time has a long-established speedrunning community across platforms and leaderboards that examine any mechanical change introduced by remasters or ports.
Channels and contributors like Kethnaldo document techniques, feeding that information back to runners and the broader community.
For players on Switch 2 and those browsing the Nintendo eShop for the remake, these early findings give practical movement options to test in casual play or competitive runs.
Developers and publishers occasionally update games post-launch to tweak balance or fix bugs, so players interested in routing should follow official updates and community resources.
As with any speedrun discovery, wider adoption depends on reproducibility and whether the technique becomes part of established routing on leaderboards.
The franchise, developed and overseen by Nintendo teams with Eiji Aonuma as a long-standing producer on the series, traces its origins to the original Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64 (released in 1998).
The remake's updated mechanics — including a new dash for child Link — have become an immediate focus for players who specialize in shaving seconds off route times.
During the Zelda Direct presentation, Aonuma noted that the dash was introduced in the remake because many players of the original frequently used rolling to move quickly between points.
Speedrunners have since put those design changes to the test.
Analysis from the Zelda speedrunning channel Kethnaldo shows that, for Young Link specifically, rolling remains a marginally faster option in many scenarios than the new dash or standard running.
Kethnaldo demonstrated a technique the channel calls "forward hop roll-cancelling." In journalistic terms, the channel explained the move as follows: by performing a forward hop to build momentum, immediately rolling to remove the hop's end lag, and then repeating the sequence, a player can chain momentum-maintaining actions to increase traversal speed.
In a timed example running from Koriki Forest to Hyrule Castle, that chained sequence delivered a gain of roughly four seconds over conventional running or dashing methods.
That kind of optimization matters in speedrunning, where seconds — and sometimes fractions of seconds — separate leaderboard positions.
Ocarina of Time has a long-established speedrunning community across platforms and leaderboards that examine any mechanical change introduced by remasters or ports.
Channels and contributors like Kethnaldo document techniques, feeding that information back to runners and the broader community.
For players on Switch 2 and those browsing the Nintendo eShop for the remake, these early findings give practical movement options to test in casual play or competitive runs.
Developers and publishers occasionally update games post-launch to tweak balance or fix bugs, so players interested in routing should follow official updates and community resources.
As with any speedrun discovery, wider adoption depends on reproducibility and whether the technique becomes part of established routing on leaderboards.
