Ocarina of Time Remake Players Are Already Finding Wild Ways to Break Hyrule

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake has barely had time to settle into players' hands, yet the community is already testing every edge of its systems. In a development that will feel familiar to anyone who has followed the original Nintendo 64 classic's long speedrunning history, players have uncovered movement exploits that allow Link to jump repeatedly in midair, travel far beyond expected boundaries, and enter parts of Hyrule at points in the adventure where he should not normally be able to reach them.

The discoveries have also produced one especially memorable side effect: distorted versions of Link whose stretched limbs and warped proportions have quickly become the focus of clips and screenshots shared across social media. The remake may include refreshed content and modern conveniences, but its early days are already demonstrating that Hyrule remains a wonderfully unpredictable place when players begin pushing its rules apart.

Infinite jumping opens unexpected routes

Two different approaches to sustained jumping are circulating among players. One technique involves rapidly cycling through the quick menu while switching between items. The precise setup has been demonstrated in short social clips, where the player is able to keep Link airborne and gain height or distance that ordinary movement would never permit.

Embedded X/Twitter post

Embedded X/Twitter post

Embedded X/Twitter post

The other method, commonly called actor jumping, is being treated as the more dramatic discovery. Rather than simply offering a clever shortcut, it appears capable of significantly disrupting the intended progression structure. Players using the technique can reach elevated terrain, bypass conventional paths, and access locations that are ordinarily locked behind story milestones.

For useful background on this topic, read Ocarina of Time's Castle Town Is More Haunting When Its People Are Still Waiting.

For a game as carefully mapped around the contrast between child Link and adult Link, that is a potentially enormous break. Ocarina of Time's world design famously gates numerous areas, puzzles, and encounters behind the passage through the Temple of Time. Being able to visit later-game spaces while still playing as child Link creates situations the game was never expected to display, let alone support cleanly.

Child Link is visiting places meant for another era

The most striking demonstrations involve child Link entering areas generally associated with the later portion of the quest. One shared video shows him making his way into the Bongo Bongo boss arena within the Shadow Temple, a destination whose normal context is closely tied to the older version of the hero.

These out-of-sequence visits are not merely an amusing curiosity for explorers. They may prove valuable to speedrunners and technical players attempting to understand exactly how the remake handles loading zones, collision, cutscene triggers, equipment checks, and age-specific world states. Every unusual transition offers another opportunity to identify whether the game enforces its intended restrictions consistently or whether a movement exploit can carry players through a gap in that logic.

That process is already well established around the 1998 original. Over decades, Ocarina of Time became one of gaming's most deeply studied speedrunning titles, with players documenting tricks, routing strategies, glitches, and increasingly elaborate methods of reaching credits faster. The remake was always likely to attract the same close inspection, even if its revised mechanics mean familiar tricks cannot necessarily be reproduced exactly.

Some techniques associated with the original have changed, particularly methods tied to its auto-jump behavior. But the arrival of new jumping exploits shows that a remake does not need to preserve every old quirk to generate a fresh technical metagame. Different systems produce different vulnerabilities, and players have wasted no time looking for them.

The birth of Lonk and Lunk

The stranger consequence of bringing child Link into unsupported circumstances is visual. When the game is forced to handle character and environment combinations it seemingly did not anticipate, Link's model can become unnervingly elongated. Screenshots show a version of the hero with an expanded, stretched-out shape that is more surreal than heroic.

The community has naturally responded with humor. One reaction that gained traction reduced the cursed results to two new names: "We got Lonk and Lunk." The labels suit the images remarkably well. This is still recognizably Link in the broadest possible sense, but the visual errors transform him into a lanky, uncanny approximation of Hyrule's usual green-clad protagonist.

In some images, the effect is simply ridiculous. In others, the malformed character model looks unexpectedly intimidating, with players comparing the result to creatures that are supposed to be much scarier. For a series known for unsettling enemies and eerie dungeon imagery, it is an odd achievement for an exploit to make the hero look more alarming than the horrors he is meant to confront.

These glitches are also a reminder that video game worlds depend on countless invisible assumptions. Character models may be built around a specific skeleton, animation state, camera angle, or scripted location. When a player enters an area under conditions the developers did not intend, those assumptions can collide. The result might be a harmless oddity, a crash, a route-breaking shortcut, or, in this case, a very strange-looking Link.

A modern remake with the same experimental spirit

The remake is not simply a visual reissue of the Nintendo 64 adventure. It includes additions such as new sidequests, altered dungeon elements, an option to hide the interface in a manner reminiscent of the presentation flexibility seen in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and a dedicated jump button. Those changes give players a different set of controls and systems to investigate than the ones available in 1998.

A dedicated jump button in particular changes the conversation around movement. Ocarina of Time's original controls made automatic jumping a defining part of traversal, and many classic tricks grew out of mastering or manipulating that design. A more direct jumping option can make ordinary movement feel more flexible, but it can also introduce entirely new interactions when paired with menus, objects, uneven surfaces, actors, and area triggers.

It is too early to know how consequential the newly discovered exploits will become. Some may be patched, while others may prove too inconsistent or too slow to matter in competitive speedrunning. Actor jumping could also turn out to have conditions that limit its usefulness outside of demonstrations. The community will need time to test inputs, identify setup requirements, determine whether the techniques work across every relevant location, and establish whether they can be performed reliably.

Still, early experimentation is part of the appeal. The first weeks after a major Zelda release often bring a mix of earnest exploration, puzzle discussion, sequence-breaking attempts, and playful discoveries that no one anticipated. Ocarina of Time has now added a fresh chapter to that tradition, one involving impossible leaps, forbidden dungeons, and a hero who occasionally stops looking like Link altogether.

What these discoveries could mean for speedrunning

For casual players, the clips are likely to be a source of laughs. For speedrunners, they could be the start of a much more involved investigation. A technique that grants extended airborne movement has obvious potential for skipping walls, gates, climbing requirements, and lengthy detours. If it can be performed near major story triggers, it may also reveal routes that avoid quests or equipment checks entirely.

However, a spectacular exploit is not automatically a useful one. Competitive routes tend to favor methods that are repeatable under pressure, work consistently in the current version of a game, and save enough time to justify their risk. A trick that looks incredible in a social post may be impractical in a full run if its setup is fragile or if failing it loses more time than it saves.

Even so, the discoveries matter because they expand the list of questions players can ask. Can child Link enter every adult-era area? Are boss arenas loaded differently from overworld locations? Does the game retain important items or flags when progression is bypassed? Can actor jumping cross major map boundaries, or is it useful only in certain rooms? And perhaps most importantly for the growing catalogue of cursed screenshots: what other forms can Link take when Hyrule's underlying systems are pushed past their intended limits?

The answers will emerge through repeated testing, route planning, and plenty more odd footage. For now, the remake has made one thing clear: despite updated features and revised content, Ocarina of Time still inspires the same curiosity that kept its original version alive for nearly three decades. Players are not content merely to save Hyrule. They are determined to see what happens when they fly over it, slip behind it, and accidentally turn its legendary hero into Lonk or Lunk.