Ocarina of Time is back on Thursday, and you can finally play it in Portuguese
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time lands on 5 November, rebuilt from scratch for Nintendo Switch 2, at €59.99 on the Portuguese eShop. It adds voiced dialogue, free running and jumping, and a clock that keeps ticking. Portuguese appears on the language list for the first time.
Some people will tell you it is the best video game ever made. Plenty of others have never touched it. From Thursday, 5 November, both get the same way in: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time returns, rebuilt from the ground up and exclusive to Nintendo Switch 2.
On the Portuguese eShop it costs €59.99, with release set for 5 November. In the US, the digital edition is $59.99.
Portuguese, at last
This is the news for players here. The Nintendo 64 original reached Europe on 11 December 1998 with text in English, French and German. The 2011 3DS version added Italian and Spanish. Never Portuguese.
Nintendo’s European listing for the new version puts Portuguese among its 12 languages. The US store specifies Brazilian Portuguese, so players in Portugal should expect the Brazilian variant rather than the European one. Even so, it is the first time Link has spoken the language.
What has changed since 1998
The story is the same: young Link, Navi the fairy, Ganondorf after the Triforce, and an adventure that jumps between two ages. Almost everything else is new. Nintendo lists fresh dialogue and voiced cutscenes, a sprint button and free jumping (in the original, Link only hopped automatically at ledges), a horse for later in the game, and a world where time passes on its own and new faces, and new enemies, turn up after dark.
The slingshot and bow can be aimed with motion controls. Ocarina songs can be played on the buttons or hummed into the console’s microphone, and Nintendo even suggests trying them on a real ocarina. If you lose the thread, a recap screen called Threads of Time shows the story so far and your current goals.
The extras
Two amiibo, Young Link and Young Zelda, unlock special masks, but they do not arrive until 2027. There is also ZELDA NOTES, in the Nintendo Switch mobile app, for stats, game trivia and composing and sharing your own ocarina tunes.
Series producer Eiji Aonuma admitted in an interview in Paris last week that he is nervous about how the remake will be received. Fair enough. This is a game where every change will be measured against childhood memories.
The Switch 2 already lost one exclusive planned for this year when The Duskbloods slipped to 2027. This one is holding its date: pre-orders are open on the eShop and the download unlocks on Thursday.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Nintendo