Nintendo has composed new cutscene music and recreated sounds from the Nintendo 64 original for its Ocarina of Time remake. The Nintendo Switch 2 release arrives November 5, during the 40th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series.
Sound director Masato Ohashi said the additional cutscenes called for new music. A scene in Kokiri Forest, for example, uses motifs from the area’s background music, rearranged to suit the scene.
For sounds drawn from the original game, released 28 years ago, the team returned to the Nintendo 64 source files. Ohashi said it used the original sound source as a reference to recreate some sounds, rather than using the console’s audio output unchanged.
Producer Hidemaro Fujibayashi contrasted Ocarina of Time’s score with the more ambient music of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. He said mixing sounds from the earlier era into the remake changed how the new version felt to him.
The remake also includes a microphone-driven ocarina feature. Aonuma said he had real instruments in mind, while Fujibayashi said getting the Switch 2 to recognize the sounds correctly proved difficult. Aonuma acknowledged that voice recognition does not make it easier to progress through the game.
