BODY: Anyone who played Ocarina of Time in 1998 can hum it on command: that bouncy, slightly tinny market theme that greeted you the first time Link stepped out of the forest and into the big city. Nintendo knows this. Which is why the newest clip from the Switch 2 remake leads with it.
Posted to the game's official X account, the short video tours Hyrule Castle Town, the kingdom's central hub and the setting for a big chunk of the game's opening hours. The accompanying text describes it as "the kingdom's center featuring a lively town — full of vitality with people and shops," and the footage backs that up: vendors at their stalls, townspeople milling through the square, and a brief glimpse of the Temple of Time at the far end.
Visually, it's noticeably brighter than the N64 original. The muddy, low-resolution textures that once stood in for cobblestones and awnings have been rebuilt, and the lighting gives the whole plaza a warmth the 1998 version could only imply. What hasn't changed is the music — the original composition plays over the clip unaltered, which is likely the point of the post as much as the graphics are.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time launches for Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, priced at ¥8,980 for the physical edition and ¥7,980 for the download version.
The insider take
The clip is one installment in a slow drip of location reveals Nintendo has been running on Japanese social media since the release date was confirmed — a marketing cadence that Japanese publishers favor far more than Western ones, where a single big trailer tends to do the work. Castle Town is a deliberate choice for this slot. In 1998 it was the technical showpiece of the entire game, the moment the N64 asked players to believe in a populated world rather than an empty field, and it ran rough enough that the compromise was visible. Showing it rebuilt, with the original BGM untouched, is Nintendo telling its most nostalgic audience exactly what it wants to hear: the seams are gone, the feeling isn't. With a holiday launch landing squarely in Zelda's 40th anniversary year, that's a message worth repeating one location at a time.
Originally reported by GAME Watch (Japanese).