Miyamoto Explains Why Nintendo Is Making So Many Remakes Like Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

Shigeru Miyamoto sat down with a Japanese publication recently and said something that sounds obvious until you think about it for thirty seconds. Nintendo makes remakes because they want younger players to experience the classics. The original hardware is gone. The original context is gone. The games themselves shouldn't be.

He's not wrong. He's just not telling you everything.

Here's what I mean. When Miyamoto talks about Ocarina of Time getting another re-release, he's not talking about preservation. He's talking about pipeline. Nintendo doesn't remake games because they love the past. They remake games because they're building toward something and they need you to remember what came before.

Think about it. Every time Nintendo drops a Zelda remake, something Zelda-shaped is three years out. Every time they dust off Metroid, Metroid Prime 4 gets a little closer to the shelf. These aren't nostalgia plays. They're primers. They're homework assignments with a $60 price tag.

And the specific game he mentioned? Ocarina of Time. The one that defined 3D action-adventure. The one that taught a generation that lock-on targeting wasn't just a mechanic, it was a grammar. The one where you learn the Song of Time and use it to solve puzzles, and then fifteen years later you're playing Dragon Age and realizing you already knew how to sequence abilities because Pokémon taught you type matchups and Ocarina taught you timing.

That's the connection nobody's drawing. Ocarina of Time isn't just a game. It's a design thesis. Every modern action game with a targeting system, every game that asks you to learn a pattern and execute it under pressure, every game that hides a key item behind a puzzle you didn't know you were solving — they're all footnotes to Ocarina. The remake isn't for the kids who played it in 1998. It's for the kids who played Breath of the Wild and have no idea why the combat feels the way it does.

But here's where it gets interesting. Miyamoto also mentioned Star Fox in the interview. Just in passing. Just as an example of something they haven't figured out how to bring forward. And if you've been paying attention for the last twenty years, you know what that means.

Star Fox is the weird cousin Nintendo doesn't invite to Thanksgiving. They know he exists. They feel bad about it. But every time they try to bring him around, he does something strange and everyone remembers why they stopped calling. Star Fox Adventures was weird. Star Fox Assault was fine but nobody bought it. Star Fox Zero was a control experiment that escaped the lab.

And now Miyamoto is floating the idea of a remake. Not a new game. A remake. Because before you can make a new Star Fox, you need people to understand what Star Fox was. You need them to feel the rail shooter rhythm. You need them to internalize the All-Range Mode flow. You need them to know why Fox McCloud matters before you ask them to care about what happens next.

That's the play. Every remake is a reintroduction. Every re-release is a syllabus. Nintendo isn't looking backward. They're using the past as a ramp.

Who is this for? It's for the person who groaned when they saw another Ocarina port announced. It's for the person who already owns it on N64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. It's for the person who thinks they've seen everything this game has to offer. You haven't. Not because the game changed, but because you did. And Nintendo knows that. They're banking on it.

The real question isn't why Nintendo makes so many remakes. The real question is what they're making room for. And if I had to guess, I'd say they're clearing shelf space for something that needs an audience that remembers what a good Star Fox game feels like.

Because right now, that audience doesn't exist. And Miyamoto knows it.