Speedrunners Already Breaking The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's Remake

Published Nov 8, 2026, 11:32 AM EST Tomas Franzese is the Weekend News Editor at Polygon, following and reporting on the latest goings-on in the gaming and entertainment spaces. During the week, you can find him working on Remastered, his newsletter about video game history and retro gaming, or contributing to GameSpot and other publications. Previously, Tomas was the Gaming Segment Lead at XDA and a Staff Writer at Digital Trends. The addition of jumping to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has enabled a new speedrunning trick Image: Nintendo EPD/Nintendo via Polygon Sign in to your Polygon.com account Speedrunners have had their hands on the Nintendo Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for a couple of days now, and some funky tricks have already been discovered. In particular, the remake's addition of a jumping mechanic has enabled new speedrunning tactics that just weren't possible in the Nintendo 64 original or its 3DS remake. What is Actor Jumping in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's remake? Videos from YouTubers like Kethaldo and Knightpohtayto, as well as Bluesky user Mircacle, show how actor jumping is essentially a glitched super jump that players can do with certain aimable tools in Ocarina of Time. To perform the trick, players have to find a movable object, or "actor," in the game's environments, like a chest or movable tombstone. When standing on it, players then have to shoot, press the lock-on button (ZL by default) before it's done being used, and then jump as soon as the animation ends. By doing this, Link can jump much higher than he is supposed to. When used at certain parts of Ocarina of Time's levels, it's possible to jump even higher and skip massive swaths of the game. Right now, it's easiest to pull off when using the hookshot, so actor jumps are worth attempting once you get it. Nintendo has yet to patch this trick out of the remake, so the speedrunning community is avidly taking advantage of it less than a week after the game's launch. Compared to some other speedrunning tricks in the remake, action jumps are very easy to perform, too. When Nintendo decided to add jumping to Ocarina of Time, I'm not sure this is quite what it had in mind. Regardless, it will be very entertaining to see what new speedrunning tricks emerge and how Nintendo responds to or attempts to fix them, as speedrunners spend even more time playing and breaking the remake.