The Nintendo Switch 2 remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time removes the Mario character portraits from Zelda's castle courtyard. Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma says the team wanted to prevent references to other games from interrupting players' experience of Hyrule.
In the original, looking through the courtyard windows revealed images from Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. The secret put characters from Nintendo's other series near the location where Link meets Zelda.
Aonuma described a different attitude toward those additions when the original was made: “Certainly, at the time, when we put those [portraits] there, I don't think anybody thought it was too big a deal. Maybe there was a more carefree or comfortable approach to that sort of thing.”
What replaces the courtyard portraits
The Ocarina of Time remake changes include replacing the portraits with a view of the full Threads of Time artwork. The windows still offer something to inspect, but their contents no longer point players toward Mario's world.
The removals extend beyond Mario. Skyward Sword artwork hidden in certain locations in the Nintendo 3DS remake is also absent from the Switch 2 version. Aonuma gave the same explanation for that decision: the team did not want to “interrupt the player's experience by seeing something that's unrelated to what they're currently doing in the game”.
The team also considered references beyond these returning Easter eggs. Developers proposed adding nods to the wider Zelda timeline, but Aonuma declined those suggestions so they could focus on making “the best version of Ocarina of Time that we can”.
The original adventure remains the focus
Ocarina of Time launched on November 21, 1998, as the fifth Zelda game and the series' first move into 3D. Its combination of adventure and puzzle gameplay follows Link through time-traveling dungeons as he tries to stop Ganondorf from seizing the Triforce.
