Nintendo has long been skilled at polishing its popular older titles and bringing them to modern platforms, which is nothing new. But starting with this year's Star Fox, Nintendo's definition of "remake" seems to have changed. According to the studio's senior vice president, future remakes will stand alongside new titles as a core business direction for Nintendo.
In an interview with gaming media outlet Polygon, Nate Bowldorf, Senior Vice President of Product Development and Publishing at Nintendo, detailed the importance of remakes to the studio today. "Honestly, I believe both new titles and remakes have their place in Nintendo's product lineup, and both are equally important," Bowldorf stated, making it easy to predict that Nintendo will release more remakes in the future.
"Revisiting a game with such special significance as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time brings a strong sense of satisfaction... but equally important is that so many people have never played the original. For them, the Ocarina of Time remake is a brand-new gaming experience in 2026," added Bowldorf. The Ocarina of Time remake launched yesterday, following the Star Fox remake, which had a similar scope and exclusively launched on Switch 2 five months earlier.
These two titles seem to have ushered in a new era for Nintendo remakes. Nintendo has previously remastered older titles in HD and brought them to new consoles: Super Mario RPG on Switch, and the Metroid Prime remakes, whose quality approached that of full remakes; and Ocarina of Time isn't experiencing life beyond the N64 for the first time, as another version was already remade for the 3DS.
But this year's batch of remakes feels distinctly different. They are not just rebuilt from the ground up; they also retain the original titles, without labels like "HD Remaster" or "Full Remake," and don't even mention the Switch 2 platform in the title. For Nintendo, they are simply the classic games themselves, presented in a new form to a new generation of fans—many of whom weren't even born when the originals were released.
With official confirmation that more remakes are coming, fans naturally began making their wishes and nominations. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is probably the most frequently mentioned title right now. As a sequel to Ocarina of Time, it reused a lot of assets and had a short development cycle. It's almost certain that a team within Nintendo is already working on its remake.
Super Mario 64 is another title with a loud fanbase calling for a remake. We've already seen remakes of Star Fox and Ocarina of Time, and if Mario 64 joins the lineup, only Super Smash Bros. Melee would remain among the N64's four legendary titles without a modern remake. Of course, some die-hard Mario 64 fans don't want it remade—they believe the original is perfect and any suggestion of a remake upsets them. But now that everyone has seen Nintendo's excellent work on the Ocarina of Time remake, perhaps these fans will change their minds and accept this classic, which pioneered 3D platforming and inspired countless subsequent works, in its new form for modern players.