I’d forgotten already (despite playing the original very recently) that Ocarina of Time has a lot of minigames all over the place. There’s Bombchu Bowling (which everyone remembers for its apparently very hot attendant), a game about guessing which chest has a rupee in it, a fishing game, a shooting gallery, and some other stuff. There’s also a simplistic chicken game that rewards you with a precious bottle filled with Lon Lon Milk.
You used to be able to very easily cheat at this game and win it on the first go. Now, in the remake, you can’t.
It’s easy to cheat at the Cucco minigame at Lon Lon Ranch in the original Ocarina of Time. The goal of the game is to find three special Cuccos in a big flock of identical ones inside Talon’s house. Playing normally can take a couple of tries, as you’re given a time limit, and there’s no way of knowing which Cucco is which. And it costs money to play each time, which early in the game can hurt Link’s little baby wallet. But you can cheat by picking up each Cucco in the house before the minigame starts, and dumping it into the corner behind Talon next to the stairs. The Cuccos will stay back there, so when Talon releases his three special ones, they just sit in the middle of the floor alone and it’s obvious which ones are which.
In the remake, this cheat is gone. Not only can you not get the Cuccos stuck back in that corner anymore (I tried chucking every single one up the stairs, that didn’t work either, they just slid down), but Talon actively shuffles the Cuccos in the whole room when you prompt him to start the game, putting each one back on the floor again. Fortunately, picking up and putting down Cuccos is much faster with the Switch 2 version’s smooth controls, so it’s easier than ever to just…win at this game the first time, no cheating required.
I’ve noticed some other little changes, too, that get rid of well-known little “exploits” if you will. You can’t climb the chains on the drawbridge of Hyrule Castle to collect rupees anymore—you just fall straight through them.
On the other hand, some little tricks are still in place. For instance, you can apparently still hit butterflies with a Deku stick to turn them into fairies. I didn’t even know you could do that in the original:
Yessss!! they kept one of my favorite feature from the OG Ocarina of Time. You can turn butterflies into fairies if you hit them with a deku stick!!! pic.twitter.com/yYszJuB58A
— Riz. 🇵🇸 (@Rizkhalifa449) November 5, 2026
And, I hear tell you can still do some of the dungeons out of order:
I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m assuming you’ll still be able to use the Lens of Truth (or Goggles, as I guess they are now) to cheat at the Chest Minigame. Now if only I could also somehow cheat at the shooting gallery…
