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The story
In an official Nintendo interview about the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, developers revealed an intense attention to graphical detail, saying they “prototyped Link’s outfit starting from thread.” This sparked discussion on 5ch’s hardware/industry board (Geha), where users drew comparisons to past cases of graphics obsession being mocked — like FF15’s “onigiri” rice ball and FF16’s “cheese naan” — splitting opinion in the thread. Some argued it was “a boomerang, since Nintendo is now doing the exact thing it used to get mocked for criticizing,” while others countered that “this is a remake — an outfit that stays on screen the whole game matters more than a food item that appears for a split second,” turning the differing standards used to judge remakes into the central point of debate.
Even so, I’d like to focus on the newly refined elements — the art style in this game struck me as quite impressive. How did that come about?
Shinta
First, by taking advantage of the Nintendo Switch 2’s hardware performance…
Source: nintendo.com / Original article here
What people said
Exactly this.
That's beyond boomerang — that's a full-blown circle.
That's not really a boomerang though.
Probably mostly young staff though.
the situation's different from the cheese naan thing…
You can already play the original on the N64 Classic anyway.
All about the graphics now, huh.
Unlike the outfit that's on screen the whole time you're playing, those are items that vanish in an instant.
Guess it's not tacky enough to need its own label, so "puppet-theater-like" works as a description?
The cheese naan was only on screen for a moment.
A designer who can instantly land on ideas tracing straight back to the source material, I tell ya 😆
Actually building physical puppets — they've been doing that since the Famicom days.
Nintendo＜We put real care into the graphics.
🐷💦＜…
This is genuinely hilarious lol
There's never been a time before where graphics were literally the only thing going for it, right?
If they're pouring money and manpower into stuff that misses the actual essence of the game, there's no future in that.
That's saying something completely different, lol
That means they still don't get why onigiri and cheese naan got ripped apart so hard in the first place, right?
No seriously, isn't that alarming?
It's probably just one guy.
If anything, what usually gets brought up is stuff like going overseas just to take reference photos of rocks and concrete.
It's a remake/remaster, so if anything you'd be annoyed if they neglected that part.
For FF7 I feel like the criticism was more about the design and the cringe-worthy banter rather than the graphics.
As for graphics, I think FF16 got hit harder — too dark, looking worse than FF15, plus the bed scene.
Though that's probably partly because it came right after FF15's Leviathan "onigiri" thing.
Child Link just has this face 🙄 the entire time.
To be fair, that guy was kind of like that to begin with.
Found one: "the boomerang who kept bashing FF15's onigiri"!
Background and Key Points of This Debate
The anecdote from Nintendo’s interview — that the team “prototyped the costumes starting from thread” — invites an easy comparison to the infamous attention to detail behind FF15’s onigiri graphics (which caused a stir back in 2015) and the development story behind FF16’s cheese naan. Both the onigiri and the cheese naan were mocked at the time with comments like “was it really worth spending that much effort on this?” In the thread, this fueled a clash between those arguing “Nintendo doing the same thing is a boomerang” and those countering that “this is a remake of Zelda 64 — the weight of a protagonist’s outfit that stays on screen the entire time is different from a food item that appears for just a split second.” Underneath this is an industry-wide difference in standards: remakes and remasters tend to place heavy value on faithfully reproducing the original to meet longtime fans’ expectations, whereas a brand-new title leaning too hard into graphics risks criticism for “prioritizing looks over gameplay.” Because the thread’s discussion never clearly sorted out this difference in premise — remake versus all-new title — it partly escalated into an emotional clash, which is worth keeping in mind when reading it.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread “Nintendo: “We put incredible care into the graphics for Zelda: Ocarina of Time. We prototyped Link’s clothes starting from thread.”“
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