The mystery of who made the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake had a tidy answer earlier this week: Nintendo did it in-house. By launch day that answer had picked up a footnote. Xenoblade developer Monolith Soft has announced that it worked on the game too, handling part of the game design, programming and graphics.
The statement landed as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrived on Switch 2 on November 5. GamesRadar+ reports that the studio's post on X says it did partial contract development in those three areas, while Nintendo Life's rough translation of the announcement reads: "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, for which Monolith Soft handled partial contract development of the game design, programming, and graphics, has been released by Nintendo Co., Ltd."
Xarmo read that announcement through those two outlets rather than from the studio directly, so the wording above is theirs.
So who made it?
Nintendo's internal team still leads this story. Nintendo Life reports that Nintendo confirmed earlier in the week that the remake was developed internally by its Entertainment Planning & Development Production Group No. 3. In Nintendo's own Ask the Developer interview, HokWai Ng introduces himself as the director, responsible for proposing the core development approach and overseeing the project as a whole. Aya Shida is the art director and Hiroki Taguchi the program director.
The key word in Monolith's statement is "partial". GamesRadar+'s headline calls the game co-developed, but the announcement as reported describes contract work on parts of the project, and nobody has said how large those parts were. Nintendo Life's report doesn't put a figure on it, and neither does GamesRadar+.
Shacknews adds another piece of evidence from the game itself. It reports that Monolith Soft is listed in the Special Thanks section of the credits, along with studio president Hirohide Sugiura and Tadashi Nomura, head of the Kyoto office. Shacknews also says the remake now appears on the games list on Monolith Soft's corporate website, and Nintendo Life reports the same.
A familiar arrangement
If this feels like a pattern, it is one. GamesRadar+ says Monolith Soft has helped with Nintendo games since Super Smash Bros. Brawl in 2008, and it lists Skyward Sword, A Link Between Worlds, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom among its Zelda credits. Outside the series, it names Mario Kart World, every Splatoon game and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Nintendo Life adds Splatoon Raiders to this year's tally, and says Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is returning next month.
The studio's name had already come up before launch. GamesRadar+ recalls that a Norwegian retailer listed Monolith Soft as the remake's developer, which fed speculation, before Nintendo revealed the internal team.
GamesRadar+ also notes that Daiki Iwamoto, whom it calls general manager for the Zelda series, has said he'd like to see the studio lead a Zelda game of its own. Nothing announced this week points to that happening, and Monolith Soft's statement doesn't mention future Zelda work.
Riley's take: Going by that list of credits, Monolith Soft is very often the second studio standing just behind Nintendo's first. The fun part isn't that the retailer's listing was half right. It's that "internal Nintendo game" and "Monolith helped" were both true, and the only open question is which bits of Hyrule to thank them for.
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