TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
Listen!
For The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's shiny new remake, Nintendo unintentionally cast the same actor twice - 28 years apart - to deliver Navi's infamous "Heys!" and "Listens!"
The Switch 2's Ocarina of Time makes a pretty substantial change to the N64's Ocarina of Time, released almost three decades prior. There's proper voice acting this time, of course - not just grunts and murmurs and hyahs. But even when retroactively adding new things, Nintendo wanted to ensure the remake's cast matched the original's pretty faithfully, so the developer held blind auditions that eventually paved the way for one actor to reprise their role during Link's adventure.
"We felt that if we were going to improve the graphics so dramatically, the cutscenes needed to be fully voiced to match," director HokWai Ng explained in the most recent Ask The Developer blog. "But at the same time, we knew we shouldn't mess with established perceptions of how certain characters sound based on the original. Navi's "Listen!" is one example. Even someone who's never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time may have heard it before. We absolutely didn't want to change anything as iconic as that."
To maintain the original's nostalgic sounds and voices, Nintendo held blind auditions with the goal of finding actors who could recreate the "feel of the original game."
Series director Eiji Aonuma recalls that the team wanted to choose actors "based solely on which voices most closely resembled those of the original." And, who woulda guessed? "As fate would have it, one of the actors we selected had actually voiced the same character in the Nintendo 64 version. None of us saw that coming."
The duo didn't outright name which character they're talking about, but fans have long been speculating that Kaori Mizuhashi might be reprising her role as Link's trusty fairy companion Navi - at least, in the Japanese language version. A leaked online video of the game's credits now also confirms that Mizuhashi is back almost three decades later. I suppose it only makes sense that the person who most closely resembles Navi is Navi.
Chris Donlan called the new version an "astonishing remake" in his five-star Eurogamer Ocarina of Time review.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2)
Nintendo Switch 2Read more: Full article on www.eurogamer.net
What do you think about this?
For The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's shiny new remake, Nintendo unintentionally cast the same actor twice - 28 years apart - to deliver Navi's infamous "Heys!" and "Listens!"
The Switch 2's Ocarina of Time makes a pretty substantial change to the N64's Ocarina of Time, released almost three decades prior. There's proper voice acting this time, of course - not just grunts and murmurs and hyahs. But even when retroactively adding new things, Nintendo wanted to ensure the remake's cast matched the original's pretty faithfully, so the developer held blind auditions that eventually paved the way for one actor to reprise their role during Link's adventure.
"We felt that if we were going to improve the graphics so dramatically, the cutscenes needed to be fully voiced to match," director HokWai Ng explained in the most recent Ask The Developer blog. "But at the same time, we knew we shouldn't mess with established perceptions of how certain characters sound based on the original. Navi's "Listen!" is one example. Even someone who's never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time may have heard it before. We absolutely didn't want to change anything as iconic as that."
To maintain the original's nostalgic sounds and voices, Nintendo held blind auditions with the goal of finding actors who could recreate the "feel of the original game."
Series director Eiji Aonuma recalls that the team wanted to choose actors "based solely on which voices most closely resembled those of the original." And, who woulda guessed? "As fate would have it, one of the actors we selected had actually voiced the same character in the Nintendo 64 version. None of us saw that coming."
The duo didn't outright name which character they're talking about, but fans have long been speculating that Kaori Mizuhashi might be reprising her role as Link's trusty fairy companion Navi - at least, in the Japanese language version. A leaked online video of the game's credits now also confirms that Mizuhashi is back almost three decades later. I suppose it only makes sense that the person who most closely resembles Navi is Navi.
Chris Donlan called the new version an "astonishing remake" in his five-star Eurogamer Ocarina of Time review.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Switch 2)
Nintendo Switch 2Read more: Full article on www.eurogamer.net
What do you think about this?