Nintendo is fielding Zelda against GTA VI (but it’s a remake)

In November 2026, the video game industry finally found someone willing to take on GTA VI. Not Electronic Arts. Not Ubisoft. Not Microsoft. Not even Sony with a new billion-dollar intellectual property. Nintendo has chosen a game from 1998. And it’s hard not to appreciate the irony – and the drama.

Whilst Rockstar is preparing the blockbuster that has been hogging the limelight, the budget and media attention for years, the other publishers seem to have lined up neatly on the pavement. No one wants to cross the road when GTA VI comes along. Nintendo, on the other hand, takes a hit like Ocarina of Time, gives it a polish, revamps the graphics and sends Link straight into the path of the lorry. The most curious thing is that it might actually work.

Why the Ocarina of Time remake has sparked genuine enthusiasm. And yet there is almost nothing new about the concept: it is a masterpiece that has already been played, celebrated and analysed for nearly thirty years. It is the opposite of innovation: it is the industry opening a drawer, finding Granny’s best crockery and deciding that perhaps it is still the best thing to put on the table.

Of course, Nintendo knows exactly what it’s doing. Zelda is no longer just a series of video games: it’s a cultural heritage to be managed. The remake, the film, the merchandise. Link no longer has to invent the future. He has to turn the past into a profit-maker.

In an industry that promises ‘the next revolution’ every year, the most intriguing rival to the most eagerly anticipated game of the decade is an adventure game that first saw the light of day back in the days of the Nintendo 64. Perhaps it isn’t Nintendo that has shown courage. Perhaps it is everyone else who has been afraid.