Ocarina of Time is even better if you use a smartphone app

I never liked hunting for Golden Skulltulas in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The game has 100 of them tucked all over Hyrule, and even over my many hours with the N64 classic growing up, I can’t remember ever actually finding all of them, or even wanting to. Jumping into the Ocarina of Time remake, I expected to ignore the Golden Skulltulas once again. But while poking around Nintendo’s Zelda Notes companion app, I discovered that its maps are a huge help to tracking down all of the elusive golden spiders — and pretty much every other collectible in the game — and now I find myself constantly opening up the app to make sure I haven’t missed a secret.

Inside Zelda Notes, which is available in the free Nintendo Switch app (you don’t need a Switch Online subscription to use it), you can peruse a big map of Hyrule and tap on individual areas for a closer look. The app offers just enough direction to nudge me toward an elusive pickup; when zoomed in, the app drops icons on the map showing you the locations of different collectibles, and if you tap on an icon, the app will show a popup noting any items or special requirements you need to fulfill to be able to obtain it. There are also a bunch of filters you can apply, like swapping between the maps for child and adult Link and toggling categories of icons on and off.

For Skulltula hunting, the map has already saved my sanity many times. While exploring, I’ll often come across the telltale Golden Skulltula sound but have no idea how to get to the tricky spider, even with the help of additional chimes from the new Echo Gem Skulltula tracking item. But with a peek at the Zelda Notes app, I can pinpoint the exact location of where the Skulltula is supposed to be and if I need to use a certain item or change the time of day to be able to get to it.

I recently delved into the Shadow Temple, for example, and I couldn’t figure out how to get up to a Skulltula that I saw while coming down an elevator. But when I checked the icon on the Zelda Notes map, it said that I needed the Scarecrow Song to create a hookshot point, which I hadn’t gotten yet. As soon as I finished the dungeon, getting the Scarecrow Song was my first priority.

Zelda Notes has been useful for tracking down Pieces of Heart, too, which give Link more health once you collect enough. While running up and down Zora’s River, I kept seeing two Pieces of Heart on faraway ledges that I couldn’t figure out how to get to. (My memories of my extensive time with Ocarina of Time as a kid also failed me.) But tapping one of the icons on the Zelda Notes map revealed that I needed a Cucco to get to it — and suddenly, I understood why there was one of the chirping white birds near the entrance of the zone.

Yes, it can be annoying to have to open my phone and dig through an app to track down all of the Skulltulas and other objects of curiosity scattered around Hyrule. I play video games to try and get away from my phone, not look at it more. And sure, I could just look up an online guide, but that often means wading through walkthroughs of varying quality, trusting an AI summary, or scrubbing through a YouTube video. But with Zelda Notes, I’m usually in and out relatively quickly, putting down my phone after seeing a clue or an icon that pushes me in the direction of the next golden spider. I’ve already found more than 70 Golden Skulltulas, and to my surprise, I now want to hunt for the full 100.

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