// THE VERGE — HARDWARE & GADGET
Ocarina of Time is even better if you use a smartphone app
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Finding Ocarina of Time’s hidden collectibles is a lot easier with the help of Zelda Notes.
Finding Ocarina of Time’s hidden collectibles is a lot easier with the help of Zelda Notes.
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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.