You Can No Longer Cheat in The Chicken Game in Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Nintendo Switch 2 The Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

© Nintendo

I had already forgotten (despite having played the original very recently) that Ocarina of Time is packed with a lot of minigames scattered all over the place. There’s Bombchu Bowling (which everyone remembers for its apparently very hot attendant), a game about guessing which chest holds a rupee, a fishing game, a shooting gallery, and some other stuff. There’s also a rather simplistic chicken game that rewards you with a precious bottle filled with Lon Lon Milk.

You used to be able to cheat at this game very easily and win it on the first try. Now, in the remake, you can’t.

It’s easy to cheat at the Cucco minigame at Lon Lon Ranch in the original Ocarina of Time. The goal of the game is to find three special Cuccos in a big flock of identical ones inside Talon’s house. Playing normally can take a couple of tries, as you’re given a time limit, and there’s no way of knowing which Cucco is which. And it costs money to play each time, which early in the game can hurt Link’s little baby wallet. But you can cheat by picking up each Cucco in the house before the minigame starts, and dumping it into the corner behind Talon next to the stairs. The Cuccos will stay back there, so when Talon releases his three special ones, they just sit in the middle of the floor alone and it’s obvious which ones are which.

© Nintendo

In the remake, this cheat is gone. Not only can you not get the Cuccos stuck back in that corner anymore (I tried chucking every single one up the stairs, that didn’t work either, they just slid back down), but Talon actively shuffles the Cuccos around the whole room when you prompt him to start the game, putting each one back on the floor again. Fortunately, picking up and putting down Cuccos is much faster with the Switch 2 version’s smooth controls, so it’s easier than ever to just…win at this game on the first try, no cheating required.

I’ve noticed some other small changes as well, which eliminate well-known minor “exploits,” if you will. You can no longer climb the chains on Hyrule Castle’s drawbridge to collect rupees—you simply fall straight through them.

On the other hand, a few small tricks remain intact. For instance, you can apparently still hit butterflies with a Deku stick to turn them into fairies. I didn’t even know that was possible in the original:

Yessss!! they kept one of my favorite feature from the OG Ocarina of Time. You can turn butterflies into fairies if you hit them with a deku stick!!! pic.twitter.com/yYszJuB58A

— Riz. 🇵🇸 (@Rizkhalifa449) November 5, 2026

And, I hear you can still complete some of the dungeons out of order:

[OoTHD] I tested the remake to see if it was still possible to do [SPOILERS]
by/Hal_Keaton inzelda

I haven’t gotten there yet, but I’m assuming you’ll still be able to use the Lens of Truth (or Goggles, as I guess they are now) to cheat at the Chest Minigame. Now if only I could somehow also cheat at the shooting gallery…

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