I love playing OOT randos. Not only is it a new puzzle every time, there are a lot of quality-of-life improvements (e.g. pushing blocks is faster, cutscenes are skipped) that make it much more enjoyable for someone who already knows the game well.
Ship of Harkanian, the PC port of OoT created from the decompilation project, has the randomizer built in. It's the best way and probably easiest on PC.
You can also build an actual N64 rom and play in an emulator or on a real N64 using a flashcart. RetroArch N64 cores will work fine with it.
If you're just playing it for fun the PC port has randomizer seed support as well as a ton of other QoL improvements. If you're doing things as part of a group race there might be a requirement to use only certain emulators or real hardware though, depending how much the group cares.
In general, if you can play the game on the system you can probably get the randomized ROM to play on it.
This is a multi-game randomizer, where items will be scattered accross all games in the multiworld, and so players will have to find items in their own games, but for eachother.
It's really fun, and I am just amazed by the fact that it works so well for a ton of games.
There's another that combines Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask into one game, joined by a portal connecting the Happy Mask Shop and Clock Town. It's possible to scatter every bush and box and pot from both games across both worlds.
What I like most about it is the "Container Appearance Matches Content" option, which specifically colors every randomizable element and makes the run-throughs feel very dynamic. The last time I tried Ship of Harkanian, I was disappointed to see it missing.
How does one ensure that every seed can be completed without glitches? The website says this is the case, so I wonder how they do it because it seems nontrivial to generate valid seeds efficiently.
The project has data about every location (doors, chests, etc.) and the conditions that must be met to allow access to those locations - for example [1]. From there the randomizer shuffles various entrances/exits and item locations around using rules that are mostly guaranteed to keep the game beatable.
Think of every location in the game as accessible only after certain events or items are acquired. You can create a directed acyclic graph (how build systems figure out dependencies!). You can randomize all the locations of items, as long there is still a way to get from the starting node to the ending node.
Now does the DAG make sense to humans? Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
How out of sequence can the game get?
Is Master Quest just the moral equivalent of a single static random roll of the Randomizer?
Someone should do this with Majora's Mask, but in a way that can somehow combine the two games.
>Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
It can be configured with options as to how items are distributed. But yeah, in general anything can be anywhere. Without clues: sometimes there are clues, those silly gossip stones in OoT can output a message about the general location of a thing, but you check everything you can. You learn which items open up each logic path and then open every chest, do every quest, etc.
>How out of sequence can the game get?
Completely. There are randomizer settings that require glitches and sometimes if the logic is wrong (it is sometimes) there are unwinnable seeds.
> Someone should do this with Majora's Mask, but in a way that can somehow combine the two games.
I have somewhere a branch that allows for "sharing" items between games as well. One could do an Oracle of Seasons+Ages game where your inventory is "the same" between both games, where possible (or extend to other games for group fun).
I don't know about OoT, but in the case of Super Metroid Map Rando (https://maprando.com/), the logic is also quite detailed – see e.g. https://github.com/vg-json-data/sm-json-data/blob/master/reg... for one room – and comes with information about the difficulty of the tricks necessary to get from one place to another with a given item loadout, health, runways from connecting rooms etc.; having that, it is possible for the user to specify a desired difficulty, and one of several game modes then effectively ensures that the "next" item is located in a particular location, access to which has only been made possible by the current loadout and doing tricks of the given difficulty, so that players sufficiently familiar with the logic (and the tricks) can quickly narrow down the set of possible locations. Other game modes will be less strict in how items are placed, which in practice can mean that the game becomes "easier" by giving you a more powerful item loadout but "harder" in that figuring out where to go becomes less straightforward; and as a result, you end up with games that feel completely different just by having a different focus on the exploration and execution aspects.
I've find that it becomes quite an interesting spectator sport too, since people will compete on completing a given random map as quickly as possible, effectively having to perform difficult platforming tricks while also having to solve a non-trivial constraint satisfaction problem to understand the map layout, and different speedrunners have evolved different probabilistic heuristics for how to do that.
> Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
I haven't played this OOT randomizer, but with the Wind Waker randomizer I've been playing, you can configure things like that - so dungeon keys could spawn in their own dungeon only, or literally anywhere in the world, or just other dungeons. It also has settings that allow you to talk to an NPC to get hints where game-progressing items are.
From what I've seen of YouTube runs, it can make zero sense (think going into a random cave out in the wild puts you into the queen's bedroom etc.). I guess it must be most fun for people who've played the game so much it's already just a DAG to them. Or maybe they enjoy the surrealism.
I don't know the specifics of the OoTR algorithm but in general they work by considering a set of items which are currently "available", and then progressively picking a random item to place only in locations which are reachable with that current set of available items (which is expanded with each placement).
Randomizers are a fantastic innovation of the past decade. They can breathe so much new life into a game you've gotten comfortable with, where subsequent playthroughs are becoming stale.
I played through a Dark Souls randomizer a few years ago and it really made me explore a lot more like I haven't really done since my first playthrough, since I eventually learned where to get all the equipment I like and which areas aren't worth going to.
I'm just glad we're getting to a point where they're at least a little more mainstream.
For quite awhile there, a lot of randomizers would include potential requirements like knowing how to do some arbitrary wrong warp, or some highly technical unintended interaction. They felt like toys only for the speedrunning community.
He's always on in the background when I work. Love him to bits, and I've been a paying customer for almost six years already. He's the only subscription I pay for rather than Netflix et.al.
Like the variety of games and of course mawio! The only thing I don't like is barb insisting on doing those fake sneezes all the time...
What timing - I just started playing Wind Waker HD randomizer runs. It really adds a lot to the experience, especially after having played through the vanilla game several times. It manages to re-capture some of the feeling of exploring the world for the first time.
I'm glad to hear that Wind Waker HD has fan support like this. It was always a bummer to me that the best versions of Wind Waker and Skyward Sword were trapped on the Wii U, given the incredible preservation that Dolphin provides for their original versions.
Edit: I own a Wii U, I'm not trying to be a hater. For years, it really was the ultimate Zelda box.
I found the Wii U joystick too springy to win OOT or even play much of Twilight Princess. I was able to compensate for the springiness until the penultimate fight with Ganondorf at the top of the castle in OOT, at which point it got too annoying and I just gave up, but with Twilight Princess, I hit that threshold in the fire temple's boss fight. Possibly even just a miniboss.
It's possible I just had a Wii U with an unusually tight joystick or something.
> given the incredible preservation that Dolphin provides for their original versions.
Does cemu not provide comparable preservation for the HD versions? I played through both WW:HD and TP:HD on my Steam Deck using cemu and found it a great experience.
I can't wait until my daughter is old enough to play the Wind Waker. It's so amazing that only one generation after OoT they released a Zelda that not only is arguably as good or even better than OoT, but it holds up over 20 years later. You can play Wind Waker today and not realize it's not a new game, the graphics and the gameplay are just perfect.
I’ve played most Zalda games but life was busy when Windwaker came out and I just completely skipped it on accident. Should really grab a copy after hearing your praise.
I was really disappointed at the time due to the "childish" graphics. But now I think it is interesting that they made such a daring design choice. Like Super Mario 2 hardly being anything like SM1.
It would be fun to play Windwaker someday with my kids. I never played it.
Nintendo released that teaser trailer of a realistic Zelda in an epic fight with Ganon and the world was anticipating that for years. But Nintendo realised competing with PlayStation was going to be a race to the bottom so they built the GameCube as budget hardware that could have never rendered that Ganon fight scene. And thus disappointing all the children who had become teenagers since the release of OoT.
Without that context however, the game is indisputably great. And the fact that they used vector graphics is a lucky win as it means the game renders crisply on modern TV's and monitors.
For Twitch streamers who play OoT randomizer, I strongly recommend Zfg's stream (one of the best OoT players out there), who is coincidentally streaming it now: https://www.twitch.tv/zfg1
There's a ROM that combines Super Metroid and A Link to the Past into a single randomized game. It's a crazy experience, especially if you don't remember every powerup/pot location by heart.
Maybe it's because I love Ocarina of Time but this is one randomizer I really enjoy playing/watching. I think it's because there is already a little bit of sequence breaking built into the game (you can swap the orders of the Spirit and Shadow Temples if you want - in fact, their medallions are already swapped in the Quest Status screen) but there's also a ton of items available to you to solve the same puzzle in different ways. As Adult Link, the hookshot/longshot or hover boots can often be used to solve the same puzzles; ditto for bombs and the hammer.
I love playing OOT randos. Not only is it a new puzzle every time, there are a lot of quality-of-life improvements (e.g. pushing blocks is faster, cutscenes are skipped) that make it much more enjoyable for someone who already knows the game well.
What platform or emulator do you play them on?
I suppose these will work on Analogue 3D when it gets released?
Ship of Harkanian, the PC port of OoT created from the decompilation project, has the randomizer built in. It's the best way and probably easiest on PC.
You can also build an actual N64 rom and play in an emulator or on a real N64 using a flashcart. RetroArch N64 cores will work fine with it.
If you're just playing it for fun the PC port has randomizer seed support as well as a ton of other QoL improvements. If you're doing things as part of a group race there might be a requirement to use only certain emulators or real hardware though, depending how much the group cares.
In general, if you can play the game on the system you can probably get the randomized ROM to play on it.
It should do, it can run on original hardware (e.g. via an Everdrive). I play on a MiSTer FPGA [0] and it's great.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiSTer
I use OpenEmu on my Mac, so I guess Mupen64 as the emulator core. However as someone else mentioned the ROM should run on native hardware.
Here's a related software that I like : https://archipelago.gg/
This is a multi-game randomizer, where items will be scattered accross all games in the multiworld, and so players will have to find items in their own games, but for eachother.
It's really fun, and I am just amazed by the fact that it works so well for a ton of games.
It's so awesome! I want to finish adding the Ultima 6 one sometime - https://arya-iwakura.github.io/Ultima6Randomizer/
There's another that combines Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask into one game, joined by a portal connecting the Happy Mask Shop and Clock Town. It's possible to scatter every bush and box and pot from both games across both worlds.
What I like most about it is the "Container Appearance Matches Content" option, which specifically colors every randomizable element and makes the run-throughs feel very dynamic. The last time I tried Ship of Harkanian, I was disappointed to see it missing.
https://ootmm.com/
How does one ensure that every seed can be completed without glitches? The website says this is the case, so I wonder how they do it because it seems nontrivial to generate valid seeds efficiently.
This is referred to by OoT runners as "Logic" and you can get an overview here: https://wiki.ootrandomizer.com/index.php?title=Logic
There are people that do "No Logic" randomizers. That's a very different kind of game than the original base game.
The project has data about every location (doors, chests, etc.) and the conditions that must be met to allow access to those locations - for example [1]. From there the randomizer shuffles various entrances/exits and item locations around using rules that are mostly guaranteed to keep the game beatable.
[1] https://github.com/OoTRandomizer/OoT-Randomizer/blob/d1bb6c2...
Think of every location in the game as accessible only after certain events or items are acquired. You can create a directed acyclic graph (how build systems figure out dependencies!). You can randomize all the locations of items, as long there is still a way to get from the starting node to the ending node.
That's great!
Now does the DAG make sense to humans? Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
How out of sequence can the game get?
Is Master Quest just the moral equivalent of a single static random roll of the Randomizer?
Someone should do this with Majora's Mask, but in a way that can somehow combine the two games.
>Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
It can be configured with options as to how items are distributed. But yeah, in general anything can be anywhere. Without clues: sometimes there are clues, those silly gossip stones in OoT can output a message about the general location of a thing, but you check everything you can. You learn which items open up each logic path and then open every chest, do every quest, etc.
>How out of sequence can the game get?
Completely. There are randomizer settings that require glitches and sometimes if the logic is wrong (it is sometimes) there are unwinnable seeds.
> Someone should do this with Majora's Mask, but in a way that can somehow combine the two games.
Someone did:
https://ootmm.com/faq
There are a few multi-game randomizers out there.
Some of them even run on real SNES hardware
The Super Metroid / Zelda LTTP one is pretty famous, including having been played live at GDQ:
https://youtu.be/yWNGWrZ8wec?si=-d65Db2DySL9js0E
I have somewhere a branch that allows for "sharing" items between games as well. One could do an Oracle of Seasons+Ages game where your inventory is "the same" between both games, where possible (or extend to other games for group fun).
my favorite are the coop randos where 2+ runners are grabbing items for eachother and having a good timetime roasting eachother
I don't know about OoT, but in the case of Super Metroid Map Rando (https://maprando.com/), the logic is also quite detailed – see e.g. https://github.com/vg-json-data/sm-json-data/blob/master/reg... for one room – and comes with information about the difficulty of the tricks necessary to get from one place to another with a given item loadout, health, runways from connecting rooms etc.; having that, it is possible for the user to specify a desired difficulty, and one of several game modes then effectively ensures that the "next" item is located in a particular location, access to which has only been made possible by the current loadout and doing tricks of the given difficulty, so that players sufficiently familiar with the logic (and the tricks) can quickly narrow down the set of possible locations. Other game modes will be less strict in how items are placed, which in practice can mean that the game becomes "easier" by giving you a more powerful item loadout but "harder" in that figuring out where to go becomes less straightforward; and as a result, you end up with games that feel completely different just by having a different focus on the exploration and execution aspects.
I've find that it becomes quite an interesting spectator sport too, since people will compete on completing a given random map as quickly as possible, effectively having to perform difficult platforming tricks while also having to solve a non-trivial constraint satisfaction problem to understand the map layout, and different speedrunners have evolved different probabilistic heuristics for how to do that.
Some good showcases:
- The AGDQ 2025 finale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it_xbTZHan8
- The grand finals of a recent tournament: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2485240928
> Does it ever put things in absurd places, eg. a necessary dungeon key in a random grotto halfway across the map (or in another time)? Without clues, how would you know where to check next? Does the game help at all?
I haven't played this OOT randomizer, but with the Wind Waker randomizer I've been playing, you can configure things like that - so dungeon keys could spawn in their own dungeon only, or literally anywhere in the world, or just other dungeons. It also has settings that allow you to talk to an NPC to get hints where game-progressing items are.
From what I've seen of YouTube runs, it can make zero sense (think going into a random cave out in the wild puts you into the queen's bedroom etc.). I guess it must be most fun for people who've played the game so much it's already just a DAG to them. Or maybe they enjoy the surrealism.
The rules for what locations/checks can be reached in what situations and with what items are painstakingly encoded in a machine readable format: https://github.com/OoTRandomizer/OoT-Randomizer/tree/Dev/dat...
I don't know the specifics of the OoTR algorithm but in general they work by considering a set of items which are currently "available", and then progressively picking a random item to place only in locations which are reachable with that current set of available items (which is expanded with each placement).
One of my favorite things to watch on Twitch are the Dark Souls randomizer runs.
E.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y8R0JWQdeo
Randomizers are a fantastic innovation of the past decade. They can breathe so much new life into a game you've gotten comfortable with, where subsequent playthroughs are becoming stale.
I played through a Dark Souls randomizer a few years ago and it really made me explore a lot more like I haven't really done since my first playthrough, since I eventually learned where to get all the equipment I like and which areas aren't worth going to.
I'm just glad we're getting to a point where they're at least a little more mainstream.
For quite awhile there, a lot of randomizers would include potential requirements like knowing how to do some arbitrary wrong warp, or some highly technical unintended interaction. They felt like toys only for the speedrunning community.
Wow! I never expected to see Barb talked about on hacker News.
He's always on in the background when I work. Love him to bits, and I've been a paying customer for almost six years already. He's the only subscription I pay for rather than Netflix et.al.
Like the variety of games and of course mawio! The only thing I don't like is barb insisting on doing those fake sneezes all the time...
There are a lot of us bald programmers..
Or balding!
What timing - I just started playing Wind Waker HD randomizer runs. It really adds a lot to the experience, especially after having played through the vanilla game several times. It manages to re-capture some of the feeling of exploring the world for the first time.
I'm glad to hear that Wind Waker HD has fan support like this. It was always a bummer to me that the best versions of Wind Waker and Skyward Sword were trapped on the Wii U, given the incredible preservation that Dolphin provides for their original versions.
Edit: I own a Wii U, I'm not trying to be a hater. For years, it really was the ultimate Zelda box.
I found the Wii U joystick too springy to win OOT or even play much of Twilight Princess. I was able to compensate for the springiness until the penultimate fight with Ganondorf at the top of the castle in OOT, at which point it got too annoying and I just gave up, but with Twilight Princess, I hit that threshold in the fire temple's boss fight. Possibly even just a miniboss.
It's possible I just had a Wii U with an unusually tight joystick or something.
> given the incredible preservation that Dolphin provides for their original versions.
Does cemu not provide comparable preservation for the HD versions? I played through both WW:HD and TP:HD on my Steam Deck using cemu and found it a great experience.
I slightly disagree, but only because Skyward Sword HD on the Switch is a pretty big improvement.
The Wii U was indeed a fantastic Zelda box though.
I can't wait until my daughter is old enough to play the Wind Waker. It's so amazing that only one generation after OoT they released a Zelda that not only is arguably as good or even better than OoT, but it holds up over 20 years later. You can play Wind Waker today and not realize it's not a new game, the graphics and the gameplay are just perfect.
I’ve played most Zalda games but life was busy when Windwaker came out and I just completely skipped it on accident. Should really grab a copy after hearing your praise.
Oh dear, do it! It is my favorite Zelda game by a wide margin. And GP is completely correct in how it holds up, especially with the HD version.
I was really disappointed at the time due to the "childish" graphics. But now I think it is interesting that they made such a daring design choice. Like Super Mario 2 hardly being anything like SM1.
It would be fun to play Windwaker someday with my kids. I never played it.
Nintendo released that teaser trailer of a realistic Zelda in an epic fight with Ganon and the world was anticipating that for years. But Nintendo realised competing with PlayStation was going to be a race to the bottom so they built the GameCube as budget hardware that could have never rendered that Ganon fight scene. And thus disappointing all the children who had become teenagers since the release of OoT.
Without that context however, the game is indisputably great. And the fact that they used vector graphics is a lucky win as it means the game renders crisply on modern TV's and monitors.
> Like Super Mario 2 hardly being anything like SM1.
I would not call that a design choice. It's a consequence of putting Mario branding on an unrelated game.
Ye I know the "Super Mario USA" story.
However, I still think it is a "design choice" to not just do the same thing again. The safe and boring bet.
I.e. releasing something like "the lost levels" as SM2.
For Twitch streamers who play OoT randomizer, I strongly recommend Zfg's stream (one of the best OoT players out there), who is coincidentally streaming it now: https://www.twitch.tv/zfg1
An example No Logic run he did at Awesome Games Done Quick 2025 (which required shenanigans): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-lBi4_g6HQ
Not randomizer but I miss the days of Clint vs Zfg so much.
Happy to see Clint streaming a bit again.
I couldn't find an easy answer on the wiki or site, but I am using my phone instead of a desktop.
Do users still need to obtain (an obviously legal, Nintendo approved) ROM of classic OOT to use the randomizer?
Yes. Typically randomizers take the input rom (or data from a CD in the case of something like SOTN) and use that as a starting point.
There's a ROM that combines Super Metroid and A Link to the Past into a single randomized game. It's a crazy experience, especially if you don't remember every powerup/pot location by heart.
Maybe it's because I love Ocarina of Time but this is one randomizer I really enjoy playing/watching. I think it's because there is already a little bit of sequence breaking built into the game (you can swap the orders of the Spirit and Shadow Temples if you want - in fact, their medallions are already swapped in the Quest Status screen) but there's also a ton of items available to you to solve the same puzzle in different ways. As Adult Link, the hookshot/longshot or hover boots can often be used to solve the same puzzles; ditto for bombs and the hammer.
Good Old Days Gaming is great and does a ton of randomizer runs.
https://www.youtube.com/@GoodOldDaysGaming
Is it not easier to do this directly in Ship of Harkinian nowadays?
And then it runs perfectly on the Steam Deck for example.
The Ship of Harkinian randomizer isn't strictly feature comparable to the original randomizer, but it's pretty close.