The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake: Who AI Cites (Pre-Launch Study)

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Remake launches on Switch 2 on Thursday, November 5, 2026. The day before launch, players were already asking AI the same questions: when does it come out, is it worth $70, what changed from the N64 original, how do I beat the Water Temple.

So we asked first. We ran 500 prompts about the game through the five AI platforms every LLM Pulse plan tracks (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode) and recorded every source they cited. The result: 2,412 AI answers citing 977 different domains.

The headline is simple. When people ask AI about a big launch, the answers are built on creators and communities first, media second. YouTube is cited in 43% of all answers, Reddit in 31%, and the most-cited gaming outlet, IGN, in 26%. Below is the full breakdown: by source, by AI platform, by type of question, and down to the individual YouTube channels and subreddits.

How we ran the study

We built one LLM Pulse project around the remake and wrote 500 prompts the way real players ask, from "When does the Ocarina of Time remake come out?" to "How to beat Bongo Bongo without the Lens of Truth". Every prompt was tagged with one topic and one intent, so we could see who AI trusts for each kind of question, not just overall. If you want to build a prompt set like this for your own brand, our guide to choosing the prompts you track walks through the method.

The main metric is simple: the share of AI answers that cite a domain at least once. A domain cited three times in one answer counts once. For a deeper look at why this matters, see how to measure AI visibility without fooling yourself.

The 15 sources AI cites most

Out of 977 domains, a small group carries the conversation. Three patterns stand out:

• YouTube and Reddit sit above every gaming outlet. YouTube is cited in 1,036 answers and Reddit in 736, against 617 for IGN, the most-cited media outlet.
• Fan-built wikis and guide sites outrank most media. Zelda Dungeon (24%) and Fandom (21%) beat GameSpot (19%) and Nintendo Life (16%). Zelda Central, GameWith and Zelda Wiki also make the top 12.
• The official site is only eighth. Nintendo.com appears in 15% of answers, and nearly two thirds of those citations come from a single AI platform, ChatGPT (more on that below).

Every AI platform has a different favourite

This is where the study gets interesting. Same game, same 500 prompts, and five very different maps of who matters.

• Google AI Overviews is a video engine. 92% of its answers cite YouTube, and it is also the platform that brings Facebook, Instagram and TikTok into the picture. If you want to understand this behaviour, our guide to tracking brand mentions in AI Overviews and AI Mode explains how both surfaces pick sources.
• Gemini is a Reddit engine. 61% of Gemini answers cite a Reddit thread, double the overall average.
• ChatGPT goes to the source and the specialists. Nintendo.com leads with 47%, followed by fan guides like Zelda Dungeon and vi.ki. YouTube does not even make ChatGPT's top 10.
• Perplexity trusts traditional media most. IGN appears in 44% of its answers, the only platform where a media outlet is #1.

The practical takeaway: a single "AI visibility" number hides more than it shows. A brand that only checks ChatGPT would conclude YouTube does not matter. A brand that only checks AI Overviews would conclude nothing else does.

The question decides who gets cited

Tagging every prompt by topic shows that AI does not have one favourite source. It has five different #1 sources across 14 topics, and the pattern is very readable:

• How-to questions go to video. YouTube leads walkthroughs (56%), bosses and combat (55%), graphics and performance (55%) and music (48%). When someone asks how to do something, AI points to someone showing it.
• Completionist questions go to fan guides. Zelda Dungeon leads collectibles and secrets (52%), just ahead of YouTube.
• Opinion questions go to Reddit. Reddit leads reviews (44%), remake vs original (47%), new features (41%), beginner questions (43%) and speedrunning (50%).
• Lore goes to the wiki. Fandom leads story, lore and characters with 51%.
• Release and buying questions go to official and news sources. Nintendo.com leads release and editions (37%); Nintendo Life leads buying and deals (37%) and franchise questions (37%).

By intent

Transactional prompts ("where to preorder", "best price", "Black Friday deal") are the only ones where creators and communities step back. There, AI cites the official store, deal coverage and retailers like Best Buy and GameStop.

Media outlets vs wikis and guide sites

Among media, IGN (26%), GameSpot (19%) and Nintendo Life (16%) form a clear top three, followed by GamesRadar, Nintendo Everything, Notebookcheck, The Verge, Vice, VGC and Kotaku. This mirrors what we saw in our study of the news outlets AI cites most: a few large publishers capture most of the citations, and the long tail drops off fast.

On the guide side, the specialists win. Zelda Dungeon (24%) is cited almost as often as IGN, and Fandom (21%) more than GameSpot. Single-game guide sites with deep, structured pages are exactly what AI needs to answer "where is the fourth bottle" or "what does this song unlock".

Social platforms: YouTube and Reddit, then everyone else

YouTube appears in 1,036 answers, five times more than Facebook (207). Instagram (73), TikTok (62) and X (34) are marginal by comparison. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok citations come almost entirely from Google AI Overviews, which pulls short-form video and social posts far more than any other platform.

Two details worth noting:

• Media brands win on social too. Some of the most-cited TikTok and Facebook posts come from GamesRadar, TechRadar, IGN and Kinda Funny, not only from individual creators.
• Short-form video gets cited. 7 of the 40 most-cited YouTube URLs are Shorts, and almost all of those citations come from AI Overviews.

The YouTube channels AI cites most

We looked at the 40 most-cited YouTube videos and the channels behind them. Brand channels lead the ranking: Nintendo of America (46 citations, led by its 40th Anniversary Direct video, the single most-cited YouTube URL in the study) and IGN (44 citations across six videos).

But the bigger story is below them: 28 of those 40 videos come from independent creators, not media brands. These are the YouTube channels AI cited, roughly from most to least:

koadyokay, Tony StrongStyle, Skill Up, Kevdog, hChatNation, Luznyx, Aero, GamerFuzion, DPadGamer, SicCooper, Rule of 2 Review, SuperMetalDave64, AndresRestart, Arlo, Nintendo Memories, swaggmasta, KnightPohtaytoe, RELZY, PredCaliber, アオイゲーム, Dr.Wily, ProsafiaGaming, SwitchForce, Podcast Now, CaveGamers and Gaming Reinvented.

Other brand and media channels in the list: The Game Awards, GamingBolt and WhatCulture Gaming.

A few things jump out:

• Specific beats generic. The most-cited independent video, from koadyokay, is about which classic tricks will no longer work in the remake. Narrow, useful, hard to find elsewhere.
• Language is not a barrier. Luznyx, a Spanish-language creator, and アオイゲーム, a Japanese channel, are cited in answers to English prompts in the US.
• Each platform has its own creators. Several videos are cited almost only by Perplexity, others almost only by AI Overviews. Which creators "matter" depends on the AI platform your audience uses.

We covered the mechanics behind this in why AI search cites YouTube so much.

The subreddits AI pulls answers from

Across the 60 most-cited Reddit threads, two communities dominate: r/OcarinaOfTime (78 citations) and r/zelda (69). Then come the platform communities, r/NintendoSwitch (29) and r/NintendoSwitch2 (28), followed by r/nintendo, r/Switch, r/truezelda and r/GamingLeaksAndRumours.

The single most-cited thread is a review discussion on r/NintendoSwitch, cited 22 times, mostly by Gemini. And Reddit's memory is long: threads from years ago about the 3DS version are still being cited to answer questions about the remake. If you want to dig into this, see how Reddit shapes what AI says about your brand.

What this means if you are launching something

This study is about a video game, but the pattern applies to any launch with a passionate audience: a phone, a car, a cosmetics line, a SaaS release. When people ask AI about it, AI does not only read your website. It reads the people who talk about you.

Three steps we would recommend to any brand:

1. Map your prompts by topic and intent. A single list of prompts gives you one number. Tagged prompts show you which sources matter for which questions.
2. Check every AI platform separately. In this study, YouTube was cited in 92% of AI Overviews answers and was not in ChatGPT's top 10. Averaging hides that.
3. Find the creators and communities AI already trusts in your category. Those are the people to brief, partner with and support before your next launch, not after.

Run this study for your own brand

Everything in this post came out of a single LLM Pulse project: 500 prompts, topic and intent tags, and the Sources view across the five base AI platforms. You can build the same map for your category, in any country and language, starting from €49/mo.

Start your 14-day free trial, no sales call needed, or see pricing.

Independent study by LLM Pulse. Not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Nintendo. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Data reflects AI answers collected on November 4, 2026, one day before launch; AI answers change over time.