The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 on November 5, 2026. For Nintendo, it's an opportunity to revisit a Nintendo 64 classic and give its newest console a heavy-hitting exclusive. For a terminally ill man named Blake, it's a fresh chance to finish Ocarina of Time decades after trying the original game.
On September 21, Blake – as we'll call him – posted on the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 Reddit communities. "I'm dying, and I plan to make the new OOT the first game I ever fully complete," he wrote. Both posts were met with huge support from the gaming community, including many people who offered to buy Ocarina of Time for Blake.
"All these strangers and people I've obviously never interacted with before sending me all these good wishes and offering to buy me the game, it was crazy," he tells me. "I'm very thankful for all the touching comments from everybody. It's little things like this that put a smile on my face and will be something I remember."
Blake explained that he has a motor neuron disease called ALS – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, sometimes called Lou Gehrig's disease – which impacts muscle control. Per the ALS Association (which you can donate to here), people with ALS typically lose the ability to "walk, dress or write, speak or swallow, breathe on their own."
"While the average survival time after diagnosis is about three years, many people live longer," the ALS Assocation says. Blake says his father was also diagnosed with ALS and passed away six months after his diagnosis.
Blake says he was diagnosed with a rare form of ALS at age 38 and given 12 months to live. Almost five years later, thanks to medically transformative spinal injections, he says he's more than capable of talking to me over email, but, in his Reddit post, adds that "my time is winding down though now sadly, and I really do only have about a year left."
Blake's story is an important example of what games can mean to people and why games should be for everyone. Now a software architect and 3D printing nerd (handy for wheelchair parts, he says), Blake says he got into games in the late '80s through Apple computers, starting with Prince of Persia on the Apple II, before diving into consoles with an N64. Even back then, Blake says he focused more on competitive games like GoldenEye 007 and NFL Blitz. He only rented Ocarina of Time from Blockbuster to try it while his best friend "was raving about it."
But Ocarina of Time just didn't click with him despite its impact and acclaim. He put the game down and moved on. Everything changed in the 2000s when Blake discovered MMOs – specifically, Dark Age of Camelot from Mythic Entertainment. He put 11,000 hours into the game in the following years, he says, "so to say it was a big part of my life back then is an understatement. Still today, I talk to some of those friends I made in that game."
More recently, he says he's put 9,000 hours into Destiny, which is even more than me, someone whose professional and personal lives orbited Bungie's MMO for over a decade.
"Today, games are just an outlet for me to get my mind off of things that are currently happening, as well as a way for me to spend time with my little girl," Blake adds. He says he and his wife had a child via donor a few years ago to avoid any genetic risks with ALS.
"As you can imagine there is a lot going on in life with a terminal diagnosis, and sometimes you just need to take a step out of reality and let your mind go somewhere else," he continues. "For me, I find that in gaming. My 2.5 year old also loves watching the games so I give her one of my spare controllers and she 'plays' the games with me. Watching her eyes light up, listening to her laugh at the screen, and just spending some time with her where it's just the two of us is really something I cherish. I know my time with her is winding down, and having these special moments to share means the world to me."
As his reflexes weakened, Blake says he gravitated toward single-player games since he "had to stop playing" a lot of the competitive games he'd focused on, like shooters and battle royales. "Eventually as I keep progressing I will move to communicating through an iPad with an eye-gaze device. At that point, my gaming will transition to gaming on an iPad using my eyes," he explains.
Some of his modern favorites include the Greek action roguelike Hades, platforming masterclass Celeste, stunning Metroidvania Ori and the Blind Forest, horror fishing game Dredge, and Spiritfarer, a cozy management game about death and the afterlife. Spiritfarer "gets me a little emotional with everything going on in life right now," Blake says. "They are relaxing and have fantastic stories to tell," he said in his post. Yet he's never actually finished a game.
"Since most of my gaming life was spent on live service games, MMOs, shooters, BRs, etc. I never actually 'beat' a game before," Blake says. "Even the single-player games I played growing up, I never fully beat one of them. That was another item on my bucket list - fully beat a video game. The timing of the announcement of [the Ocarina of Time remake] just fell perfectly for me. I knew I wanted to beat a game, I knew I wanted to give OOT another try, and then the remake was coming out. For me - it just clicked. This will be the first, and likely only, video game I actually beat."
Given the reaction to his Reddit posts, I asked Blake if there's a message he'd want to share. His response will stick with me.
"For the readers - as cliche as this is - life is short, trust me," he begins. "Try your best to not leave any regrets behind because you never know when the time will come that you won't be able to easily fix those. When I was diagnosed at 38 I could have chosen to hole up in my room and let it consume me - but I have a family that I wanted to make memories with. I chose to fight it, start the spinal injections (which remove some spinal fluid, inject a drug, and I get every 28 days - they are not super fun), and accept that I will need help. I cannot do it all on my own anymore.
"I witnessed my father have a brief stint of anger when he was diagnosed, and he told me before he passed that was one of his biggest regrets. Due to that, I've decided to not let that anger consume me. My wife and I joke about my condition all the time... If you can't laugh and be happy in a time like this, you really have nothing to keep living for."
In addition to the ALS Association, the CDC keeps a list of organizations that support ALS research, care, and patient advocacy, including ALS United, ALS Network, and the Les Turner ALS Foundation.
