There’s nothing worse than making a cool airship in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, launching off into the sunset, and then watching in horror moments later as all your Zonai pieces slowly disappear one-by-one. Fortunately, there are glitches to get around this, and Japanese player Peco used them to live out their Top Gun fantasy of breaking the sound barrier across Hyrule while Kenny Loggings sings in the background.
Zelda: TOTK gives players a massive toolbox to play with in its sprawling open world, but sets limits on what is supposed to be possible by despawning equipment at various intervals. Rockets are used up after a few seconds, gliders only last a couple hundred meters, and even fans eventually cease to exist. Battery life is another limiting factor, theoretically setting a timer on how long even the wildest creations can come to life.
There are ways around these rules, however. Glitches are a pathway to many abilities in Zelda: TOTK some consider to be unnatural, but ones for infinite battery life, infinite rockets, and other building exploits have existed since Ver. 1.2.1 went live almost a year ago. Peco, who has spent years pushing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel to their absolute limits with combat montages and other stunts, recently posted a walkthrough for how to create your very own Top Gun fighter jet, modeled after the F-14A Tomcat that carried Tom Cruise to fame and fortune back in the ‘80s.
Beyond the tricks used to make rockets last forever and to get infinite battery life, another key is to only use materials for the ship itself that won’t despawn over time, but require transporting stuff over long distances. The tutorial Peco created, showing every glitch and step of the project (which is all in Japanese unfortunately), is nearly an hour long. That’s dedication, but the sight in other videos of Link jetting beneath bridges and cruising through Hyrule without a care or restriction in the world seems worth it.
You can watch the entire walkthrough below: