The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom engineer discovers Moblins are amazing at basketball if you give them a fancy hoop to play with

Over a year on from its release, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom players are still discovering some incredible ways to pass the time in Hyrule without actually, y’know, saving it, as one genius discovers that the Moblin enemies apparently have a natural talent for basketball.

In a short clip posted to Reddit, content creator MRKD GAMING shows off the glory that is “Hyrule’s Basketball League.” Two teams of Moblins can be seen competing against each other, launching their smaller Bokoblin friends into a hoop to score points. Of course, the points are being counted up by the player themselves, but by all accounts, the Moblins seem fully immersed in the game, and it’s genuinely amazing how talented they are – those throws are on point. 

Hyrule’s Basketball League 🏀 from r/tearsofthekingdom

It’s super amusing to watch, and I know for a fact that I’m going to be loading my own game up to try it, but the setup itself is really clever, too, so shout out to MRKD GAMING for discovering how to do it. The Moblins throwing Bokoblins like that is a normal behavior, but generally speaking they’ll only do that towards Link himself if they’re trying to attack him. To prevent them from doing that, the player puts on Majora’s Mask, which makes you invisible to these particular foes so long as nothing else spots you. 

After that, it’s all about making the hoop itself interesting enough for the competitors. As well as the general shape, which was pieced together using the Ultrahand ability, MRKD GAMING has crucially attached a Zonai Homing Cart to the backboard. Although it’s fastened in place and poses absolutely no threat to the Moblins, they clearly see it as such (or are plain offended by its very presence), because it’s this that they’re aiming for when throwing their poor friends. Sadly then, it doesn’t seem like basketball is a natural love for these foes, but who knows, maybe this activity will give them a new passion. 

We’ve certainly come a long way since the early days of Tears of the Kingdom and its, uh, phallic creations, with the community even managing to impress the devs with their ingenuity when it comes to using certain tools and items in unexpected ways. One player even brought the engineering aspects of the game to life in the real world by creating a “mech suit” to control Link with, which is truly next level. Considering how open-ended Tears of the Kingdom is, it seems likely that we’ll be seeing cool stuff like this for a long time to come. 

Be sure to check out our guide to Zelda Tears of the Kingdom vehicles if you’re looking for even more cool stuff to make with Ultrahand.