The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the absolute most important game in the The Legend of Zelda series, and a milestone in the industry as a whole. I won't argue if it is the best game in existence - in all honesty, that's a subjective viewpoint best reserved for each gamer's individual taste.
Without a doubt, however, The Legend of Zelda games as a whole are a landmark staple in the gaming industry. As a benchmark of action, role-playing and exploration, masterfully designed dungeons and puzzles, and even involving stories (Twilight Princess, particularly), Zelda means a lot to many gamers.
On this anniversary of the most important Zelda game released, I take a moment to look back on my history with The Legend of Zelda series.
I came to the Zelda party a bit late: it wasn't until 1997 that I even discovered what The Legend of Zelda was. Being dropped into the middle of the Zelda franchise felt a little disorienting at first, but it did allow me to catch up on a quite a bit of Zelda goodness in a short time. I have played all of the Zelda games in some form or another, but have fonder memories of some rather than others. Thus, here is my story - my history - for my experiences with The Legend of Zelda series, in perfect chronological order as I experienced the games.
Link's Awakening
In 1997, in the seventh grade at Otsego Middle School, I lived among a culture of gaming. It wasn't long into the school year that I realized just where I was: growing out of a "kid" phase, but just adult enough to make vulgarity part of my daily vocabulary. One day while enjoying our 11am lunch break, a semi-new friend of mine, Jason, was playing his GameBoy (the original gray brick!), and he had a recently-purchased game in it: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. He was stuck at some point in the game, and was frustrated enough to pass the GameBoy around our circle of friends, hoping someone would figure out how to help him.
After a few pairs of hands touched his GameBoy, my turn came up. I settled into my seat, leaned back, and got a glimpse of a little elfish character in the middle of a grassy field. I moved the character, pressed buttons, and soon my heart took off. I was in a fantasy world with limitless exploration, cool items to use, and a sword in hand. Granted, at the time, I did nothing more than run around with a shovel and dig rupees out of the ground, much to Jason's frustration. But unlike the Mario and Tetris games of my youthful past, this game let me explore to my heart's content, and sure enough, I wanted the game for my own. I bought it a few week's later with money saved up from around the house.
It took me about six months, but I eventually played through the entire game myself, and it became a staple in my GameBoy. Link's adventure was certainly quirky in many respects, but I loved every minute of the game. After the GameBoy Color was released in the late 90's and Nintendo reissued an updated Link's Awakening with color graphics, I did not hesitate to play through the game again - and again and again.
A Link to the Past
I bought a copy of this game at Walmart for $30 shortly after I began the eighth grade. Little did I know at the time that this was not a sequel to my precious GameBoy Zelda. As it turned out, I was missing a lot of Zelda history. Thanks to some issues of Nintendo Power (of which I was a loyal subscriber at the time), I quickly learned that the Zelda franchise spanned a full decade or so by the fall of 1997 that I was playing through A Link to the Past.
All in all, the color graphics, sweeping soundtrack, and extremely deep (and for me, challenging as hell) gameplay kept me hooked for weeks on end. More than anything, this game was huge - far larger in scope than Link's Awakening, and I spent hours at a time just poking around every corner of the game, exploring what there was to explore. After two months of playing it, I gave up on the game well into the adventure, frustrated by a pain-in-the-ass puzzle. Around December of 1997, I learned that a new Zelda game was in the works for my beloved Nintendo 64 platform. By this time I knew and understood Zelda well: it was one of my favorite games, and I needed to own the upcoming release. By the first couple of months into 1998, I took the time to finish A Link to the Past and prepared myself for the next great Zelda game.
Ocarina of Time
It goes without saying that this game is respected more than any other in the franchise. At 7am on a foggy November morning in 1998, I set out with my mom to Wal-Mart in Bowling Green, where I reserved the limited-edition Gold cartridge edition of Ocarina of Time. Upon hitting the car for the ride home, I shredded the plastic packaging (but kept the shiny cardboard N64 game box, still in mint condition today). Everything about the cartridge reeked of possibility, and I spent seven straight hours glued to my television that day playing Ocarina of Time. I have never spent so long in front of a television in one continuous play session.
Every moment of the game was simply an experience. Although not as overly difficult as A Link to the Past, it took me a bit longer to beat the game, namely because I spent a great portion of my time running about Hyrule, exploring every nook and cranny that the game world presented to me. Most interesting was the fishing minigame, which I spent a ton of time playing. The 100 Gold Skulltulas to collect kept me busy in between dungeons, and any side quest that involved exploring Hyrule usually became my favorite.
As of today, I've played through the entirety of Ocarina of Time several dozen times, I've marveled at its landscapes, swore at its challenges (although always overcame them), and have fallen in love with the game every single time that I boot it up. Simply awesome.
Oracle of Ages & Oracle of Seasons
With my heart set on Link's Awakening as being among my favorite of the Zelda's, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that two new Zelda games were being developed for the GameBoy Color. Although featuring an odd link-compatible feature-set, the oddball characters, unfamiliar story, and heavily-congested overworld steered me away from what were apparently really awesome Zelda games. Given how busy I was with gaming in 1998 (Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, Turok 2), I found little time to devote to these two Zelda's. I hope that Nintendo re-releases them in some capacity in the near future so I can give them another go around.
Wind Waker
The Wind Waker was a mixed bag of Zelda goodness for me. On one hand, I fell in love with the artistic design of the game immediately upon playing it. The controls were tight as hell, seemingly fine tuned to levels that no other Zelda game had ever achieved. The game's story was overly convoluted and a bit unnecessary: why try to fit into the general Zelda timeline when plenty of other Zelda games have simply disregarded any sense of continuity?
But Wind Waker had something no other Zelda had to such extremes: exploration. Although set over a vast, vast ocean, so much of Wind Waker could be played simply as an adventurer. Sailing from island to island to uncover hidden secrets was fun enough, but then the ocean itself harbored hundreds of underwater secrets too. This was almost "Zelda GTA-style," and although the exploration could slow the main game down a bit, it was rarely necessary to progress the story along (although the Triforce map collection quest was a bitch!).
Twilight Princess
Nintendo hyped Twilight Princess as "Ocarina of Time reborn," and they were almost right. Returning to a mature-themed Zelda world, Twilight Princess brought a classy, dark, mature Zelda world to gamers, and plenty of game play to go along with it. Easily the most feature-filled Zelda game, the overall scope of the game is almost mind boggling. For a Zelda game, it has a surprisingly large Hyrule to explore. Getting around on horseback is necessary, and luckily the game drops this ability early in the game. A deep, involving story that takes a few twists and turn to keep things feeling fresh is the driving force of the game. Past Zelda's have had stories, although never one that is constantly the prime driving force behind continuing the adventure (I could easily say that Link's Awakening or Ocarina of Time sometimes just provided a story as a means to get from one dungeon to the next).
More than anything, Twilight Princess is Ocarina of Time highly refined. While I hold Ocarina of Time closer to my heart thanks to its age and longevity, Twilight Princess is a great play for a gamer with more modern taste in terms of graphics, story, and complexity. This is a close second to Ocarina in my book.
All the Others
I largely missed the NES-era of Zelda games, but I do have experience with them. I first played the original 1987 The Legend of Zelda while borrowing a friend's NES in 1998 or so, although at the time I found the stiff controls, lack of narrative, and completely open world as put-offs. In later play-throughs closer to 2000 (emulation by this point, mostly), I gave it second, third, and forth chances. While I never beat the game nor progressed very far, I did learn to appreciate how groundbreaking this type of game was in 1987.
I played Zelda II: The Adventures of Link for the NES very briefly, almost as a demo, and found - as most people did in 1988 - the 2D combat and disconnected overhead world to be jarring, and that pretty much sums up my experience with the game.
In Closing
If I had to personally rank my favorite five Zelda games, based solely on personal enjoyment, nostalgia, and other personal preferences, the list would look, in order, something like this:
- Ocarina of Time
- Link's Awakening
- Twlight Princess
- A Link to the Past
- Wind Waker
Today I will spend a good chunk of my time replaying the beginning sections of the game, Kokiri Forest, and losing myself in a wonderful game.
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