The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

 N64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) game

N64 Magazine said it best in their review when they compared this game to great works of art and I couldn't be more poetic about it than they were. I came to the N64 late, a year after this game was released, but I already had a prior connection to it in a couple of different ways - the more immediate was an associate at school who was playing it and was happy to relay the wonders of it when asked, but I also had a great affection and excitement about 'The Legend of Zelda' itself since my greatest gaming moment had been discovering 'Link's Awakening' on the Game Boy, which my Father gave me as, I think, a birthday present, something he'd read was one of the best games on the system. We'd both played it and it was one of those once in a lifetime experiences when you encounter something so new and revolutionary compared with previous experiences as to forever cement it in my mind as possibly the best game I ever played (I've since come to view 'The Settlers' on Amiga as the true greatest, but that's beside the point). Understandably, the idea that I could play a game like that, but which had been uplifted and advanced into a fully three-dimensional world away from the simple 2D interaction of old, was an intoxicating concept and one of the motivating factors in my gradually increasing desire to get an N64 myself.

Oddly, it was actually the far less groundbreaking 'Star Wars Racer' that actually tipped me over the edge when deciding which console to buy, but as it turned out I got 'Zelda' with the machine as I bought it secondhand from someone I knew, which included a number of games, many of them the best on the system. My favourite was instantly 'Ocarina of Time.' It was everything I could have imagined from what I'd been told or my own expectations based on the earlier game, a thrilling, wondrous experience that I don't think I even fully understood at that time was such a revolution as it was. Every aspect of the game was reaching untold heights of what was achievable in a game, a work of art really is the best way to describe it! I revelled in its freedoms to the extent that at first it was enough merely to exist in that world: to run around Kokiri Forest with its sparkling fairy dust floating all about, climbing fences, talking to characters, exploring and enjoying, but it's not until actually exiting that first area, having defeated the evil within the Deku Tree, the first dungeon, and setting out into Hyrule Field, that the breathtaking scope of such potential hit. It was a game that had so much in it, and though for the uninitiated player it was very possible to get stuck and find the breadth of possible places to go and things to try to get out of that position could be overwhelming, that's about the only criticism that could be levelled at it.

What was so amazing was that they were able to translate what had been so successful in the previous, 2D games, and yet in turning the formula into a vast 3D world it didn't lose the immediacy and simple pleasures that had been enjoyed before, but actually enhanced them. Many of the same monsters and creatures you meet, interact with, and fight, were taken from past entries, but intelligently implemented into what was a truly brave new world that required extremely complex thought to create. That alone is worthy of attention, but that they were able to do it so strongly and with such attention to detail sustained over many tens of hours is an absolute testament to the skill of these artists, programmers and creators. Take something as simple as jumping. In a 2D space you only have to worry about a couple of levels, maybe three at the most: the ground, areas above from which, in 'Awakening,' you could drop down, and perhaps an underground area which you could fall into. But you didn't need to worry much about the location of the character within that space. In 'Awakening' you could get the Roc's Feather which enabled your otherwise grounded Link to jump in the air to hop over holes, but in 3D you now have so much more scope and space to cover and account for. And they didn't even have a jump button! Context-sensitive movement (and in many aspects of the game), could be restrictive (I think of the Don Bluth games like 'Space Ace,' etc), where you need to press a button to achieve something at a specific moment. Here, it was about providing what would be best suited to your needs.

I'm sure I went into it on the 'Majora's Mask' review I wrote a few years ago, but the intelligence of the game to know when you were leaping off into the unknown or had stumbled over the edge by mistake, is very clever, but that was merely one revolutionary approach to existing in a 3D environment. Z-Targeting was another, where you have the ability to lock on to something or someone which changes how the controls respond. I'm getting into the dry realms of technical expertise here, and that's really not what the game is about, but the fact these things were so intuitive and natural in enabling existence within a 3D space can easily be overlooked because of countless games that came after. 'Citizen Kane' still impresses today, but its ways and technicalities are taken for granted all the same because so much has been taken from it by what came after. It's the same for this game and others that pioneered the 3D genre, it's so easy to take it all for granted and that's one reason some subsequent 'Zelda' titles haven't rated so highly with me - I've seen it all before, its lustre has rubbed off, and certainly it's very hard to create something really new and different that doesn't stray too far beyond the confines of the series. But this was where it all (or most of it), began and seeing it through those eyes helps to remind me why it stays in my top three games of all time (behind the aforementioned 'Settlers' and 'Awakening').

I hadn't played it in probably twenty years. I think I played through it at least twice, but it's the 'Zelda' I know best because I also watched other family members and relatives play through chunks of it (and even assisted on occasion). I'd gone back into it to record some of the music over the years, but in my usual reticence to delete old save files there came a time when I couldn't replay it without deleting another file, something that put me off. That and being so familiar with it, as I thought, and not just because of the game itself, but so much was taken and used in sequels up to 'Twilight Princess' (and beyond of course, but that was the furthest I'd played until my recent play of the Wii's 'Skyward Sword' in Christmas 2022), so there was an impression of over-familiarity. I may even have had a sneaking suspicion it could be slightly boring to replay this one since I knew it so 'well,' and also because I'd found myself, as in general, but also in specific, underwhelmed by games in the GameCube era. I didn't think particularly well of 'Twilight' and only revisiting it again on another recent Christmas made me appreciate it more and reevaluate it and understand that my disillusion was partly down to my place in life when I'd originally played it, so much was seen through that view. Another reason I hadn't gone back to 'OOT' was that I would have eventually played the 'Master Quest' version on the disc that came with 'Wind Waker,' but in recent years, losing my old Amiga monitor and finding my Dell screen didn't play 60hz games I was stymied.

At the same time I was gearing up to it year on year as playing a 'Zelda' at Christmas became a fast tradition and I was running out of options. The other reason to take it on was that it was my last truly great N64 game that I hadn't replayed during the last fifteen years (!) of writing for this blog and so I had no other option. I was not disappointed, no amount of lustre-scrubbing or familiarity breeding contempt had dulled or dimmed its power, and probably because I hadn't played it for such a long time it was like travelling back to college days. What really made me happy, however, was another technical aspect: playing it as good as it ever looked thanks to accidentally discovering how to enhance the Dell's image quality. This really made an impact (and how I wish I'd found it years ago when I was going through so many other great N64 games, 'Jet Force Gemini,' 'Body Harvest,' 'Majora's Mask,' the list goes on, titles that would have benefited from visual perfection!), and made me love the experience even more - it's not that I can't enjoy games with inferior graphics, just as I can still appreciate black and white films, because it's not about the medium: with the former it's about the gameplay, and with the latter, the story and character. With games like 'OOT' that line was blurred, you really do notice the quality of storytelling increase with the capabilities of the technical side. Saying that, even 'Awakening' could make you care about character and story with its simple graphics, but now they could make it cinematic in scope and style.

That's not always a good thing, there has been the danger of story eclipsing interactivity so that you're just pressing a button and essentially watching cut-scenes, but not at this time and not with this game, its immediacy and extension of your own fingers never puts you in that situation and in turn only enhances your connection to the world so that when you do watch the story unfold you're even more involved. Every moment of the story being relayed is perfectly judged, whether it be grand visions or the use of silence and pauses, it shows a fluency in language of cinema that shows a more advanced development of the technology than 'Super Mario 64,' which comes off as almost a tech demo in comparison. 'OOT' is where you actually feel for what's happening as much as you explore the freedoms of exploration and gradually unfolding access to a larger and larger world. It would have been enough to have done all these things: the exquisite controls mapped to the Controller, the involvement of the story, the fulness of the world, but on top of that they beautifully push the boundaries with the addition of time that makes a difference to how you approach things. There is beauty to be had gazing over the misty waters of Lake Hylia as dawn breaks, or Kakariko Village bathed in the red glow of a suspended sunset, or a mournful solitude to the night as crows caw above you, all this further pulling you into such a fully realised world that almost goes down to the micro level when you see butterflies hovering or tiny bugs burrowing into the ground. With the backdrop of vast mountains and tall towers the scale is incredible!

Not that the graphics are amazing to modern eyes - obviously that has all dated, there's a sense of simplicity in the fact that everywhere is walled in, no matter how large the area. They hadn't been able to disguise that and it does look unnatural, but crucially it doesn't take anything away from the game and the textures remain very impressive, selling the different environments perfectly with the addition of expertly judged sound effects: the crunch of snow underfoot, the plash of water, the pat-pat of footsteps across grass, sand, or rock. And the textures aren't always static, either: the first great use (other than the mere beauty of the forest environment right from the start), is how they show the sad death of the Deku Tree, texture rippling up his form to simulate his shrivelling state, Ganondorf riding through planes of fire, or the watery reflections on the walls of the Water Temple. It really is astounding how much they were able to achieve at this time in one of the earliest 3D games Nintendo had made and the first in this series! The environments may be clichés of green forest, red fiery lava, white snow, and so on, but it's those familiar hallmarks that instantly make it engaging and real, we have an instinctive understanding of how environment and colour affects each area and in turn what we can do to affect it ourselves.

The breadth of things to do can be overwhelming, and I can well remember in the old days becoming stuck and not knowing exactly what to do to progress. Now I'm so well versed there's practically no chance for me to get stuck, not because of specific memory, but a sort of muscle memory that means I know how the puzzles work, I know the extent of the game's logic (sometimes I forgot, such as during the trading sequence where you're supposed to find the Cucco lady's brother in the woods to give him some medicine, but when you return he's not there - I spent ages searching every part of the Lost Woods until I eventually went back and just showed it to the little Kokiri Girl, all that was required!) - about the only thing that required dull, plodding repetition was searching for the hidden holes in the ground that can only be discovered with the use of a Rumble Pak (since the N64 Controller didn't come with rumble built in). It's not that heavy an addition to the Controller, but it does make it more bulky and requires batteries, too, so I wasn't planning to use it. It just got to the point at the end where I'd done everything else in the game and I didn't quite want to let it go, so I carried on searching for the final Gold Skulltulas and Heart Pieces, and I suspected some of them were in the hidden holes so that necessitated running back and forth across every location in Hyrule, bar the dungeons. But even here the holes were in pretty logical locations next to a landmark or in an obvious site (such as the fenced off area between Hyrule Field and Lake Hylia). Finding the last two Skulltulas was a real achievement for me as, even with the help of the Prima guide back in the day I'd only managed 98 and so my goal had been to get every one this time.

I'm glad to say I never used the guide, or any other kind of help. Perhaps I can't say I was completely pure in my gameplay as I was also trying to complete the game with 000 on the death counter, so reset the N64 during battles with the final bosses of both Water and Spirit dungeons since I was about to die, so you could call that cheating, but it was the only liberty I took (and you still need to win the battles). That, and doing a quick internet search to narrow the parameters on the hidden holes, which I wouldn't have realised some had to be activated with the Song of Storms, not bombs. By then, I'd completed the game proper and done everything else, so I can live with these minor compromises, and I still had to do the legwork to find the holes themselves! Even so, I had to admit defeat on the Heart Pieces, succeeding with 32 out of 34 (I missed one in the grave since I'd never have thought to play the Sun's Song, and I never went back to the frogs after playing them all the non-warp tunes on my Ocarina, and never found the butterfly-chomping game), checking the guide book to discover which two I'd missed. But still, it was a very successful campaign - I'm always looking to improve on a previous game-playing performance and I did that in every other way (back then I used the guide and still couldn't track down the last Piece for some reason!): maximum 2000 points in horseback archery, knocked a few seconds off the foot race against the runner, to 1:08, caught the biggest fish it's possible to catch in the pond as both child and adult (including the Hyrule Loach which I was overjoyed about), and even knocked one almost impossible second off the Lon Lon Ranch horse race, at 0:47 seconds.

 Not to blow my own trumpet, but I was highly motivated to keep trying at all the challenges because it was simply a joy to be in the world. In other 'Zelda' games I haven't had the same dedication, preferring to finish it out then move onto something new, but this was The One, the special game, and I was drawn to do everything. The main game itself is long enough with a total of eight dungeons and a couple of mini-dungeons, even if the first two as child Link are almost mini-dungeons themselves. But I appreciated the artistry involved in dealing the player in gently, introducing the concepts and modes of play, the many weapons and pieces of equipment that would make up your growing arsenal - as in all 'Zelda' games. The difficulty curve was excellent, although I was surprised to find the Water dungeon not as brain-scramblingly difficult as I'd envisaged, and the last two dungeons aren't as mentally taxing after that one. I'd even go so far as to say the Spirit dungeon is relatively easy, but that's a side effect of both having so much experience by the time you reach that stage, and being fully empowered by your armoury that no opposition or puzzle can stand in your way. It becomes more a pleasure of style variation in those last two dungeons than true challenge, as you're either dealing with changing visibility in locations, enemies and items, or the clever splitting of the final one between both times.

Perhaps that was one step too far at the end of such a lengthy and fully developed project, which might explain why it's not taken as far as it might have - imagine puzzles that required time travel to solve, alternately flitting between child and adult. That wasn't going to be a reality as the time travel itself is quite restrictive - you have to go to the Temple of Time to do it, necessary for the entire game world to work with the tasks you have to accomplish. It would be a very different game if you did have time travel at will from anywhere in the land, which is something that the next game, 'Majora's Mask' took to a new level. It also gave them somewhere to go and encouraged them to put out another game in the series on the same system, and for that I'm grateful because the series has always been known for long gestation periods, and even to this day it's more likely there'll only be one game per generation. This one would have been enough for the N64 to be able to say it was the king of the genre, but we were afforded a sequel, too, time saved by reusing many of the character models and the whole style and look of the game. 'Ocarina' has to be acknowledged as the superior, simply for the extent of its revolutionary nature, and while 'Majora' squeezed out its own revolution, it was still standing on the shoulders of this giant.

It really is sad to bid it goodbye, it almost made me want to play 'Majora' again, if only to see that in better quality than when I played it only a few years ago, and it's no question that the ability to see it with improved visuals enhanced my love for it. But it's still the build of the world, the music, the sounds, the detail that drew me on. Running up a green hill, slicing up plants in one swinging attack, riding across the land while loosing off arrows at Poes. Revisiting locations tied to an earlier time in my own real life (I still remember messing about at Lake Hylia on a Saturday morning long ago - in fact I had to choose whether to play until 12pm on days like that or play after 12pm. The second was always better because it meant you had many more hours, but then you had to have patience to get through the morning doing something else!). The atmospheres that were so successfully generated, whether gloomy caverns haunted by the screech of those mummies or other creatures, the giant hand dropping from the ceiling with a whoosh. Or the happy folk of the towns and the various oddball characters you meet all over the place. Entire cultures in the Gorons, Zoras, and Gerudo. The desolation of the world seven years later as you go forward and make right what Ganondorf has ruined. And it all made sense, too: he allowed you to go about your business rather than crushing you like a fly in order to flush Princess Zelda out! That was a great revelation. It's not that you need it to make sense, it's very heavily a fantasy, and unlike sci-fi, in that realm anything goes. It wouldn't affect how you enjoyed the puzzling or tests of skill and timing, but it's the final layer on top that makes it more than mere actions, as enjoyable as the actions are. It's a great story and worked really well in the 'Zelda' tradition.

I will say that I was surprised how much iffy stuff was in the game - I've always felt the series has become much more supernatural and inappropriate as time's gone on, but I can't deny there's a very large amount of that here, goddesses and evil beings (even other suspect content, such as the Poe hunter that compliments you on your looks and suggests you could get into some 'other' business if you wanted). So it's far from being spotless and pure. There are also the many little mysteries that crop up which foxed me severely until I had a search of the internet when I had no other way of finding out: the big one was after you finish the Water dungeon and speak to Sheik. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but I suddenly noticed someone plop into the lake and could never find anything or anyone there. Turned out it was just Sheik making an escape, but because all the other times it's done by using a Deku Seed or some such thing to make a flash and vanish, and because it happens so far away you can't make it out, it confused me. Same with the room in the Spirit dungeon with the switch that activates a small ring of fire, with a block activated by the Song of Time, neither of which have any apparent purpose, though I read you're meant to lure the enemies in that room into the fire - unnecessary since you have fire arrows!

What proved a great help was making notes: in every area, whenever Navi would show up green, indicating something of interest, I'd write it down. Same with every Gold Skulltula, so I always knew where to go back to once I had whatever was necessary to be able to access them. I'd leave question marks if I wasn't sure what a location contained or meant, and in that way I was easily able to break down each location, be it the over-world or the dungeons, and that was a lot easier than relying on memory! I wouldn't normally write notes, other than for the purposes of preparation for a review, but I was so focused on getting every Skulltula token this seemed the best way. And so it was eventually all over. I discovered things I'd never known about before (playing certain songs where Navi goes green can release a special 'pink orb' fairy that can't be captured in a bottle, but can be used there and then, restoring all hearts and replenishing the magic meter, too). This time I felt I really got to the bottom of the game, much more than ever before, with only two outstanding questions left (I never found any song to do anything to the heraldic device above the gatehouse in front of Hyrule Castle, though Navi goes green there, and I was never able to get a butterfly to land on a Deku Stick), but otherwise I got everything I could have wished for from the game.

Even the items themselves can be enjoyable to use - launching yourself across large spaces with the aid of the Hookshot, uncovering invisible walls with the Lens of Truth, the masks (something taken to a whole new level in the sequel), even the ability to change your attire, and of course the Ocarina itself which allows you to play it as you see fit, just like a real instrument! But the basics are the most fun, as they should be: just swinging a sword about or using your shield (especially the swanky, shiny Mirror Shield!), the sense of progression as you upgrade various equipment... Perhaps it can be said the animation on some of the characters is a bit basic in that they just stand there and jig about or whatever, but this is the sort of thing that becomes noticeable based on later games improving them, and as a whole the design and movement of everything was top notch. The variety of the places to explore, completely different architectural and cultural styles, all packed into one little game cartridge... I could go on and on: the beautiful end sequence with all those characters having a party and the Sages flying over them up into the mountains, and looking down on Hyrule. The fight with Ganondorf, the rush back down the tower as it's collapsing, then a final fight with Ganon... Especially the beautiful moment at the very end, that final scene of Link going back to visit young Zelda for the first time...

It's a shame there isn't a proper continuity - after this one 'Majora' could easily fit in, and the earlier ones to some extent if they came later, but with the 'Cube games and on they didn't stick to the history that had been so cleverly established, preferring to reset the characters to give them more leeway. I can understand why, and it is a 'legend,' not a history, but what was set up here was brilliant and they should have used it as a springboard for all that came after rather than merely taking the design cues, races and puzzles. That's not this game's fault, it will always exist in its own pocket of time, just as my playing of it will. Now that I think of it, though I wasn't a child when I first played it, time has moved on massively, much more than the seven years in-game, and perhaps that adds one further little connection to going back to it after so long? There isn't anything else to say, or rather there is much you could say, pointing out every little detail, ruminating on the story, commenting on every aspect of every part of the world, indeed a big book could be written about it all. But then you'd be better finding out for yourself firsthand: and that's what you should do, if you've never played this game get on it, and if you have, go back to it. You won't be disappointed either way.

*****