If you grew up as a Nintendo kid at any point in the last 38 years, there’s a good chance that your favorite game of all time included the words ‘Legend’ and ‘Zelda’ at one point or another. And there’s an equally good chance that your favorite Christmas as a kid involved unwrapping Link’s latest adventure.
If you were an ’80s baby, the original game took you on an open-ended adventure in a dangerous world. If you came of age with the SNES, there’s a good chance you were enchanted by A Link to the Past’s intricate dungeons and time-hopping story. If the ’00s were your introduction to gaming, The Wind Waker’s gorgeous visuals and wide open sea offered an evocative introduction that was fit for any kid.
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When you got a little older, Twilight Princess showed a darker, scarier side of Hyrule. And Nintendo served up a pair of incredible open-world adventures for ’10s and ’20s babies to embark on with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It’s rare that a generation goes by without Eiji Aonuma and co. dropping an era-defining classic.
Ocarina Of Time Was The Perfect N64 Intro
One was certainly under my tree on Christmas Day, 2000. It was a strange yuletide for a number of reasons, not least of which because it was the first and only time my family spent the holiday in Florida, where my grandparents owned a trailer they stayed in half the year. It was also the only time we’ve opened all of our presents on Christmas Eve.
So I was introduced to Ocarina of Time and the translucent green N64 I would play it on when the sun was down and the room was illuminated by twinkle lights. Getting that console and that game offered that first taste of adulthood you get the first time something kinda expensive is yours and only yours.
Before that, I had access to a Sega Genesis, but it was my sister’s. I could play Mario on an original Game Boy, but that was also my sister’s. A year before this, I got a Game Boy Pocket, and a copy of Pokemon Red, which was the first system I ever owned. But there was a massive difference between that small, inexpensive handheld that let me play technologically limited 2D games, and the full-color 3D worlds the $199.99 N64 gave me access to. It was an introduction to a whole new world of privilege and responsibility.
Ocarina Of Time Is A World Like No Other
And what a game to arrange the meeting. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a special game. Not because it’s the best Zelda game — that’s Breath of the Wild — or even the most sophisticated. A Link to the Past was more complexly structured, and each of the 3D Zeldas that followed would build on Ocarina of Time’s design in significant ways. No, Ocarina of Time is special because it was the first 3D Zelda and, though I didn’t realize it at the time, it was introducing a whole new vocabulary that gaming just didn’t have access to yet.
Of course, one of Ocarina of Time’s most important innovations was Z-targeting, which would become the standard for most 3D action games that followed. But as a kid, I was amazed by its aesthetics, not its mechanics. Kokiri Forest felt like a real place to me, and Link’s friend Saria felt like a friend. Not a friend to me, necessarily, but like a real and important person to Link.
The Great Deku Tree, which I spent most of those first days exploring, was haunting and dangerous. My grandma made potato soup while we were visiting and I remember eating bowls and bowls of the stuff while attempting to avoid the Gold Skulltulas that patrolled the webbing inside that organic dungeon.
I would eventually go on to reach Dodongo’s Cavern and Jabu-Jabu’s Belly (where I would stay for more than a decade), but in those early days, I only scratched the surface of Ocarina of Time. And still, it was a surface unlike anything I’d ever seen.
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