The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64
Developed by Nintendo
Published by Nintendo

For its time, the original Legend of Zelda for the NES was a damn cool game. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, was a piece of cat shit. Shigeru Miyamoto went way too experimental and ended up with a game that was extremely difficult, extremely unfun, and extremely unplayable.

He redeemed himself with the SNES version, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, which retained all the good things from the original, and added some interesting new elements to take advantage of the new technology.

In Ocarina of Time, he did this again, the most obvious change being the graduation to the third dimension, but I'm not quite sure if the game lives up to the immense amount of hype given to it.

This has to be one of the most eagerly anticipated games of all time. With about 6 years since the previous game, you'd expect it to have been damn good and break a lot of new ground given that it's on the best game console out there.

It was poned and postponed over and over again, as any respectable video game should be. Then they created the commercials making it look like the second coming of Final Fantasy VII or something.

The real kick in the balls, though, was creating a limited supply of "gold" cartridges as opposed to the standard grey. You had to pre-purchase the game by a certain date and even then you weren't assured the gold.

I got my damn gold, but it wasn't the bright, shiny gold that was on the two NES versions.

Suffice it to say, I wasn't blown away. When I first played Super Mario 64, I was blown away.

In Zelda64, my first impression was that the graphics were decent-looking, the control was okay and slightly better than Mario64, and the music was so-so (and they didn't even bother to put the classic Zelda music into the game, while they did rehash a tune from SNES's Super Mario World 2). I thought, so much for the hype, but I figured the game might pick up a little.

The game does pick up – the music gets better, you get cooler objects, you fight cooler monsters … but as far as the plot goes, this game is no better than John Madden Football on the Sega Genesis.

We've seen it a hundred times before; there's a sacred prophecy, blah blah blah, you're going to save the land and the princess, blah blah blah, and you must awaken the six sages, blah blah blah. I'm very disappointed that there wasn't something more original here.

And the secrets. Ah, what would Zelda be without its secrets? The game has its secrets, but they fall into two categories: very easy; and so fucking illogical that you want to bury the goddamn thing in the backyard. Plus, most of the secrets aren't even worth getting.

This game is in no way BAD, however. Annoying at times, but not bad. Zelda64 is exactly what Tomb Raider should be – a 3-D adventure game that's easy to control, and colorful. To get through the game normally is fairly easy, but to finish with all the secrets is not. The bosses range from really cool (a horse rider who phases in and out of paintings on the wall) to really bizarre (a giant penis-looking thing with two huge hands who pounds on a drum that YOU'RE standing on).

There are only about three or four tunes in the game that are really worth listening to. I'm no organ grinder, but I know what I like in video game music, and most of Zelda's music is unmemorable.

Some of the graphic effects are cool. There's a realistic sandstorm in the desert where you can't see five feet in front of you. There are guys called Iron Knuckles (an actual holdover from Zelda 2!) who have shiny reflective armor. Fire and water are done pretty well, too.

The camera control in Zelda is a lot better than it was with Mario64. You can automatically center it by pressing the trigger button. It's also neat when you use the bow or slingshot and it puts you in a first person, Doom-like mode.

An interesting innovation is so-called Z-targeting, where you press the trigger when you're near a person, monster, or other important thing, and it automatically locks you onto it. When you're fighting, you're always facing the creature. Although sometimes this can be severely detrimental, most of the time it works well enough.

Let's get back to some of the things that irk. For one, you almost need to have a Rumble Pak ($20 US) to get all the secrets. I am not fond of the Rumble Pak. The thing tickles my hand, and scares me when there's a big jolt to it.

Second, they didn't give the characters in the game English names, but kept the stupid Japanese versions (Bandooru, Nabooru, and Rauru?? Yeah, like I'm going to remember those fucking names).

After 6 years, I was expecting something better from Nintendo. This game is good, and I'm glad I bought it, but it is a far cry from the "game of the century" it is hailed as by various video game authorities. For crying out loud, we've only had video games since 1972.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks I'm kind of sick of Zelda and want to play Tomb Raider III (which I know will be lackluster). In a few months there will probably be an adventure game that's a lot better than Zelda64, but for now it's probably the most fun out there.

Either that, or Tomb Raider III. At least Nintendo doesn't have to bank on a pair of large animated breasts to sell the damn game.

Loud Bassoon rating scale

Review by Eggle