Shades of Resonance: Fond Reminiscence - Memory Log #51

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the ultimate example of a game for which I have great fondness but can't come up with enough words to adequately express why I feel that way about it.

This, honestly, is one of my big regrets. It started becoming so when I finished putting together my rough draft for this piece, at which point all I could think about was how inappropriate it seemed that I had so little to say about my history with Ocarina of Time and that I was about to deny it the mountains of text that I usually reserve for games of its world-changing distinction.

I feel as though I should be giving Ocarina of Time feature-length treatment, which it certainly deserves, yet I can't deny the reality that my memories of the game simply aren't structured that way.

That's to say that I don't have a true "chronology" of memories to share. I have no real "story" to tell. I recall my history with Ocarina of Time only as a series of feelings and nostalgically shaded memory fragments and mental images.

And because that's the case, I've decided that it's best for me to approach this piece from a different angle: Since I lack the wealth of material necessary to form a lengthy, coherent narrative, I'm going to instead focus mostly on what the game meant to me.

To frame it properly: Ocarina of Time is a game that held me in total captivation for the 1998 holiday season and the year in following. It's the technical marvel that showed me the true potential of 3D gaming and inspired me to dream about what the future held for these amazing next-generation consoles. And it's the masterpiece whose profound impact strongly colors my memories of the late-90s era of gaming.

It is, in my opinion, the irreplaceable 3D Legend of Zelda game.

The history leading up to my purchase of Ocarina of Time was a typical one for me: For a long period, I was largely apathetic about the game. I never read too deep into Nintendo Power's coverage of the game or looked far beyond the screenshots.

The game looked impressive, sure, but at the time, the idea of a three-dimensional Zelda just didn't sound all that appealing to me. What I was looking for, really, was more of what A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening had offered, and I wasn't convinced that a 3D Zelda could provide me that type of experience. I didn't believe that it could replicate the 2D games' style of action or overworld navigation or reproduce the sense of atmosphere that I associated with those old top-down games, which put the focus on the spaces and environments that you could see and left everything else to your imagination.

"That type of atmosphere simply can't exist in a game in which you can view the world from any angle and see well beyond the boundaries," I felt.

Now, I didn't have a learning disability or anything. I hadn't forgotten about Mario's successful jump to 3D and the hugely positive impact that Super Mario 64 had on me. So I knew that there was a possibility that the Zelda series could also find similar success in the 3D space and adapt to it just fine.

"But can a 3D Zelda actually replicate the 2D games' core elements with a high degree of authenticity and become heralded as their true evolution?" I wondered.

The more I thought about it, the more I leaned toward "no."

What made me doubt the possibility was my reflecting upon the way in which Super Mario 64 had achieved its success: It didn't do so by seeking to evolve its 2D predecessors' underpinning formulas or replicate their unmistakable graphical values, no, but by instead endeavoring to be something entirely new. We celebrated it simply because it was, more than anything, an amazing video game. It was so transcendently great that it didn't matter to us that it didn't have much in common with games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World.

We were too awed by it to care about whether or not it was anything like the 2D games.

But that was the problem! Zelda wasn't Super Mario. Its history had already shown us that if it broke from convention, it'd produce a game whose differences were completely irreconcilable with the classic entries' (or so I thought until I finally gave Zelda II: The Adventure of Link a fair chance and realized that Zelda could indeed work very well in a different form). It had shown us that the series couldn't stray too far from the existing template without losing sense of itself.

"So what if it turns out to be the next Super Mario 64?" I thought. "It simply wouldn't be Zelda if it were 'new and different'! It'd lose way too much to capture me in the same way!"

I mean, I was still going to buy the game, anyway, because I was a Nintendo fan and I was so devoted to the Zelda series that I felt that skipping one of its entries would be akin to missing out on a major world event! But it was going to be a pure loyalty purchase; there would be no logical impetus for it.

The fact was that I simply couldn't find a compelling-enough reason to feel excited about Link's 3D debut. And I knew that I probably never would.

So my plan was to wait a few months before buying a copy of Ocarina of time. In the meantime, I'd remain focused on WCW/nWo Revenge and other recent releases. They'd keep me busy for a while, I thought.

But soon something unexpected happened: I suddenly found myself caught in the hype!

It happened because Nintendo Power was ramping up its coverage of Ocarina of Time to such an insane degree that I could no longer ignore the game or deny how awesome it was sounding. "Are you telling me that I can ride a horse anywhere I want?!" I asked enthusiastically while bearing an amazed expression.

Members of my family were talking about Ocarina of Time. Gaming magazines were continuously featuring it. And it was a frequent topic of discussion in just about every AOL chat room (hobbyist-focused or otherwise) I visited.

The hype was contagious, and once I was caught in its net, I couldn't escape. And before long, I was helpless against the power of Ocarina of Time. I had to have it!

"So why wait until next year?" I figured. "I should be there on day one!"

My decision to buy the game immediately was likely influenced by the fact that its release happened to run concurrent to my school's Thanksgiving break. And of course there was the undeniable allure of being able to play a big-time Nintendo release during one of those always-magical later-year Christmas vacation periods.

Such opportunities were precious, I knew, and I would never want to miss them.

So for that reason and plenty of others, I went out and bought Ocarina of Time as soon as it hit stores.

I vividly remember the opening moments of my Ocarina of Time experience and how the game began to exhibit its power right from the jump.

It all started with the game's curiously subdued and pleasant title-screen intro. Within seconds of seeing it and hearing it, I fell into a state of total entrancement, and consequently all of the remaining traces of apathy and cynicism were permanently cleansed from my system. The moment the intro's melancholic, highly remindful tune began emanating from my television's speaks, it was over. My defenses were eradicated, and I was fully captured.

The only thing that I cared to do in that moment was watch on silently and let the intro's emotionally drenched visuals and music absorb me.

One of the strongest factors in my submission was that I immediately recognized the tune's opening flute melody. It was a recreation of the ditty that would play whenever we would use the The Legend of Zelda's recorder item (which, coincidentally, we all called "the flute").

This one little detail brought everything home and provided Ocarina an instant nostalgic resonance.

The tune's accompanying scene, in which Link rode his horse (Epona, whose name has since become ingrained in our memories) all across Hyrule and gave us a glimpse at some of its more notable landmarks, did well to harness its energy and help it to evoke powerful feelings of wistfulness and wonder.

In that moment, I ignored any text that urged me to press the Start button. What I did, instead, was place the controller down at my side and let the intro loop over and over again.

I let it wash over me for a good five minutes or so.

Thinking about that indelible scene now, I feel even sadder that I don't have much of a story to tell past this point. But that's just how it is: I simply don't remember a whole lot about my first play-through's minute-to-minute progression--about the places to which I traveled initially or what I was thinking or feeling whenever I discovered a new location.

All I have, really, are the scattered memories that have stuck with me all of these years. I remember, for instance, the opening moments in which I ran about the wondrous, sun-drenched Kokiri forest and tested out Link's new three-dimensional abilities (the sense of enormity that I felt during this particular experience was equivalent to the one that overcame me the first time that I made Mario run in circles using the analog stick, which is to say that it was majorly impactful) and generally got a sense of Ocarina's world.

It all felt magical.

I recall, also, other memorable moments like my first meeting with the incomparable Great Deku Tree and how his mere presence informed me of the enormous scope of Ocarina's creative ambition; my first steps into the mind-blowingly massive Hyrule Field and how I became filled with goosebumps when the wonderfully rousing Hyrule Field theme kicked in and worked to further enrapture me; my first time seeing the breathtakingly pre-rendered Temple of Time and the visual against which it was set: the enchantingly ominous, imagination-stirring Death Mountain; how I aimlessly ran up the stairs to the east and suddenly found myself in the grasp of the familiar, utterly wistful Kakariko theme, which I never expected to hear in a 3D game; and the time when my brother, James, happily strutted his way into the den at the exact moment that I initiated dialogue with the carpenters' boss, whose incredibly raucous greeting ("HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!") sent him recoiling back in terror and caused him to raise his arms to chest-level and do so as if he was preparing to be trampled by a riotous mob.

Maybe I shouldn't have had the volume turned up that high.

There were plenty of other memorable moments, too, like when I peeked into the Hyrule Castle interior and excitedly discovered a hidden portrait of Mario and his crew. My frightening encounters with the reDeads. Experimenting with the surprisingly versatile Ocarina of Time. Running through the Forest Temple's awe-inspiring twisting hallway. Exploring the impressively designed domains of the Gorons and the reimagined Zora race. Fishing in a three-dimensional space. Riding Epona for the first time. Finally unlocking the Temple of Time's secret and claiming the Master Sword. And being overcome with feelings of nostalgia as the incredibly invigorating, goosebumps-inducing Master Sword-obtention theme majestically resounded throughout the pedestal room in the same way that it did six years earlier when I obtained the Master Sword in A Link to the Past.

Then there was the intense battle with Dark Link, which was fought within the confines of an illusory placid spring. The encounter with Ganondorf and playing projectile tennis in a 3D space for the first time. The surprise appearance by the giant pig version of Ganon and the epic battle that ensued. And, of course, Navi's persistent pestering, which was annoying yet endearing in a way (that's to say that it wasn't as obnoxious as the endless hounding and uninvited chatter that was heaped upon you in future series games by the "helpers" that she inspired).

Really, I'd wind up listing every memorable "first moment" if the consequences of such didn't entail Blogger running out of available server space. So I'll stop there and let these mountains of text speak for themselves and give you a sense of the sheer number of special moments that I experienced in my first Ocarina of Time play-through.

At the time, Ocarina of Time was part of the fabric of being. It was everywhere. Its name would pop up in conversations that I was having with the people around me and with the Internet denizens with whom I was communicating on a daily basis.

When my cousins from New Jersey came to visit us for Christmas that year, we had a lot of fun talking about our personal experiences with the game. Most memorably, we shared a lot of laughs as we recalled the extremely contrived side mission in which an enormous Goron agreed to repair Young Link's broken Biggoron Sword but required that he endure a waiting period of seven years, which just happened to match the span of time that would elapse whenever he'd travel to the future and back.

"Come back in, oh, seven years," he'd say, never once stopping to rethink his practice.

Every part of that deal was hilarious to us.

And when my online cohorts and I were together in a chat, it was inevitable that one of us would attempt to communicate with the others by randomly throwing out lines of dialogue from the game. "With C! With C! Sell me something with C!" we'd repeat, partly hoping that we'd draw out a response from a lurker who had managed to figure out what that Kakariko panhandler wanted.

"FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, MAN--SELL ME SOMETHING WITH C!" I'd often type in jest. Because it perfectly captured the frustration of both the panhandler and all of the players who were desperate to figure out what the hell he desired.

At the same time, message boards were flooded with posts within which people were talking about how the game had touched them. They'd speak glowingly of the areas they liked to visit, the characters that they loved, and the dungeons they'd recently completed. And to me, seeing their reactions to the game was an essential part of the Ocarina of Time experience. It reminded me of how my friends and I used to meet up in the schoolyard each morning and talk about the progress that we were making in A Link to the Past.

It made this game, too, a shared experience and all the more special for it.

That was another type of magic that Ocarina was able to create.

To the majority of forum-goers, all of the the dungeons were hits except the Water Temple, which the consensus said was very frustrating for a number of reasons (namely for its slow rate of progression, its high level of arcanity, and its requiring that the player frequently endure the tedious process of equipping and soon unequipping the steel boots).

My opinion is that all of their criticisms are valid except for the one that concerns difficulty. Personally, I don't think that the Water Temple was all that challenging. It's more so annoying because of how easy it is to accidentally fall back down to a lower level and have to start the multi-step water-raising/lowering process all over again. That's about it, though.

But then again, I've never been stumped by dungeons that have water-raising and -lowering gimmicks or those that demand the use of spatial reasoning. Because that's just how my brain is wired.

So you'd be forgiven for not giving a lot of credibility to my argument.

You could spend so much time thinking and writing about how Ocarina of Time made you feel that it would become easy to take for granted how astoundingly great it was as a video game.

It really was mind-blowingly amazing. There was no category in which it didn't rank as near-perfect: It looked incredible. It cinematics were beautifully presented and, admirably, never put any distance between the player and the game's world. Its music was exquisite, and each of its individual tunes was all at once stirring, evocative and utterly absorbing. Its controls were excellent and allowed for Link to pull off a variety of maneuvers (in both first- and third-person views) in a smooth and hiccup-free manner. Its combat mechanics and newly introduced Z-targeting system were absolutely brilliant. Its dungeon design was so masterful that you'd have thought, if you hadn't been following the scene, that Miyamoto and his staff had been making 3D Zeldas for years. And it was packed with so much content, all of which was high in quality, that the average player would need to spend months exploring Hyrule's vast world if he or she hoped to discover all of its secrets.

I wasn't a fan of light world-dark world systems, because very few games executed them well, but I was very fond of Ocarina's and felt that it was a wildly successful take on the idea.

The key component was that Link, too, underwent a transformation during the shift from past to present and vice versa, and each of his separate age-based forms was able to wield different weapons and gain exclusive access to certain areas. This opened up the potential for scenarios in which his past and future selves had to work together and use some temporal trickery to help each other advance through the game.

Those elements were what made Ocarina's system so brilliant and so excitingly unique.

It helped that both versions of Hyrule were interesting places to visit, observe and explore. So when skillfully planned time-travel puzzle solutions helped to build bridges between them, the result was often magical-feeling.

And also, Link's fourth-dimensional escapades worked to further expand the game's already-enormous sense of scope!

It all made for a powerfully impactful, incredibly unforgettable gameplay experience.

So Ocarina of Time determinedly stomped its way across the generational barrier and triumphantly carried The Legend of Zelda series into the world of 3D. It transitioned the series in a spectacular way and consequently established it as a major force in the new generation.

Yet it didn't forget where it came from. It endeavored to be "new and different," certainly, but it also made sure to honor the 2D classics by incorporating many of their traditional elements. That helped it to capture their spirit and feel just like them at times.

It did everything that we hoped a 3D Zelda would do.

And for that reason, I consider it to be a "peak game," which is a term that I invented to describe any game that so thoroughly perfects its given formula that a sequel can't surpass it simply by making its world and its systems larger and more complex. In fact, I consider Ocarina of Time to be vastly superior to all of the subsequent 3D Zeldas, which are, in comparison, bloated, tediously paced, and so disappointingly derivative that not even their graphical, transformation-based or motion-control gimmicks can disguise their clear lack of transcendent spirit.

That's why it makes perfect sense to me that Ocarina of Time is still the highest-rated 3D Zelda game. It really is the best of them.

Yet those of us who played Ocarina know that it's so much more than a mere aggregate of high categorical rankings. We understand that its best qualities can't be measured with numbers and that its true power, rather, lies in its ability to boldly take us to wondrously new, unforgettable places and do so while encompassing everything that we loved about the 2D Zeldas and the unmistakable ways in which they presented their game worlds and invited us to explore them.

Ocarina of Time wasn't just a game that you played, no. It was, much like its antecedents, a game that you lived.

That's something that Ocarina's critics tend to miss when they rant about how "overrated" it is. They see categorical rankings as the be-all and end-all when it comes to judging games, and thus they fail to take into account that a video game can mean more to people beyond what its graphics, music, controls and other qualities communicate. There are so many other reasons why they might connect with it. It could be that playing it brings them comfort. Or maybe they're able to draw inspiration from it. Or perhaps it helps them to form closer bonds with their friends and relatives.

You can't simply dismiss how a person feels about a game. Because how a game impacts you emotionally or mentally can be an important part of how you connect with it.

The hardcore types might not want to believe it, but how a game influences and inspires you is indeed part of its value.

I mean, sure--Ocarina has its shortcomings: It has some camera issues. Its horse-riding controls don't always function as intended. It's a little more linear than we'd like to admit. And for however vast Hyrule Field is, it's disappointingly empty.

But so what? None of that should negate the fact that the game is able to positively effect your life. You can throw some honest critique at it, certainly, but you don't have to stop loving it because popular opinion suggests that it should mean less to you because the giant moblin's head is comprised of only eight polygons.

Ocarina of Time has the power to make your world a better place. What's "overrated" about that?

Over the course of the next five years, I played through Ocarina of Time four or five additional times, and I usually did so during the late-autumn months, when it would start to get dark early and I desperately needed to add some vibrancy to my life. That's a small total when it's measured against the number of times that I've played through other games that I hold dear (it's just the way things worked out, honestly), yeah, but with Ocarina, I always say, the number of play-throughs doesn't really matter. Had I played it only one time, I'd still feel the same way about it. I'd still have the same vivid memories, and I'd still fondly remember the time that I spent with it.

Even though I'm unable to recall every step of my journey through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, its best parts, of which there are a great many, strongly resonate with me, and I'm sure that they'll continue to do so for as long as I live. And for certain, Ocarina of Time will continue to add rich texture to my memories of the N64, the late-90s gaming scene, and the magical Legend of Zelda series.

Now that I think about it, maybe that's all I needed to say.