The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• 1. Introduction

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  The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time holds an average score of 99/100 on Metacritic, the highest of any game on that review aggregator. Nintendo developed and published it for the Nintendo 64, and it was the first Zelda game built in three dimensions. It reached Japan and North America in November 1998. The player takes the role of Link, a boy in the kingdom of Hyrule who must stop the evil king Ganondorf. The journey runs through dungeons and across time, and the player must play songs on an ocarina to progress. Behind the acclaim sit three puzzles of the game's own. How did a team new to 3D invent controls that later games adopted? Why did the project leave a planned disk drive for a cartridge? And how did a second, harder version end up waiting for a different console?

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• 2. Locking On

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  Z-targeting lets the player lock Link's focus on an enemy or object, and the camera then follows that target while Link constantly faces it. Arrows and other projectiles fly toward the locked target without manual aiming. Link fights mainly with a sword and shield, and he can also use bombs and magic spells.

  Yoshiaki Koizumi changed the look of the targeting marker, which began as a generic symbol. He redesigned it as a fairy to make it feel less "robotic". Staff began calling it the "Fairy Navigation System", the nickname shrank to "Navi", and a character was born. That birth became a pivotal point in the story's development. In play, Navi also offers hints and advice.

  One button on the Nintendo 64 controller can carry several jobs, which simplified the control scheme. The on-screen display shows what will happen when the button is pressed, and it changes with what Link is doing. Standing beside a box, the button makes Link push it. Pushing the analog stick toward the box makes him climb on it instead. Reviewers counted the system among the game's strongest elements, though they noted it sometimes caused unintended actions.

  Camera control in Ocarina of Time is far more limited than in Super Mario 64, and the game's AI handles much of it. Shigeru Miyamoto said this reflects a focus on the world, while Mario's camera centers on the character. Reviewers quoted the camera as making combat "second nature", although the system took time to learn. Miyamoto had first planned a first-person view so players could take in the vast terrain of Hyrule Field. He dropped the idea once a child Link entered the design, because Link had to be visible on screen. For the sword fighting, he looked to chanbara, the Japanese samurai genre.

  One side quest is a trading sequence of ten items with non-player characters. It ends with Link receiving the two-handed Biggoron Sword, the strongest sword in the game. Another side quest gives Link a horse, which lets him travel faster but limits him to attacking with arrows while riding.

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• 3. Seven Years Asleep

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  In Kokiri Forest, every child has a fairy companion except Link, until the Great Deku Tree instructs Navi to guide him. Navi wakes Link from a nightmare in which a man in black armor pursues a young girl on horseback. The Great Deku Tree has been cursed by a "wicked man of the desert". Before dying, he gives Link the Spiritual Stone of the Forest and sends him to Hyrule Castle.

  In the castle garden, Princess Zelda tells Link that Ganondorf, the Gerudo king, is seeking the Triforce, a holy relic that grants godlike power. She asks Link to gather three Spiritual Stones and reach the Sacred Realm first. Darunia, leader of the Gorons, gives him the second stone, and Ruto, princess of the Zoras, gives him the third. Back at the castle, Link watches Ganondorf chase Zelda and her Sheikah caretaker Impa on horseback, just as in his nightmare. He fails to stop him.

  Inside the Temple of Time, Link uses the Ocarina of Time, a gift from Zelda, together with the stones to open a door. There he finds the Master Sword. As he pulls it from its pedestal, he is incapacitated, and Ganondorf appears to mock him for gathering the stones on his behalf.

  Seven years later, an older Link wakes in the Sacred Realm, where Rauru, one of seven Sages, explains what happened. The Master Sword was the key to the Sacred Realm, and pulling it let Ganondorf enter and claim the Triforce. Link's spirit was sealed until he was old enough to wield the blade. Meanwhile Ganondorf has taken over Hyrule.

  Five of the seven Sages do not know their own identities. A mysterious young Sheikah named Sheik guides Link to free five temples from Ganondorf's control. Saria becomes the Sage of the Forest Temple, Darunia of the Fire Temple, and Ruto of the Water Temple. Impa takes the Shadow Temple, and Nabooru, leader of the Gerudo in Ganondorf's absence, takes the Spirit Temple.

  Returning the Master Sword to its pedestal sends Link back to his childhood, and taking it again returns him to adulthood. The two Links have different strengths. Only adult Link can use the Fairy Bow, and only young Link can squeeze through certain small passages.

  Once the five Sages awaken, Sheik is revealed to be Zelda in disguise, and she is the seventh Sage. She explains that Ganondorf's heart was unbalanced, so the Triforce split into three pieces. Ganondorf took only the Triforce of Power. Zelda holds the Triforce of Wisdom, and Link the Triforce of Courage.

  Ganondorf then traps Zelda in a large crystal and teleports her to his castle. He wants her piece and Link's piece to increase his power. With help from the other six Sages, Link enters the stronghold and frees her after defeating Ganondorf, who brings the castle down around them. Ganondorf then climbs out of the rubble and uses the Triforce of Power to become a boar-like beast named Ganon. He knocks the Master Sword from Link's hand, but with Zelda's aid Link retrieves it and wins. The seven Sages seal Ganondorf in the Sacred Realm, and a vow of revenge accompanies his imprisonment.

  Zelda uses the Ocarina of Time to send Link back to his childhood. Navi departs, and the young Link meets Zelda in the castle garden once more. This time he passes on what he knows of Hyrule's fate, so that its decline can be prevented.

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• 4. Hyrule Under Construction

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  Hyrule Field sits at the center of the map, with the peoples of the kingdom living in regions around it. Death Mountain belongs to the Gorons, rock-consuming creatures. The Zora are fish-like and caught in the middle of a crisis. The secluded western desert is home to the Gerudo, a population mostly of women who serve a king born once every century. Lon Lon Ranch, renowned for its horses and high-quality milk, stands in the middle of the field. Lake Hylia, a fishing attraction to the south, hides the Water Temple.

  For the market below Hyrule Castle, Shigeru Miyamoto traveled to Germany to study the half-timbered architecture of Lower Franconia. He spent a few weeks in northern Bavaria. The towns of Ocarina of Time were based on medieval Europe.

  Work began in 1994 inside Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis & Development division, alongside Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. The budget exceeded $12 million, and the staff numbered more than 200. Miyamoto, who had been principal director and producer on Super Mario 64, now acted as producer and supervisor over five directors. Splitting the parts among different directors was a new strategy for the division. Early teams ran separate experiments on scenario, Link's actions, camera, motion capture, sound, special effects, and the flow of time. Eiji Aonuma designed the dungeons. Assistant director Makoto Miyanaga recalled a "passion for creating something new and unprecedented".

  Streaming 500 motion-captured character animations demanded more data throughput than the 64DD disk drive could offer, so development moved to cartridge. The target of 16 megabytes grew to 32 megabytes, making it Nintendo's largest game ever. The team had feared that cartridge limits might force a structure like Super Mario 64, with Ganondorf's castle as a hub and paintings as portals. One idea from that stage survived. A Ganondorf doppelganger who rides through paintings became the boss of the Forest Temple.

  Takumi Kawagoe, a cutscene director, wanted players to feel in control of the action. All the cutscenes, totaling more than 90 minutes, are generated in real time on the Nintendo 64 rather than played as prerendered video. A small team of 3 to 7 cinematic developers could therefore keep adjusting the storyline until the final months. Toru Osawa created the story from an idea by Miyamoto and Koizumi, supported by Kensuke Tanabe.

  The game began on the Super Mario 64 engine but was so heavily modified that Miyamoto considers them different engines. Some of his ideas went into Super Mario 64 because it would ship first, and others fell to time constraints. Miyamoto also wanted Ocarina of Time to be easier than Super Mario 64. A storytelling shopkeeper called "Hobbit" was slated for removal, then repurposed as the Deku Scrubs.

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• 5. Five Notes

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  The Nintendo 64 controller's button layout resembles the holes of the ocarina in the game, and that resemblance shapes how Koji Kondo's music works. Kondo, who composed for most Zelda games, built every song from the five notes an ocarina offers. Players can bend pitches with the analog stick for extra tones. Kondo called creating distinct themes on such a limited scale a "major challenge" but felt the result was very natural.

  Link receives a first ocarina near the start of the game, and the Ocarina of Time replaces it later. He learns twelve melodies that solve music-based puzzles and teleport him to locations he has already visited. The game's popularity led to an increase in ocarina sales.

  Areas of Hyrule have their own pieces of music, as characters do. Critics described this as leitmotif in reverse, because the music introduces a stationary place as the player approaches rather than announcing an arriving character. In some places the music varies an ocarina tune the player has learned.

  Pony Canyon published the official soundtrack in Japan on the 18th of December 1998, as a single compact disc of 82 tracks. An American version had fewer tracks and different artwork. IGN was disappointed that the traditional Zelda overworld theme was missing. In 2001, GameSpot named it one of the top ten video game soundtracks. Pitchfork gave the album 9 out of 10.

  The original theme for the Fire Temple contained a sample of the adhan, an Islamic call to prayer. The sample came from a commercially available sound library, and the developers did not realize it carried Islamic references. Nintendo removed it because of its policy against real religious references. Many people believe public outcry caused the change, but the altered versions were made before the original release.

  In 1999, SM Records released Hyrule Symphony in Japan, a live album of twelve orchestrated songs arranged by Ryuichi Katsumata. In 2017, the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra recorded the score as Hero of Time for the label Materia Collective, with a vinyl edition from iam8bit. That recording earned a nomination at the 16th Annual Game Audio Network Guild Awards. In 2011, owners of the 3DS version could receive a free 51-track limited edition soundtrack by mail through a Club Nintendo offer.

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• 6. A Holiday Gamble

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  Nintendo first showed Ocarina of Time as a technical and thematic demonstration video at its Shoshinkai trade show in December 1995. The plan was to launch the Nintendo 64 with Super Mario 64 and release Ocarina of Time later for the 64DD disk drive, with an expansion disk to follow. Trouble with the 64DD moved the game to cartridge, so it missed the 1997 holiday season and slipped into 1998. Miyamoto also blamed Nintendo's decision to prioritize Yoshi's Story, plus a wish to compete better with Banjo-Kazooie.

  The pressure was considerable. Next Generation wrote that "Nintendo absolutely can't afford another holiday season without a real marquee title". It called Zelda one of the most anticipated games of the decade, with the console's fate resting on it. Nintendo spent $10 million on marketing. In March 1998 it was the most anticipated Nintendo 64 game in Japan. At E3 1998, chairman Howard Lincoln insisted that Zelda ship on time and become a reinvigorating blockbuster, like a hit Hollywood movie.

  North American customers who pre-ordered received a limited-edition box with a golden plastic card reading "Collector's Edition". The box held a gold-colored cartridge, a tradition begun with the original Legend of Zelda in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. On the 3rd of November 1998, Electronics Boutique stopped presales because demand was so great. The game reached PAL regions the following month.

  In the United States, more than 500,000 pre-orders were placed, more than triple the number for any previous game. That earned a Guinness World Record for Most Advance Orders for a Game. More than 1 million copies sold there in under a week. For 1998, 2.5 million copies sold even though the game came out only 39 days before the year ended. Its revenue beat every Hollywood film in the last six weeks of 1998. It was the best-selling game of 1998 in American dollar sales and second in units, behind GoldenEye 007.

  In Japan, 920,000 copies sold in 1998, making it the eighth best-selling game of that year. Its 386,234 copies in the first week there beat the 316,000 first-week sales of Metal Gear Solid. In Europe it was the fifth best-selling game of 1998, grossing more than 39,000,000 euros. In the UK it sold 61,232 copies on its first weekend, a record until Gran Turismo 2 arrived in 2000. Worldwide, 7.6 million copies sold on the Nintendo 64.

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• 7. The Second Quest

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  Ura Zelda, commonly translated as Another Zelda, was the working title of a second version that Nintendo built after finishing Ocarina of Time. The original game had been designed to access data stored on a 64DD disk, and Ura Zelda was meant for that format. It had rearranged dungeons and new material, some of it cut from the original for time and storage reasons. In a 1998 interview with IGN, Miyamoto expected a 1999 release but admitted the 64DD might not appear. He added that a special edition could be needed in that case.

  The 64DD was never released outside Japan. Ura Zelda was finished by August 2000, and Nintendo considered ways to release it, including tie-ups with game magazines. It never came out for the Nintendo 64 because manufacturing cartridges was too expensive. Miyamoto said in August 2000 that no online functions had ever been planned for it.

  The GameCube changed the math, because it used less expensive optical discs. The game was released there in Japan in 2002 and in North America and Europe in 2003 as Ocarina of Time Master Quest. Miyamoto said it was simple to port because it used few 64DD features. Master Quest keeps the engine and plot but raises the difficulty and alters dungeons and puzzles.

  Peer Schneider of IGN gave Master Quest a mostly positive review and compared it to the second quest of the original Legend of Zelda. He thought some redesigned areas were worse and suspected they came from "second choice" designs made during development. He still called it a "sweet surprise for any Zelda fan". Zachary Lewis of RPGamer praised the revised puzzles, which demand precise timing, but said players would be either enthralled or frustrated by the difficulty.

  The GameCube also received The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition, an emulation of the original at 640x480, double the original resolution, with progressive scan. In November 2003, the game came to the iQue Player in China as one of five games available at its release. The Wii Virtual Console version arrived in February 2007 for 1000 Wii Points. It lacks vibration, so the Stone of Agony item, which relies on the Rumble Pak, does nothing. A five-minute demo can be unlocked in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, released in 2008. The Wii U Virtual Console version arrived on the 2nd of July 2015 with vibration restored, and Nintendo Classics added the game on the 25th of October 2021.

  In June 2011, Nintendo released Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS, developed with Grezzo, an independent Japanese studio headed by Koichi Ishii. It includes Master Quest and adds touchscreen and gyroscope controls, a Boss Challenge mode, and instructional videos for stuck players. It also features a modified Water Temple with reduced difficulty.

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• 8. Verdict and Influence

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  GameSpot's Jeff Gerstmann wrote that Ocarina of Time was "a game that can't be called anything other than flawless". Most gaming publications that reviewed it awarded perfect scores, among them Famitsu, Edge, Electronic Gaming Monthly, GameSpot and IGN. GameRankings lists it at 98%. IGN called it "the new benchmark for interactive entertainment". The editors of GameTrailers called it a "walking patent office", because so many of its features became industry standard.

  Not every element won equal praise. Reviewers noted that its graphics were not always the best the console could offer. IGN judged the frame rate and textures weaker than those of Banjo-Kazooie, and it called the Hyrule Castle market "blurry". GameRevolution said the cartridge format forced "MIDI tunes that range from fair to terrible". Others found the dated audio samples a benefit and called them retro. IGN compared some of Kondo's pieces to the work of Philip Glass.

  In 1998, the game won the Grand Prize in the Interactive Art division at the Japan Media Arts Festival. It took six awards at the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, including Game of the Year. At the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards it won four categories, among them The Games Award and the Innovative Game Award. Edge gave it Game of the Year and Gameplay Innovation.

  Numerous publications ranked it the greatest video game of all time, including Edge, Entertainment Weekly, IGN, Game Informer and Nintendo Power. Official Nintendo Magazine placed it second in its list of the 100 greatest Nintendo games, behind only Super Mario Bros. Edge put it at number one in its top 100 lists of January 2000, July 2007, March 2009 and 2013. The 2009 list ended with a verdict that Nintendo made it not because it had power and wisdom, but because it had the courage to make a unique game. In May 2011, fans in an IGN tournament voted it the greatest Zelda game, beating the 2000 sequel Majora's Mask in the final round. In 2022, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted it into the World Video Game Hall of Fame.

  The game aged well. In 2007, Jeff Gerstmann gave the Virtual Console port 8.9 out of 10 and wrote that it held up surprisingly well after nine years. Master Quest holds an average of 91/100 on Metacritic.

  Dan Houser, then of Rockstar Games, said in 2012 that any maker of 3-D games who denied borrowing from Mario or Zelda on the Nintendo 64 was lying. His fellow Rockstar founder Sam Houser described Grand Theft Auto III as "Zelda meets Goodfellas". Hidetaka Miyazaki, creator of Dark Souls, said that "The Legend of Zelda became a sort of textbook for 3D action games". Hideki Kamiya cited Zelda as an influence on Okami, and Fumito Ueda cited it for Shadow of the Colossus. Amy Hennig pointed to the influence of Ocarina of Time on Soul Reaver. Hajime Tabata cited it as inspiration for the seamless open world of Final Fantasy XV.

  In November 2021, enthusiasts fully decompiled the game's ROM into human-readable C code. In March 2022, a group called Harbour Masters released a PC port named Ship of Harkinian, with widescreen support and an increased framerate.

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