

Sure, you couldn't have made Avengers: Infinity War with 1970s technology, but you could make a Star Wars movie people like better than the one that came out in 2018. 21 anniversary comes just weeks after another landmark for gaming - with Red Dead Redemption 2 already generating the sort of lavish praise that credibly raises the question … is it the best game of all time? The notion of "best video game" is perhaps more complicated than talking about the greatest movie of all time, even. It was a generation-defining video game that pushed the boundaries of graphics and storytelling. Should 'Ocarina of Time' Be Called the Greatest Game Ever? “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time hit North America 20 years ago this month.I decided at that moment that I had to have a Nintendo 64 and that I had to have it on day one, as I was convinced that surely Zelda would release alongside the ground-breaking console.” It was a scant 10-second video, but it was all my 13-year-old-self cared for. The 1995 show served as the Nintendo 64's coming out party: Nintendo showed off the hardware and over a dozen games, but for me, there was only one thing shown that mattered: the Zelda 64 tech demo. That year, Nintendo held what was then an annual event all their own, known as Shoshinkai, or Spaceworld.

The story of Ocarina of Time begins years before its release, in late 1995. I was, and I want to tell you all about it. To truly understand its cultural impact, you had to be there. It's still an incredible game by 2018's exacting standards of quality and presentation, but in 1998, it was legendary. It's also still the highest rated game of all time according to Metacritic. Despite its age, Ocarina's influence can be found in games big and small to this day. It's older than this site in fact, it's older than most gaming sites.

There was the slowly dawning realization that you could go practically anywhere in Grand Theft Auto 3’s Liberty City, provided you didn’t mind being shot at if you wandered into the wrong neighborhood. Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule Field changed how we think about game worlds “Video game creators have spent the last 20 years trying to fill players with the same sense of wonder they experienced the first time they set foot into The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule Field.
