Ocarina of Time had to solve a problem every earlier Zelda had avoided: how do you fight with a sword when the enemy can be anywhere around you in three dimensions? Nintendo’s answer was to let the player hold the N64 pad’s Z trigger near an enemy. “Holding the Z-trigger when close enough to an enemy activates a thirdperson, locked-on perspective,” Edge explained, “with strafing a simple matter of moving left or right.” The camera stayed on the target, Link circled it, and the fight became something you could read. “Z-targeting” was copied for years afterwards. In 2011 Edge could still say that Ocarina “proved Nintendo’s Z-targeting had successfully tamed the wild frontier of 3D thirdperson combat”.
The game took three years and a large team, and it arrived late in 1998 to reviews few games have matched. Edge gave it ten out of ten and called it “a work of genius”.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Nintendo
- Producer: Shigeru Miyamoto
- Directors: four, each in charge of one part of the game; Miyamoto named Toru Osawa, Yoshiaki Koizumi and Yoichi Yamada among them
- Dungeon design: mainly Eiji Aonuma, in his first Zelda
- Released: Japan, 21 November 1998; North America, 23 November 1998; UK, 11 December 1998, at £50
- Format: 256-megabit Nintendo 64 cartridge
- Reception: ten out of ten in Edge; a Metascore of 99
Three years in the making
The game was first meant for the 64DD, Nintendo’s planned magnetic-disk drive for the N64; Edge reported in 1997 that it had been “originally slated for a 64DD release” before it moved to cartridge. It became one of the largest projects Nintendo had attempted. Edge’s Christmas 1998 editorial counted “a core team of nearly 50 staff” over three years, about 120 people including peripheral staff, and Nintendo’s own motion-capture studio, where almost every animation was recorded and “technicians even built an artificial horse”. The game had “four separate directors, each dedicated to a specific element such as character creation or combat”, and only when their pieces were done could Miyamoto, as producer, bring it together.
Miyamoto described the arrangement to Nintendo Power in the summer of 1998: “I was a director for the development of Mario 64, but I’m the producer this time. There are four different directors for Zelda. I have to listen to the opinions and ideas of each of them. It’s a tough job coordinating all of their efforts.” The sword fighting was captured from a professional actor who did samurai sword stunts at Eiga Mura, a film-studio theme park in Kyoto. Yoshiaki Koizumi, described by the British magazine Arcade as Zelda’s graphics director, explained the lighting: “Light source calculation is being done for every frame.”
Eiji Aonuma, who had joined Nintendo in 1988 and directed his own Zelda-like game, Marvelous, was mainly responsible for the dungeon design. He later traced the dungeons to an interest in “the relationship between architecture and 3D shapes”. Edge would remember him as “the chief architect of Ocarina’s notorious Water Temple”.
Seven years apart
Link starts the game as a boy in the Kokiri forest. He collects three gems and the Ocarina of Time and opens the Temple of Time, and then the story jumps forward. “Link finds himself in a changed world seven years later,” Nintendo Power explained before release, and must travel “back and forth in time” to finish the quest. The magazine was keen to correct one misunderstanding: “the Ocarina isn’t the agent of time travel at all. Rather, it is the Master Sword that alters Link’s time line.”
The ocarina still mattered. Link plays “simple ditties” on it with the pad’s yellow C buttons at key points in the game, and Edge thought that “an ingenious touch that adds a new dimension to gameplay”. Hyrule itself impressed the magazine most: “rising and setting suns, flowing rivers, waterfalls, lakes, deserts, towns”, vast open expanses “with no pop-up”, sandstorms and “the melting hues of sunrise and sunset”. Jumping was handled automatically, “a conscious attempt to differentiate the gameplay from Mario’s”. Its only real complaint was the “occasionally ponderous bouts of text”. The review closed: “the game singlehandedly restores the faith in both the creative might of Nintendo and in the power of the videogame as an entertainment medium. A work of genius.”
Reception and sales
The game sold quickly everywhere. Edge reported first-week sales in Japan of “a reported 386,234 copies”, ahead of Konami’s Metal Gear Solid, and American pre-orders of 325,000. In the UK it went on sale on 11 December 1998 with an initial 250,000 cartridges. A month later Edge noted that it had taken 39 days to become the best-selling game of 1998 in the United States.
Edge’s ten was only the third it had given. By the magazine’s tenth birthday in 2003 the list stood at four: Super Mario 64, Gran Turismo, Ocarina of Time and Halo. The review aggregator Metacritic gives the game a score of 99 from 22 critics.
Later versions
A remixed version, Master Quest, was a leftover from a planned 64DD expansion, Ura Zelda, that never came out; Nintendo released it on the GameCube as a promotional bonus alongside The Wind Waker, with the dungeons rearranged. In 2011 Grezzo remade the game for the Nintendo 3DS as Ocarina of Time 3D, released on 17 June in Britain. Edge found it “inch-for-inch Ocarina”, with sharper textures and models redrawn to match the original concept art, and the lock-on moved to the L button: “L-targeting (migrating from N64’s Z)”.
Sources
- Edge issue 66, Christmas 1998: editorial (three years, nearly 50 core staff and about 120 in all, the motion-capture studio and artificial horse, four directors, Miyamoto as producer, 256Mbit, £50); news (US release planned for 23 November); review, pp. 84–87 (the Z-trigger lock-on, automatic jumps, the ocarina and C buttons, Hyrule, the text, “A work of genius”, ten out of ten, UK release 11 December).
- Edge issue 67, January 1999, news, “Nintendo’s new Zelda instalment sells a million”: Japanese first-week sales, US pre-orders, the UK launch.
- Edge issue 68, February 1999: 39 days to become the best-selling game of 1998 in the US.
- Edge issue 46, June 1997, news: Zelda “originally slated for a 64DD release”.
- Nintendo Power issue 111, August 1998: interview with Shigeru Miyamoto (producer, four directors, the samurai stunt actor from Eiga Mura).
- Nintendo Power issue 112, September 1998: “Young and old Link” (the three gems, the Temple of Time, the Master Sword, seven years).
- Arcade issue 1, December 1998: Zelda preview with Yoshiaki Koizumi on the lighting.
- Edge issue 150, June 2005, pp. 72–76, and issue 210, January 2010, pp. 60–63: Eiji Aonuma on the dungeons and the Water Temple (see the Eiji Aonuma entry).
- Edge issue 229, July 2011, p. 66: Ocarina of Time 3D review (Grezzo, 17 June release, Master Quest and Ura Zelda, L-targeting).
- Edge issue 234, December 2011: Skyward Sword review (Z-targeting “tamed the wild frontier of 3D thirdperson combat”).
- For Edge’s ten-out-of-ten games, see the Edge and Halo entries and the issues they cite.
- Wikipedia, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (web, secondary): the Japanese release date, 21 November 1998. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time
- Metacritic, “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” (web, secondary): Metascore 99 from 22 critic reviews. https://www.metacritic.com/game/the-legend-of-zelda-ocarina-of-time/