The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a 1998 action-adventure game developed by Nintendo EAD for the Nintendo 64 and is the fifth game in the Legend of Zelda series. The game was very highly reviewed upon its release, receiving a 99% rating from metacritic.com, and is widely considered one of the greatest games of all time.

Fast Facts

1. Developer: Nintendo
2. Lead Designers: Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka
3. Released: November 23, 1998
4. Platforms: Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii
5. 5th installment in the long-running Legend of Zelda series
6. More then twelve million copies sold
7. Link inducted to Walk of Game
8. 1999 Game of the Year

Story

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time takes place in the fantasy land of Hyrule, and begins with Link, a young boy who lives in a village in the woods. A fairy named Navi leads Link to the Great Deku tree, an ancient living tree near the village. The Deku Tree is cursed, and requests that Link go inside the tree (actually a dungeon) and break the curse. When Link is successful, the Deku Tree gives link the Kokiri Spiritual Stone, and requests that Link go and speak with Zelda at Hyrule palace. Zelda fears that Ganondorf, a powerful and evil thief, is planning to steal the Triforce. Link then sets out on his quest to find the remaining two spiritual stones so he can unlock the Sacred Realm and retrieve the Triforce before Ganondorf.

Gameplay

In an extreme upgrade from previous entries in the series, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the first to feature a fully realized 3D version of Hyrule. You control Link from a third-person perspective as you battle monsters, plunder dungeons and speak to NPC characters in villages. The game allows a sense of “free roaming,” with certain objectives contributing the main storyline, and others for mere exploration to seek out extra items. Throughout the game you collect items that enable certain abilities, which you equip to the C buttons on the controller: the Ocarina, boomerang, and bomb among others. One of the recurrent gameplay elements throughout the game is the use of the Ocarina. As you travel in Hyrule, you'll learn various tunes for the Ocarina, which each have a different effect on the environment. Warping, calling your horse and changing the time of day are a few of the effects of the many different Ocarina songs.

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