The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Ocarina of Time (ゼルダの伝説：　時のオカリナ, Zeruda no Densetsu: Toki no Okarina), the first Zelda game released for the Nintendo 64, was undoubtedly one of the most highly anticipated games of its age. It is also widely considered to be one of the greatest video games ever created. Released on November 23, 1998, it was the first of The Legend of Zelda series to be in 3D (previous games of the series had utilized a front or top-down view).

It is generally considered to be a classic, most famously scoring a perfect 40/40 in Famitsu Magazine - a feat which only ten games have ever achieved, the nine others being The Wind Waker, Nintendogs, Vagrant Story, Soulcalibur, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Final Fantasy XII, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, 428: Fūsasareta Shibuya de and Dragon Quest IX. It is considered by many to be the best game ever released on any console. G4 television claimed it "the #1 game of all time" as well as Nintendo Power. Ocarina of Time is listed in Guinness World Records - Gamer's Edition 2008, as the highest ranked game of all time.

Events leading up to Ocarina of Time
A war occurred approximately ten years before Ocarina of Time's story begins, known as the Hyrulian Civil War. This war explains the origins of several characters and provides extra backstory to their motives.

The Boy Without a Fairy
In the Kokiri Forest, all the forest children had their own guardian fairies, bestowed upon them by the Great Deku Tree... except for one boy, plagued by nightmares of a girl fleeing an evil man clad in black.

His name is Link. For as long as he could remember, the lonely boy had been ostracized by the other children, never quite fitting in.

That is, until one day when the Great Deku Tree, as he neared death, sent Navi the fairy to deliver the lad a summons. In order to test young Link’s courage, the Great Deku Tree bade Link to venture inside his hollow and break the death curse cast upon him by a wicked man in black.

Link did so without hesitation, but his efforts were for naught; the Great Deku Tree’s death was sealed in the pages of fate before his attempt had even began. With his last breath, the Great Deku Tree bestowed upon Link the Spiritual Stone of the Forest, the Kokiri's Emerald, and entreated him with a mission: travel to Hyrule Castle and seek an audience with Princess Zelda.

After traveling across Hyrule Field and passing through the Castle Town, Link quickly realized that speaking to the princess of Hyrule would not be a simple matter of knocking on the front door. The gatekeeper denied him entrance, laughing at the notion that a young boy would be given the audience of the royal princess of Hyrule.

Forced to take matters into his own hands, Link infiltrated the castle, bypassing the frontal gate and evading all the guards in his path. When he reached the castle itself, the raised drawbridge seemed an insurmountable obstacle. However, Link was soon able to discover an unguarded water drain in the castle moat. Barely fitting through the small opening, he managed to squeeze through the hole, emerging within the castle garden. Many more guards were on patrol here, but in a daring display of courage, Link was able to evade them all, penetrating the castle courtyard.

It was in this courtyard where his fate was to converge with the young princess of Hyrule.

Princess Zelda told Link of her prophetic dreams, that she had seen him come from the forest and break through the veil of darkness, bearing hence a green and shining stone, accompanied by a fairy guide. She also warned him of Ganondorf, the desert man clad in black, and his evil intention to steal the Triforce of Legend from the Sacred Realm. With the power of the goddesses, his desire to subjugate the world would be realized. In order to do this, Ganondorf required not only the three Spiritual Stones of Hyrule, but also the mystical Ocarina of Time.

Zelda insisted that Link track down the other two Spiritual Stones, so that they might beat Ganondorf to the Triforce and put an end to his plot.

Link set out for Death Mountain and Zora’s Domain, where he succeeded in assisting both the Gorons and the Zoras in quelling the calamities that Ganondorf had wrought in his pursuit of the Triforce and was awarded with the other two Spiritual Stones, the Goron's Ruby and Zora's Sapphire, for his efforts.

He then returned to Hyrule Castle to inform Zelda of his success... only to witness his nightmare come to pass. Ganondorf attacked Hyrule Castle, in an attempt to steal the Ocarina of Time, and Princess Zelda was forced to flee with her loyal attendant Impa in order to keep the sacred relic out of from Ganondorf’s hands. As she passed Link on the drawbridge of Hyrule Castle Town, she threw the ocarina into the moat to give him the chance to enter the Sacred Realm and retrieve the Triforce. In hot pursuit, Ganondorf charged across the drawbridge, blasting Link with dark magic when he tried to stand in his way. Dismissing Link as no credible threat to his power, he sped off in his pursuit of the princess. Link made his way to the Temple of Time, and proceeded to use the four keys to open the Door of Time. Beyond it lay the Master Sword, the blade of evil’s bane, resting in the Pedestal of Time. Link withdrew the blade, unlocking the gateway to the Sacred Realm. But then something no one could have anticipated happened...the Master Sword, though it accepted Link as its wielder, sealed him away in the Sacred Realm. Ganondorf, who had suspected that Link might have already held the keys to the Sacred Realm, mocked him for practically giving him the Triforce. As Link watched helplessly, Ganondorf passed him by and crossed over into the Sacred Realm... the final thing he saw as everything faded into light...

The Hero of Time
The Triforce is a scale that measures the three virtues ruled by the goddesses...Power, Wisdom, and Courage. If the heart of one who holds the sacred triangle carries all three of these forces in balance, that one will acquire the Triforce intact, the divine authority to govern all...however, if one’s heart is not in balance, the Triforce will separate into three parts, and only one part will remain for the one who touched the Triforce...that part which embodies the force that one most believes in.

If an unbalanced heart would seek the Triforce, then that one must strive to acquire the two lost parts, which will rest within two others chosen by destiny who will hold the crest of the goddesses on the backs of their hands.

When Ganondorf laid his hands upon the Triforce, the prophecy came to pass...the Triforce split into its three parts, and only the Triforce of Power remained for Ganondorf.

Ganondorf proceeded to conquer the Sacred Realm, and became the self-proclaimed King of Evil, but his lust for power was not yet satisfied. In order to gain complete mastery of the world, Ganondorf started hunting for those chosen by the goddesses to hold the other two Triforce parts that had escaped his grasp.

There also existed a prophecy of deliverance from evil...it spoke of six Sages, who dwelt in six temples. Together with a hero chosen by the goddesses, the awakened ones would bind the evil power and return the light of peace to the world.

Because of the evil power that now flowed from the sacred temples, however, the sages could not hear the awakening call from the Sacred Realm, and so over seven brutal years Ganondorf’s powers of darkness, enhanced by the Triforce of Power, ran unchecked across all of Hyrule.

However, his hunt for the other two pieces was in vain, for their bearers had all but disappeared from the world. His search for Princess Zelda was similarly futile, for she had gone into hiding. Still, Ganondorf’s power went virtually unopposed, and he transformed the once-pristine land into a world of monsters and darkness.

When it seemed that all hope had died, a miracle came in the form of a young man clothed in green, the long-lost Link, who appeared as if from nowhere. A mysterious man named Sheik, one of the survivors of the ancient Sheikah tribe, told him of Ganondorf’s conquest over the last seven years, and of the legend of the sages. Wielding the blade of evil’s bane, Link set out to break the curse on all of the sacred temples.

With this was done, he then returned to the Temple of Time and discovered that there was in fact a seventh sage: Sheik, who was in fact Princess Zelda herself in disguise as a Sheikah to avoid Ganondorf’s pursuits and to await Link’s return all along.

Princess Zelda had been the one chosen to receive the Triforce of Wisdom, and Link in turn had received the third piece, the Triforce of Courage. Link had been completely unaware of this. In revealing herself to him, however, Zelda also exposed herself to Ganondorf, who had been waiting for a moment such as this and promptly kidnapped her, bringing her to his tower fortress, constructed where Hyrule Castle had once stood before its destruction.

Link broke the barrier around the fortress with the help of the six awakened sages. Storming the keep, he confronted Ganondorf, and a climactic battle unfolded over the fate of Hyrule and the Triforce.

Without a strong and righteous mind, Ganondorf could not control the power of the gods, and so he was felled by Link’s hand. The sages, their power now restored, cast the evil incarnation of darkness into the void of the evil realm that had once been the Sacred Realm before Ganondorf's taint. Princess Zelda herself then sealed the gateway, and thus, Ganondorf the dark lord vanished from Hyrule.

Zelda then instructed Link to lay the Master Sword to rest and close the Door of Time, and he returned to his original time, becoming a child once more. Link, who traveled through time to save the land, would be forever known in legend as the Hero of Time.

Timelines
In most timelines, Ocarina of Time is generally considered to take place chronologically first out of all The Legend of Zelda games (or at least very early on). Recently (since the release of The Minish Cap'') it is thought by some to be the second or even third game chronologically.

However, disputes arise as to the precise nature of the timeline established at the end of the game. Whether that involves a new timeline created in which Ganondorf will not exist in Hyrule, or whether Link was merely sent back to the timeline he was already in whenever he placed the Master Sword back in the Pedestal of Time is not at all clear from the ending sequence, and is an issue of contention among Zelda timeline theorists to this day.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Ocarina of Time was revolutionary for its time. All of the previous games of the series, though they had the same core of exploration, dungeons, puzzles and using items, had nowhere near the same effect.

The three-dimensional environment, the enhanced sound, and the greater graphical capacity of the Nintendo 64 allowed Nintendo to create a truly immersive environment beyond that which had ever been done before, allowing for greater separation between cheerful environments, such as Hyrule Castle Town and Kokiri Forest, and comparatively dark areas such as Ganon's Tower and the Shadow Temple. The unique gameplay mechanics created in Ocarina of Time were so revolutionary, they were often used in games created later, and its influence continues to be felt today.

Cartridge Versions
There are three different versions of game cartridges: 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. The differences are minor, but include cartridge color (1.1 and 1.2 are gray, 1.0 can be gold or gray) and the swordless glitch in 1.0 that was fixed in 1.1. Also from version 1.0 to version 1.1, a glitch where you could steal the fishing pole was removed. From version 1.1 to 1.2 the color of Ganon's blood was changed from red to green. Minor glitches in the Twinrova fight scene were corrected. The background music of the Fire Temple was altered to edit out a choir that Nintendo felt resembled a holy Muslim chant to avoid offending Muslims. Another oddity involving Islam culture was the emblem on the Mirror Shield. In version 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 the shield's design was a crescent moon and a star, also a symbol associated with Islamic culture. The shield design was changed in the GameCube version. The symbol is also seen on other more minor objects such as blocks.

Ports and Remakes
Ocarina of Time was ported to the GameCube twice. Once was for a pre-order bonus for The Wind Waker in which you would receive Master Quest (the Wind Waker/Ocarina of Time/OoT: Master Quest bundle was available as a "limited edition" general release in the UK, in addition to preorders). The second time was for a special GameCube bundle that came with The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition.

The original Nintendo 64 version is available for download on the Wii's Virtual Console for 1000 Wii Points. The Virtual Console does not support the rumble feature.

Trivia

 * With the release of Ocarina of Time, the original Japanese Zelda logo was discarded in favor of the now-classic western logo (first seen in A Link to the Past).

Related Articles

 * The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest

Links and Reviews

 * Ocarina of Time page on ZU: Includes maps, strategies, game info and more.
 * Ocarina of Time review on VGRC.net: 9.75 out of 10
 * : Good site with general information. Very extensive as far as glitches within the game. Very fun.
 * Ocarina of Time review on IGN.com: "IGN64 reviews the biggest game of the decade. Does Zelda 64 live up to the hype?"