god getting to the light world forest for the first time in link to the past was a dream. the way the shadows hit everything
then going up to the master sword area and seeing all the animals go across while it was eerily quiet <3
Me having my first ‘open world’ experience with TES Oblivion and not enjoying it until my inner monologue suddenly switches from “I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do” to “I can go anywhere. I CAN DO ANYTHING!” and then I am slaughtered by the guard for trying to kill the nearest random peasant.
-Sometime in 2007
The chicken snitches you
TES isn’t LoZ, buddy.
I got the master sword in TotK around release and wasn’t spoiled on the context of it. It was really cool.
I wonder if there’s a timeline where Link is wearing flood pants when he first meets Rauru on that weird fountain platform in the Chamber of Sages
I know this probably won’t get seen much now, but man that game has a special place in my heart.
Starting with the original Zelda game, my mother and I always beat them together.
We were very poor, but she always did what she had to do to get us the latest Nintendo console. She worked as a dog groomer leading up to the release of the Nintendo 64. She would be gone for 12 hours at a time, working for below minimum wage (under the table) just to get us that console.
She got Ocarina of Time for my brother and I for Christmas. She was just as excited to play it as we were, but there was no way my dad was going to let us open a Christmas present early. We only got one big present to share, and two small presents. Sometimes if my dad had saved a decent amount, we’d get the large present (usually a game), and then we’d get something that we really wanted that we didn’t have to share.
I begged my mom, she begged my dad. He wouldn’t budge. In the weeks leading up to Christmas though, she broke. She came to me with her plan. We were going to open it every day when he went to work and play it until an hour before he got home.
By the time Christmas rolled around, we were in the forest temple. He didn’t play games so he didn’t have a clue.
It was so much fun sneaking that game out with my mom and my brother. It was so much fun. Seeing how big it was for the time, we literally couldn’t believe our eyes.
Is OoT my favorite game of all time? Not anymore. It is my favorite memory of a game though, and by a long shot.
Edit, for fun.
It meant so much to me that the only boxes I still have from my childhood are my Zelda and N64 boxes.
What a wholesome memory. “Making do” can be really hard, but it also makes things like this feel that much more meaningful.
Haha I didn’t even notice that it was you again. Man.
Keep rocking, bro. Thank you.
<3
Goated mom
As a kid with controlling parents? Fantasy and science fiction were always my escapes. When we finally got this game it was my everything. Little did I know the sequel had already been out for a while. I still have so much of the game memorized. Every few years I pull out the n64 and play it again…
Me seeing the starting screen “These are the end-times… There was no hope of survival… This is how you died.” For Project Zomboid the first time. The one and only Zombie-Survival-Game that absolutely hit the nail on the head in relation to an atmosphere of despair and gritty survival.
I’m surprised that game is over ten years old already. I’ve always thought it looked really cool but I’ve never been able to bring myself to spend the money on it. Maybe I’ll catch a good sale someday. Patientgamer syndrome here
There’s Survival Crisis Z, it’s free but old. https://ska-studios.com/2007/09/07/just-a-friendly-reminder/
I think it would be been more popular today, with it’s atmosphere and horror.
Same but the 80’s and you picked up the first Triforce.
6 days after Christmas to find and beat the first dungeon without the internet? Sounds about right.
Is this real?..
Or is it Memorex?
Is it live*
Is it safe?
Yes, it’s safe, it’s very safe, it’s so safe you wouldn’t believe it.
…
No…it’s not safe, it’s very dangerous, so be careful.
Lucky you. I only had Lee Carvello’s Putting Challenge. I kept hitting the ball in the parking lot.
Would you like to play again?
I have selected no
should have picked putter instead of power drive
Even as a silent GIF I hear something like this masterful rendition of the song play in my mind’s ear.
Take me back
Beats just having it handed to you by an old man!
I recommend Tunic if you want to be 8 years old again.
What makes the OoT animation a bit cooler is that Link is older after the animation, like the beams hide him from your view and after the flash of light, he grew old (and everything else changed as well, but you only see that after leaving the cathedral)
Which seems weird when you think about it. Has he been passed out there for 7 years? How did he stay alive? Where did he get clothes that fit?
And why can he not use the Kokiri Sword as a dagger? It’s like he’s not even trying
I imagine he could, but why would he? He’s got a perfectly good sword right there!
The sages used their advanced technology to send Link into a divergent timeline but had to massively simplify their explanation for refugee child living in the woods.
So does he have memories of the past 7 years or did he just take the place of the adult Link in that timeline?
I like to think that his memory is linear and if he goes from (a) young to (b) adult and back to © young, his knowledge goes from a ➡️ a+b ➡️ a+b+c. So, his age is sort of irrelevant.
And that is why he’s called the hero of time.
I’m with you on this one.
See, to me it was more like the first level of Panzer Dragoon in 95, because yeah, I was that guy.
By 1998 it took a lot to blow my hair back, though. I’m not saying it was a better game, but FFVII had been out for a year, and Quake 2, Half-Life and MGS had come out already. Things had changed.
But hey, the good news is by the time I did get around to OOT, later and through emulation, I still thought it held up alright, even if I’m not on the same “best game ever” boat as a lot of people.
Were you older? Might be that that if they were younger and didn’t have a computer to play they just wouldn’t have the same context.
Differing opinions between generations can be largely boiled down to nostalgia and someone’s age during that period informs greatly how much they could even experience prior to [thing] to compare.
Yeah, I was in my teens and by the time the N64 came out I had a gaming PC with a proper GPU in it. Between that and the N64 launching quite late over here (and doing pretty terribly) I definitely had a different experience than all the “Nintendo SixtyFoaaaar!” kids out there.
But there are levels to it. Coming at it dispassionately in those circumstances I still played through all of Mario 64 and OoT and thought they were great and good, respectively. GoldenEye, Turok and the Banjo games not so much.
Of course that opinion also has to do with controller support on PC being utter garbage until the Xbox 360 came out. For a long time the best playing 3D games on PC that weren’t shooters or RPGs were emulated console games with a PS2 controller adaptor.
Oof, sounds like you missed the whole space sim genre then. Took extra hardware for the best experience, but even with a cheap joystick it could be amazing stuff. I enjoyed first-person shooters and the like, but TIE Fighter and Freespace were 3D to me back then. I loved my Sidewinder gamepad in that era, too.
That may or may not be why fifth-gen console 3D does next to nothing for me. Until the Dreamcast came out, it all looked way behind PC, and almost no one was doing the amazing spritework that they excelled at anymore.
Well, yeah, OK, flight sims. We had flight sims, too.
And yeah, visually PC games were way ahead of the curve, but that was part of the frustration, right? You had all these super polished, advanced graphics and you were stuck on mouse and keyboard or trying to make do with a joystick or a remedial gamepad. Even when PC pads started including some form of analog stick they were so flimsy. I was on a PS2 pad for a good long while, both for native and emulated games.
I died sooooo many times to the zombies in the castle town.
And then you got outside, there’s a fiery volcano and zombies that make Link shit himself.
Those zombies terrified me! They really slowed my progress because I avoided all the places with them.
The falling hands were also scary, but I had no idea when or where they would appear so I just had to deal with them.
That hand and the zombies gave me anxiety. I think I was scared of that dumb tall ghost thing with the extra arms all around. The one in the well. Also that gross blob that eats you and steals your equipment.
Star Control 2 on the 3DO, playing that before I’d seen a PlayStation, was this for me.
And later, FF7 was this for me.
Me with Bioshock when you descend for the first time with Andrew Ryan introducing rapture.
But tbf, imo that’s a modern game as in I don’t see much difference between that and the latest AAA single player game.
It’s nearly 20 years old now bro.
But you know what? I swear it just came out.
