Ocarina of Time Retrospective

I'm back with a big one! No disrespect towards the earlier Zelda games, but when I set out to do a full series retrospective, I was most excited to tackle the 3D titles like Ocarina of Time. This legendary title is so much bigger than it's predecessors that it demanded a more extensive reflection. I tried a new format in which I go through the game bit by bit and offer my commentary along the way. As you can tell, the video ballooned accordingly...

I apologize for such a long wait since my last video, I hope to keep the gap between videos much shorter moving forward. If you're here for my Bioshock videos, I hope you weren't too disappointed to see the return of Zelda and I promise Infinite will be the subject of my next retrospective. This project wasn't easy so please continue to show my channel some love if you like what I'm trying to do. Because this video was a little different from my others, I'm really looking for feedback on how effective the new format was. Thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy my Ocarina of Time Retrospective!

Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:30 Great Deku Tree
10:31 Dodongo's Cavern
24:02 Jabu-Jabu's Belly
30:27 Time Jump
38:59 Forest Temple
44:10 Fire Temple
48:49 Water Temple
53:20 Shadow Temple
1:01:58 Spirit Temple
1:10:10 Side Content
1:16:44 Ganondorf's Tower
1:24:40 Conclusion

Correction:
19:50 The map actually has an easy to miss indicator when an area has been cleared

[samalmighty]

Fun fact: in the OOT manga, Ganondorf mistakes Saria's ocarina for the ocarina of time, and takes it from Link. But when he realizes it's not the one, he gets angry and smashes it. I honestly think this would've been a really good way to make the player hate him if they kept it in the game

[gloom]

As for Link charging straight in Ganondorf's trap, keep in mind he has the Triforce of Courage, and not Wisdom.

[rustyshackelford]

When this came out; it was almost like my real life disappeared. For that while between starting and finishing it the adventure almost seemed real. My days consisted getting up then going to school where I thought about and talked about the game all day with my friends who were playing and feeling the same way I was. Then, coming home and playing solid until bed. I am 39 now; and hearing those songs and sound effects instantly bring back all of those emotions. It was really something special.

[noguy]

To a kid, even a young teen, the path through the game isn't as clear as you'd think....especially back in 98. Both I and my older sister, along with our friends were not on a consistent rail through the game's objectives, despite being engaged and conscious of them. Exploration is still the instinct of this game. Deku Tree to Castle is a big early game connection, but afterwards, a genuine lack of bearing, curiosity, and the game's restart locations of Link's House or dungeon make a visit to every other location on the map perfectly reasonable. Therefore, encountering Lake Hylia or Gerudo Valley earlier, as intended, is quite likely. Thus Kaepora Gaebora's intros are more natural. Struggles or hiccups unlocking Dodongo's Cavern and Jabu-Jabu or navigating Zora's River, along with curiosity have a high potential of driving the player, out into the field's other branches. Retreading and exploring all of Hyrule was a big part of my first playthrough.

[RosePigCooking]

This game was unbelievable.. my best friend would sleep over on weekends and we would play this all night.... some of my greatest memories

[rodgeroconnor]

I was 12 years old when this came out, and still to this day, every few years or so, I'll revisit Hyrule and do a playthrough. What a masterpiece.

[misterlukeflips]

This may have already been said in the comments, but there is a way to track skulltullas. On the map subscreen of the start menu, if you highlight a certain region (Lake Hylia, for instance) there will be a gold skulltulla icon next to the name. If there's no icon, there's still skulltullas. This also works in dungeons.

Great video, thanks for taking the time to make it

[tommcdonald]

My god, i was 12 and bought in on release day with paper route wages.

Having never previously played a zelda title it absolutely blew my mind and was easily the most moved i have ever been by any piece of entertainment media.

Absolutely astounding and one of the most memorable experiences of my childhood.

[Xeqxz]

I was 9 when OoT came out and I remember it being the grandest video game anyone I knew had ever seen. The world just felt so infinite with secrets and hidden areas that I thought it impossible to find them all. Nowadays when randomisers being a thing there are still new things to find, be it a business scrub, a hole or a line of dialogue; even after yearly playthroughs for almost 25 years. This will always be my farvourite game! Good video :D

[viothesheikah]

I was born a while after the N64 era, in 2007, and yet Ocarina of Time was my childhood game. My dad played it when it came out, and passed down many games he used to play to me, but when i was very young, 2 or 3 even, I watched him play Ocarina of Time. As soon as I was able to pick up a controller, I was running around Hyrule. In that sense, Ocarina of Time has always been with me.
I returned to the game when I was a bit older and did a full playthrough for myself but even by that point I knew the entire game like the back of my hand.
Ocarina of Time is a game that has truly defined me, more so than any other game in this series that I so utterly adore, and I think the fact that it can have the same magical impact it had on kids in the 90s to kids like me born in the late 2000s or any other time is a testament to how truly influential and timeless this masterpiece is.
It'll always be my favourite game, and the early memories I have of watching my father play in the family living room will always be some of my most cherished. It's a game I know I will come back to time and time again in the future just as I have done my whole life, and it'll always be with me.
Truly, a game that endures the flow of time.

[Okla_Soft]

I’ve watched all of the popular retrospectives on OOT on YouTube already, and I specifically searched for a more recent upload that I hadn’t seen before that was buried further down the results page.

Great analysis, nice voiceover work and I agree with your assessments on the whole, I’ve replayed this game likely over 100 times by now, and I’ve favored the 3DS version on Citra for a few years now, but find myself going back to the original and appreciating what they were able to accomplish back in 98’. It’s hard to state just what an impression this game made on me, even when my friends skipped over this because they wanted more “mature” themes when we were 13 years old. I never knew how important this game would become.

Great work!

[KellyKnowlesArt]

my sister and i played through this game together when we were kids. i have such fond memories of putting our heads together to solve the puzzles, and handing off the controller when things got too hard. it took us well over a year to beat it, so it really felt like a huge epic adventure! watching the credits roll after all that time was satisfying, but with a bittersweet side of "oh no, what do we do now?!?!" i'm definitely looking through nostalgia-rose-colored-glasses, but nothing's ever matched the scale of this game for me!

[jimboramba]

I was 7 when this game came out. I remember being so confused with the jump mechanic, being used to mario. But the jump mechanic coupled with the 3d dungeon design unlocked parts of my brain I never knew were there. This game made me smarter in a way.

[OpticalHeadShot]

I always love a new youtuber with long retrospectives

[ghoulie]

Fun Fact, if you play Saria's Song on the Ocarina of Time as a child Saria mentions how the Ocarina sounds different.

[douglasrau]

Man, I remember buying 3 separate player’s guides back in the day because the first 2 didn’t get me through the damn Water Temple’s raising and lowering of the water levels. And the third one, the one that actually did it, had clever remarks like “Zelda shows off an arm better than many an NFL quarterback and overthrows the Ocarina into the moat behind you”.

[midnighttornado]

I was all in on the N64 when it came out, and I was actually in my late 20's at the time. The hype for this game was real, and the game unbelievably actually lived up to the hype. Had the gold cartridge and everything. I will say this; this game introduced the lock-on targeting. The auto-jumping was also a new idea at the time, as every other game and their mothers made you have to jump over everything. Not having to worry about jumping let the player instead focus on the quests and tasks at hand instead, which was great. The game had tons of memorable moments and ideas, but that moment when you mount the sword to travel forward in time and become teen Link was mind-blowing. I don't think the idea itself was original, but the dramatic build-up and how it was presented to players was surprisingly an emotional moment.

Ocarina is definitely up there as one the all-time landmark videogames. Shigeru Miyamoto was single-handedly transforming how we played 3D games at the time. Not just on the N64, but his creativity gave the industry a kick in the proverbial ass.

[AdamEnriquez]

Fantastic video. Crazy hearing people having the exact same experiences with you in relation to a game. Most don’t understand how deep that connection can actually go. Great work helping me relive those feelings again. It was such a magical time to be alive.

[deepayne]

I need Majora’s Mask, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword. The quality of this retrospective is phenomenal and your narration is as the kids say, chef’s kiss! Keep going!!!!

[douglasrau]

The fact that you can’t get all the Gold Skulltulas initially because some require weapons like the Boomerang which you won’t have on a first visit and requiring an arbitrary return at a time of your choosing blew my mind as a kid. If you want to get all 100 of them, you even have to make a point of revisiting the Great Deku Tree, a temple you’ve already cleared, with bombs to blow up a wall to enter a formerly inaccessible area.