Announcing The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time Zelda Game Club 

I’m here thanks to captburgerson. This is my most nostalgic game of all time. I have played through it more times than I can count in so many ways. 100%. 3 heart. Tunicless. Randomizers. Minimalist. Out of order. For this play through with the game club I will try to bring my insights I’ve found through my years of playing since launch.

Okay, so I got to Goron City and am about to go through Dodongo’s Cavern. So, there are thoughts I have about what is still the game that is my favorite and one that got me into Zelda games: •I have played a lot of the game versions before. N64 original, 3DS Remake, and am now playing the emulator Nintendo released on the Switch. The control scheme brought a shock to me as I forgot how much simpler this game was with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom being ingrained into my habits. Thus, I found Link to move both fluidly and stiffly at the same time. Running around and walking are pretty snappy, which makes it easier to fall off of ledges when I’m tight-roping, even mere small bridges like the one in Kokiri Forest. But the stiffness is in combat, in which I am used to Link reacting quicker and at more directions than what OoT Link does. It’s not terrible once I got back into my groove, but that is a fair warning for Era of the Wild players who expect an older game to play like every Zelda game. •Ocarina of Time is very exposition heavy, but it brought a lot of world-building to the point where I forgive the unskippable cutscenes. To this day, the Golden Goddesses remain ambiguous in purpose beyond just being creators who left Hyrule to its own devices with a Triforce (and a light goddess with retrospection of Skyward Sword). •Navi was oddly sassy upon meeting Link. Something that does not happen after they start their journey. A bit of a pity, but Navi gets the benefit of the doubt through being the first companion. She used to get a lot of grief in the past, but I think people have started to soften in perspective of her. She does her job really well in most cases, only being annoying when I come across certain points through back-tracking (which I remedy by focusing on the paths I have not traversed) and reminding me of a main objective hint Navi will repeat often throughout the playthrough depending on where you are (something unavoidable, but a lot more tolerable). If I had to guess, maybe the fact that Navi is so loud to get the players attention might have peeved off some people in the past, but her reliability is invaluable for players who did not memorize the layout of Ocarina of Time and main story. Lol! •The Great Deku Tree has become so much more of an enigma with the retrospective of the Era of the Wild’s Korok living conditions. For so long from childhood to adulthood, it did not occur for me to question the existence of structures inside the Deku Tree. Things like a turning spike pole that threatens Link when he rides a platform across the water. Or the main area having a platform that extends towards the middle above the giant web. Were they used by the Kokiri in the past? The existence of all these spider-webs seem to imply no one has been inside the Deku Tree for quite a long time, but the Kokiri are functionally immortal in the sense of never aging. It is bizarre. •Ghoma gives me the icks still to this day. I am not a fan of her birthing her devil spawn like pawns. Ergo, I made quick work of her before she can have a chance. Ghoma is a good tutorial boss, needing Link to take into account of the items he has to defeat her. •I will talk more about it later on down the line around the end of the game, but the Death of the Great Deku Tree and the Goron’s emphasis on being a real man really reminds of the enforced idealism of growing up too fast and the tragedy that befalls to young ones forced to do so because of circumstances. • Hah! I avoided to the pitfall of Kaepora Gaebora’s tutorial trap! I have incredible enough patience and foresight to remember it and not waste time! I am above such petty pranks! •The Stalchildren are a mystery that others have already theorized about. Makes me wonder what they, Redeads, and Stalfos would have been like in the Era of the Wild after seeing how Nintendo changed the Gibdo. •People are a lot more nasty to Link this Era. Many people were outright rude to Link, patronizing him as a kid, and the Castle Guards literally throw him out (thank god you don’t lose hearts from that, otherwise, things would have been much darker). •I need to give props of Nintendo’s use of Malon. Using Epona’s song to draw the attention of the player is great way to hint to them the path to go next. Imagine if she were silent among the crowd of NPC’s in Castle Town. •Those Rupees in the Castle in one area where the guard patrols is an absolute bait. Do not trust the video game. It will trick you into doing something needlessly risky. •God, I so was secretly hoping as a kid that Zelda would be playable in the game back then. You would think this would be fixed nowadays, but even now we still wish for a playable Zelda. Such a wasted opportunity. •Will get into more detail later in the game when we meet adult Zelda, but Princess Zelda in Ocarina of Time is my favorite version of any Zelda (though Era of the Wild Zelda has nowadays started giving OoT Zelda a run for her money). For now, Young Zelda’s design is okay. Not a fan of the royal hood obscuring her hair, but it’s not a bad design by any means. Zelda’s personality is pretty direct and assertive even for a game from the early-2000’s. •After Era of the Wild’s Link’s personality showing in the text boxes, I started noticing more OoT Link’s own personality through the texts. The sheer fact he has the option to say no in a lot of cases now gives me the belief that Link is not as altruistic in OoT as we’d think. Now, I picture him hesitating to say yes and even saying no, only to be persuaded to doing things anyways. The fact Link does not emote much is unfortunate, but I learned to appreciate the ability to be a petulant twerp when the mood suits me, such as telling Zelda no when she asks me if I’m from the forest or if she asks me to keep her secret. Even when I said no to the Great Deku Tree, he gently brooked no argument from me and just told me the story of the Triforce anyways, which tells me that he gets this sort of thing from the Kokiri or Link often. •Zelda’s Lullaby on the Ocarina is the best version in my opinion. It may have been introduced in a Link to the Past, but the Ocarina of Time version is the pinnacle version I think of when the name “Zelda’s Lullaby” pops into my head. •Peahats are the worst. Thank god they did not return in the Era of the Wild. •The Cucco lady is fun to prank. Collecting Cucco to get my reward then throwing one Cucco out is peak mischievous behavior that adds to me imagining Link as a twerpish kid. •Cutest version of the Goron’s. Hands down. Just the right amount of pudge, the way they sleep in balls, and the fact of how segregated from the world to the point where they don’t even know what trees are. World-building naturally that makes sense! •I love how Goron’s are just spoiled to the point where they require a specific kind of rock to survive because they can no longer handle the taste of an average rock. Hint at Goron culinary in the future? •Why don’t people talk more often about the Goron City theme? It’s amazing! •This time around, I managed to avoid the ReDeads to get the Sun Song. I don’t know why I always used to go in front of the ReDeads when going in back of them completely avoids the pitfall of their horror scram that stuns you. •Sun Song comes in clutch so much, especially traversing Hyrule Field to avoid Stalchildren. •Saria Song is still an absolute banger to this day. •I never realized how ingrained my own tips for myself were in my head. Traversing the Lost Woods is made a lot easier when not using Saria’s Song, due to the fact that in the Adult Future, the song no longer pitches down when you go the wrong way (something I learned watching DeeBeeGeek trying to use the song to guide him and finding that it no longer helped because the volume is at a constant as an adult. Flawed game design, I tell you). My method is much more full-proof. When looking into the different log pathways, you subtly notice that there hints of light in some paths. The paths that have light at the end of the tunnel mean they take Link to another area (either Kokiri Forest if you go the wrong way and one that leads to the Sacred Meadow if you choose all the right paths). The paths that are pitch black mean that they lead to another part of the Lost Woods for you travel down. Thus, if you want to avoid going back to the beginning, you can avoid it by only taking the pitch black paths. •I completely forgot that the Running Man you give the Bunny Hood to does not pop up until after Jabu Jabu. Now my ocd is gonna be triggered every time I see the Bunny Hood in my inventory telling me I have unfinished business. •I managed to find at least one full set of four heart pieces. One from doing the Skull Kids mini game in Lost Woods, another from doing the backflip exploit that takes you to the top of the entrance to Dodongo’s Cavern without spending money on seeds, one in the storage shed at Lon Lon Ranch, and play Saria’s Song for a different Skull Kid to the left path at the entrance to Lost Woods. •I noticed Lon Lon Ranch was on a raised plateau in this game. The ruins in BotW and TotK are on a flat plane. What happened to the plateau that gave protective walls on all sides of the ranch? That’s as much as I got from my playthrough so far.

Just as you suggested in the video, I’m playing on Switch with NSO. The controls are pretty janky though, but thankfully I have the Switch N64 controller which fixes that- mostly. I have played this game a lot- pretty much annually since it came out, so I’m very familiar with it, and usually I’ve dusted off my N64 for each playthrough. Still, I went with switch for convenience this time. I gotta say though, the stick sensitivity is not quite tuned right- even with the N64 controller, which makes aiming a little trickier at times. It’s kind of incredible how great of a tutorial this game has. The great deku tree is an incredible starter dungeon, it teaches you so much about the game, and it achieves it all without bore and tedium that other later Zelda games would fall victim to. It’s also incredibly atmospheric which is always a treat. I like this approach overall. Most other 3D Zelda titles give you a tutorial and THEN send you into your first dungeon, but this game rolls both of those concepts into one, and I think the game is better for it. It’s far from a complex dungeon, but it is perfect for beginners, and not a boring chore for returning veterans. Also the big jump down from the top floor is always weirdly exciting for me. It’s great how much side content you can access even this early on, while it still steers you in the right direction pretty gracefully. Though in hindsight there’s a bit of clarity missing on when/how you meet Malon. Nothing too bad, obviously I figured it out as a kid, but playing it here now I realized that there is not as much to communicate to you that you have to meet her before trying to get into the castle as there could have been. Same idea goes for needing to backtrack to the lost woods to learn Saria’s song. By the way, anybody else always get the suns song before even heading up death mountain? Or is that just me? I usually stop by the graveyard to nab a free Hylian shield anyways, so I always just get the suns song while I’m at it lol Cheers, and I’m looking forward to seeing the video!!

I'm excited for Skyward Sword version

So, “Mighty Collection” refers to as many items Young Link can grab before reaching Dodongo’s Cavern?

Gonna have to dig out my old Gamecube. I just cant get myself to like playing with the virtual console on Switch. Playing a Gameboy game makes it so you have to squint at the center of the screen.

Unfortunately, this time around, I can't join. I'm dealing with a whole host of problems, including RL politics that refuse to stop being intrusive. They're proceeding faster, but not fast enough to fix the most problematic damages that particularly keep me from doing anything with this. Hopefully next time the problems will be sufficiently resolved.

Ok

Does the 3ds version work? Do you have a discord?