Key

1998

And yet another great year in gaming. And once again, I find myself in the situation that I really don't know which one to pick as a lot of the games from this year are some of my favorites of all time. I talked about Banjo-Kazooie somewhat recently, so I don't think I want to jump into that again. Other games like the Pokemon Trading Card Game for Game Boy Advance, Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, and Spyro The Dragon all released this year. Great games, but if we're talking my favorite game from this year as a whole, I would have to go with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Anybody who's anybody knows how good Ocarina of Time is, and when put up against the other games that were released this year, it should really be no surprise as to why I chose this game. But I'll tell you why anyway. I still have vivid memories of the first time I ever played Ocarina of Time. I was relatively young and I had just borrowed a copy of Ocarina of Time from a friend of mine. I got home that night and literally less than a week later, I had completely finished the game. And that's not implying this game is short. Rather, I just couldn't help myself going from one part to the next. Because not only was it one of the first time I ever beat the game in its entirety, it was also one of the first time I had ever played the game, period. So it was a fresh experience either way you look at it. And I honestly don't really need to tell you any of this since Ocarina of Time is often touted as one of the best games of all time. And I know nowadays we've got games like Breath of the Wild and Twilight Princess etc, but when you want to go back to how the Zelda games were back in the day, I always recommend people playthrough Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and even Wind Waker. I'm sure I'll be discussing Wind Waker later on so I'll keep my thoughts on that to myself for now. The reason I always send it off with high recommendations is simply because it deserves it. I think throughout the different iterations of my gaming journal, Ocarina of Time is certainly one of those games that I probably have the most written about. But again, that's simply a testament to the quality of Ocarina of Time. It's got everything you need. Adventure, a great protagonist, an amazing antagonist, and an overarching story that never goes stale even if the game starts to feel like it's taking a while. I don't think the game is really that long though, especially if you know how to play through it already. Going back to it again can actually be a pretty fun experience since you can enjoy playing through it and just seeing everything you experienced back in the day. Lots of nostalgia for this one, and I still feel nostalgic anytime I play it, and definitely when I watch other people play it. Hell, people have been doing these crazy randomizer runs of Ocarina of Time, and it's truly a blast watching it because you get to see the game played in different ways despite it being the same game every time.

The other big reason why I always love bringing up Ocarina of Time is because I like to remind people just how good the soundtrack is to the game. Despite it being released back on the Nintendo 64, that didn't stop them from making one of the greatest video game soundtracks of all time. You've got Song of Storms, Epona's Song, Zelda's Lullaby, and that's not even scratching the surface. You've got the song that teleport you to different dungeons which then becomes it's own form of fast travel and makes getting everything in the game done just that much more enjoyable since you can literally warp to different parts of the map after playing a dope track on the Ocarina. Epona's Song is just one that always sticks out to me, and I still hum it whenever I'm just doing anything:



This song along just brings back so many feelings of nostalgia, god damn.

That's honestly all there is to it, really. Like I said, I've talked about Ocarina of Time many times over the past few years, and I honestly have no problem bringing it up again in this fashion because it really is just a testament to how good the game actually is. If you for some reason have yet to sit through at least one playthrough of this game, I highly encourage you to do so. It's one of those games you will definitely want to have had played at some point in your life. Hell, Majora's Mask is up there too, and sometimes I prefer Majora's Mask, but Ocarina of Time gets the spotlight today.