Something that’s occurred to me before is that Jumping Flash 1 and 2 on PS1 did what the N64 was generally trying to do, but better and years earlier. Probably an oversimplification in my mind based on how much I disliked all the N64 platformers (unless you count Zelda as a platformer).
I’ve wondered this, too. I’ve been surprised to see the general SB opinion of that game decline over the years (not universally, of course, but noticeably). I think Zelda alone redeems the N64.
couldn’t keep up with this whole discussion but yeah, N64 is pretty good. plenty of good games. and ofc it’s the console i have the most nostalgia for, because it’s the only console i actually owned growing up other than PS2 when games were coming out for it. a lot of people complained about the N64 being light on stuff compared to the PS1’s much deeper library (which is true) but most people didn’t own 50 games or whatever, especially considering how expensive N64 games were. the first (and second) party games were generally great too. i never got the recent hipstery hatred for N64 Zeldas and Mario 64 is one of the greatest Mario games. and yes Zelda 64 is great, it’s just escapist in the same way something like Harry Potter is i guess and it became so popular that a lot of people react against that now.
i had a rich friend growing up and he had like 40 different N64 games in 1998 (and a PS1 with about that many games as well - which was totally inconceivable to me) so i had a lot of good memories there. the ones that always stuck with me in the times i slept over there were Pilotwings 64 and Mischief Makers. thinking about playing Pilotwings and watching Red Dwarf VHS tapes over there definitely hits some wistful spot at the edge of my brain. also Bomberman 64 too - the multiplayer mode was fun. there were some games he had that looked mediocre (i.e. Buck Bumble), but ofc i never bothered with those after a certain point.
eventually i was able to talk my dad into buying one from a very sketchy pawn shop at the edge of town pretty heavily discounted so i could finally play Goldeneye, which was my principal obsession at the time. which also led to begging to get Perfect Dark when it came out - which is one of the few games i followed the whole hype cycle and got on launch, and i played that thing to death. and i got Jet Force Gemini for Christmas one year, and was very happy about that. F-Zero X and Iggy’s Reckin’ Balls were two games i owned that my friend didn’t, and i played them to death too.
i wish i had some all-encompassing theory about the N64. but i think it’s mostly just that games changed so much over the course of the 90’s, and things that seemed inconceivable before were being done so quickly. which also led to this sort of dreamlike feeling to a lot of the games on the console, because it was exploring this new space for the first time. it’s impossible to like, recreate that feeling now. but it means that a lot of the games of that era feel unlike a lot of what came later, when 3D spaces were more standardized.
Ocarina is a thoroughly decent game but years of gamers saying its THE BEST GAME EVERRRRR means we’ve half over scrutinized it, half kneejerk backlashed against it. There are more interesting N64 games, action adventure games, and ZELDA games (the ones released on either side of it for instance). It’s just sort of vanilla
(basically the gamefaqs best game ever poll does no game favors. RIP undertale)
Last time i replayed it was shortly after Breath of the Wild and i was really charmed by the contrast. OoT wants to feel very huge and epic, and as a kid it certainly did. Hyrule Field promised this VAST ADVENTURE even though it was ultimately a big mostly empty shoebox with tree.jpg textures pasted on the sides. it feels quaint now. but the quaintness is nice in its own way!
i did also play it to death as a kid and would not be able to get through a non-randomized play through now without getting bored, but thats not really a knock on the game now is it
i always liked how differently themed the dungeons are, and how they try to evoke very different feelings with limited means. it felt very imaginative. it goes back to the feeling of things being dreamlike and heavily depending on evoking a certain kind of feeling because the spaces couldn’t be as big. and that’s not really something i saw in earlier 2D Zeldas, and something that seemed less present in later 3D ones. the dungeons just didn’t feel as imaginative or as different from each other as they are in Ocarina of Time. i kinda missed that in Breath of the Wild especially. obviously they improved on the overworld aspect a lot.
the music and sound is also a big part of this - it does a lot of work in Ocarina in a way i don’t think it does as much in later games. music is a thing in games a lot of people really respond to without knowing that that’s what they’re responding to, because it blends in with everything else and creates more of a feeling of depth.
I was trying to remember what people had said when criticizing ocarina before and I couldn’t really remember except that about the overworld being empty, but I thought that was exactly what people went on about being so great with the first zelda, and shadow of the colossus when people were comparing that to zelda. I don’t know what I’d think if I were playing the game now for the first time or even replaying it now but I played it when it first came out and I enjoyed it a lot at the time. I remember my parents watching me sneak in the castle to see zelda and getting a kick out of that. anyway, for me it’s an instance where the n64 aesthetic which I agree is ugly most of the time is a big part of the appeal (and of course you need a crt or crt shaders, and a fuzzy composite connection, not no s-video shit). all the times I’ve tried to play majora’s mask have gone nowhere, but maybe that’s cause I don’t have an appropriate controller.
the pacing for me but I’m not a 3D zelda hater, I just played majora’s mask first as a blockbuster rental
i like ocarina, for a while i felt like the “straight” zeldas were often more appealing than the “weird” ones (majoras mask, links awakening, wind waker etc) bc they felt more tonally odd and full of offmodel junk, less identifiably quirky, but this theory never survived twilight princess and neither did i. i do feel like the key touchstones of a zelda game are kind of odd enough that they can survive a certain amount of prestigeification (jumping spiders, big round cartoon bombs and boomerangs, pig monsters and empty fields etc), like people complain about the glossy aspirations of ocarina but it took a few more decades of eating their own shit before they were able to get to something as perfectly bland as breath of the wild.
i remember having a good time playing mystical ninja when i was still young enough that it felt basically arbitrary whether a videogame actually let you “progress”, less like that was some expected feature and more like a gratuitous act of charity on behalf of the designers. so the way that game kept expanding in odd ways (impact, musical sequence, new characters, slightly opaque progression requirements) felt extra delightful in that context even if i’ve been slightly afraid of trying to replay it since.
doesn’t it also have a secret long drawn out quest to get a optional sword, I don’t know I think sb is maybe sleeping on the obscure game OCARINA OF TIME for nintendo 64
my first oot experience was also master quest via the wind waker freebie version on the gamecube but i think i had a better time with normal mode on the 3ds nine years later
i think @meauxdal might know the technical details but there’s something about n64 hardware where forward motion looks smoother, albeit blurrier, than ps1. most apparent in wipeout next to f-zero x but i don’t know why
i used to challenge myself to get the Biggoron Sword before the forest temple. it’s not difficult but you have to do some planning ahead as young link (plant beans, meet epona so you can save her in the future) so you dont get locked into the future. that things nuts the one drawback (cant use your shield) is NOTHING when you can just walk up to most dudes and mash the B button until dead
Almost completely unrelated i want to shout out the dungeons in Majora’s Mask just because no one ever talks about how good they are. All the density and vertical design of the water temple, but actually fun to play!
i never liked the 64 zelda controls so i don’t care for either of those games even tho they’re well crafted, tho majora’s is more visually memorable to me i m o
from what i gather i think part of the criticism i hear is like Link to the Past or Ocarina are pretty straight “save the universe from the bad guy” stories where all aspects of the universe reflect that whereas Link’s Awakening and Majora especially are kind of about quirky alternate universes with their own rules. which meant they could deviate from the formula a little bit more, at least tonally if nothing else.
but also…
i agree here that even in a lot of the “straight” zeldas there’s a lot of weird off-model stuff. to me the appeal is not so much the format as like what they chose to do within it. and in order to justify being predictable in other ways and hold your attention, these games did some pretty strange things along the way. sometimes those things can seem accidental or unintended - but to me they seem like conscious attempts to stretch the format as much as they could. SMB3 still feels like the very best example to me of their execution of that sort of creative approach. tho as someone who missed out on Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword i missed that generally less-loved period of Zelda, but it seems like the complaints i heard re: TP is that they reacted too much to the success of Ocarina by just following that formula.
ofc that means that like in these days, there are things that Mario and Zelda can never do and boundaries they can never cross, and that’s become more apparent over the years. but at least the Zelda games seemed to respond to that a little better because they had some allowances for weird dark shit from the very beginning. even with Super Mario Odyssey (a game i enjoyed a lot but kind of forgot about after i played it) i’m still not really sure what Nintendo is trying to do at some level.
my younger self hated playing MM because those stupid bomber kids triggered some fierce social anxiety in me. i think i got ridiculously far, like to the great bay temple, before getting the bomber’s notebook — and then just quitting there after seeing how much stuff there was to fill in.
none of this was an issue when i tried replaying the game several years later, but i still haven’t completed the stupid game.
anyhow, all this zelda 64 talk just makes me wanna play tetrisphere idk why
Here are two reasons to play Tetrisphere:
Edit: Okay, I also have to mention one of the hidden songs:
When I was a teenager, sometimes church activities involved another kid bringing over his Nintendo 64 to a church leader’s house so we could take turns, four of us at at time, playing Mario Kart 64, Goldeneye, F-Zero, and/or Smash Bros. Only church activities I ever truly enjoyed (which were otherwise mostly basketball).
PlayStations were a somewhat cool thing to watch over at your friend’s house, where you could watch them play Final Fantasy or Crash Bandicoot, but watching other people play video games has only ever kept my interest for about 6 minutes, and it sometimes just reminded me of how poor we were (compared to a lot of the other kids in my church congregation/high school).
Nintendo 64 was a good time.
my first time playing ocarina of time was emulated and the menu screen animation took too long, so it made me painfully aware of how much time in ocarina was spent opening the item menus to switch things off and on, and I kind of resented that. I know that years later when I played a remastered version on the 3ds I think where you didn’t have to go into a menu all the time it was sort of refreshinng, but I still wasn’t a fan
I just can’t stand his voice or the menu sound effects. i wonder if I can fool my brain if I play a mod where he is silent and has pink hair
young links voice samples are extremely grating (to the point that MM tones them down) and whoever decided to add them to LttP for GBA should be put on trial and sentenced to play through the whole thing with headphones on
i like adult link’s voice samples tho especially when he takes fall damage and goes POIT…ZZZT
Posting some of my fav N64 music tracks now (minus tetrisphere since someone already posted)
