After taking Resident Evil 5 to task, I felt it was only fair to explain what I think makes a really good videogame.  Balancing intuitive gameplay and a thematically rich story makes The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time a game that truly transcends the medium.

This franchise is a true powerhouse, and it has a very dedicated following.  However, many people don’t agree on which version is the best one.  Additionally, you can usually find Ocarina of Time in one of the top ten slots of any list of Best Video games Evah, but few place the game number one.  (That honor usually goes to a certain Italian plumber.)  I’d like to offer why I think this game is exactly what video games should aspire to be.  It is fun; it doesn’t require any instruction; and has a thoughtful narrative reinforced by the changes in game play.

To begin to understand why this game works so well, you have to understand what inspired the franchise’s creator to make it in the first place.  Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to create a non-linear game that imparts a sense of wonder and limitless exploration by his own experiences in growing up around Kyoto.  As a child, he often explored the fields, woods and caves around his home.  It is no coincidence that much of the game play in any Zelda games is based upon exploring, usually fields, woods, and caves.  But what Ocarina of Time gets so spectacularly right is that the story is also, at its heart, a simple tale about a boy growing up and all the joy and pain that comes with that journey.

Most Zelda games have basically two levels.  (Adventures of Link and Link’s Awakening are the two major releases that deviate from this plan.)  You complete one and then go back over the same ground for the harder level where all the items you need are in different places.  Starting with A Link to the Past, the Nintendo started incorporating that increased difficulty into the story line.  In Ocarina of Time, this increased difficulty corresponds to the development of your character.

Your quest starts with you as a young boy who lives among innocent, ageless fairies.  You go off on a Huck Finn-esque adventure and you meet several key players along the way.  But when you have defeated the first "quest", your character is frozen in time only to come back seven years later.  You meet all the same people that you knew as a young boy and see that their lives have changed.  You also face more complex puzzles and more difficult villains commensurate with your greater size and skill.  In fact, there are places you wish you could go, but you are now too grown up.

Thematically, you run across several major female characters that provide metaphorical distance between how your character viewed the world as a boy.  For example, your first friend is a young fairy girl named Saria.  When you return to find her seven years later, she’s still a little girl.  Sort of a reverse Peter Pan moment.  In fact, she is the first of these characters that you meet and she signals that you cannot return to the innocence of your youth.  That she is the symbol of youth and innocence is highlighted by the fact that she is found in a verdant forest, a typical symbol of such newness dating back to classic medieval literature.

Significantly, you meet a young water princess who is quite precocious when you first meet her.  She demands that you promise to marry her before she helps you on your journey.  When you return to find her as a young man, she’s fairly the embodiment of sex.  She has the most voluptuous (albeit pixelated) body.  After you save her, she pines that she would like to hold you to the promise made as a youth.  Again, it is not a coincidence that she is associated with water, something often associated with female sensuality.

You also meet the king of rock dwelling people known as the Gorons.  He is more closely associated with fire.  He is seen as a role model for the character’s sense of heroism, full of masculinity and selfless need to care for his people.  It is no coincidence that your character must save these people when they become enslaved later in the game.

And in the end, this is all done to save a princess, the classic knight’s quest.  But the great thing about this is that, and I hope I don’t spoil this for anyone, when your quest ends, the princess rewards you by sending you back to being a little boy, right to the very point at the beginning of the adventure.  Was it really a heroic quest or just the fantasy of a little boy exploring the countryside?  As the game credits roll you see all the different locations that you’ve traveled through.  You see all the characters at the end around a campfire (another traditional storytelling forum).  Then, you see the characters who have come to symbolize your growth looking down over the land of Hyrule as a reminder of just how far you’ve come.

Through this whole coming of age adventure, Nintendo keeps their eye on uncomplicated and engaging game play.  Unlike many games that require you to work several buttons at once, this one only needs a few.  It doesn’t make the puzzles less tricky or the fighting necessarily easier.  Rather, it keeps you engaged in the story without distracting you with the need for unfairly precise timing and button sequences.  I would venture to say that Nintendo’s "quaint" focus on intuitive game play on display in this game is exactly why the Wii caught Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 so flat-footed.

Remember, this game came out on the Nintendo 64.  It doesn’t boast the fastest processing speeds of its competitors in that generation of consoles.  It certainly lags behind the beautiful graphics of games out now.  But as those games continue to try to bridge the uncanny valley with better voice and animation through faster processing speeds, they lose sight of the importance of fun game play and a rich story.  The Ocarina of Time does not.  That is why the game still holds up  today and will continue to be a measuring stick for all games in the future.