Many of my favorite memories from my Nintendo 64-playing days come from that land of Hyrule made so masterfully into 3-D in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I remember stepping into Hyrule field for the first time, thinking how amazingly vast the plain before me was. It was the first time that Hyrule had been cast into the third dimension, and the result was stunning. I still remember how “realistic” I thought everything was back then (and, really, compared to all that had come before, it was realistic). Many gamers can probably relate to all of the possible nostalgic sensations I could describe when I talk about this game, but that’s not the point of this discussion. The fact that Ocarina of Time was such a break-away hit and left such a good taste in so many gamer’s mouths was what I had in mind when I recently sat down and bought all of the Zelda games for sale in my Wii’s virtual console. Reality, however, had other plans.
I ended up buying The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: Adventure of Link, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When I first sat down with Zelda and Zelda II, I had forgotten how hideous the games on NES really were. The Wiimote bears a striking resemblance to the old NES squared-off controller once you turn it sideways, which was a nice treat for the eyes, but actually playing the games was a different story. I was quickly reminded why all of the old Nintendo consoles had “select” as a button on their controllers: you had to use it, and often. I’ll admit my attention span only lasted for about 30 minutes on each of the two NES games, but that was all I needed to remind myself that sometimes it’s better to let the past be past, and realize that the reason people play games on consoles like the Wii and the PS2 is because they’ve made so many improvements along the way. People don’t like pressing select, they’d rather use the arrow keys: thus, newer games use the arrow keys. OK, fine, $10 is an acceptable loss in this case. At least the logo channels will look good on my Wii’s dashboard.
Before I began playing Ocarina, I wondered if I would have a similar experience: maybe after having played Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time wouldn’t be very fun. With this in mind, I clicked the OoT channel with the Wiimote and began to play. Of course, with all Nintendo 64 games on the Virtual Console, you’ve got to use the “Classic” controller as they’ve labeled it; some kind of bastard child cross-breed of a nintendo 64 controller and a gamecube controller. It fits in the hand well, yes, but the controls are different enough from the original game to merit 10 to 20 minutes just to retrain your brain. It was amazingly hard to adjust to the new buttons, but the real test came with the movement of the character using the Classic Controller’s left thumbstick. The right thumbstick replaces the yellow ‘c’ buttons on the Nintendo 64 controller, and the change is nice. It makes it very easy to slide between any two of the yellow buttons, which is useful in some situations for the game.
The left thumbstick, the one which controls the movement of Link, is way too fast compared to the Nintendo 64 version. I don’t know what they did, or what they were thinking, but there is a subtle change here (I plugged in my Nintendo 64 and popped OoT into the cartridge slot just to be sure) and the stick is far more sensitive than the N64’s ever was. I suppose, if I had to, I would attribute the new sensitivity to the fact that the technology in the controller mechanism itself has greatly improve, and the controller I used to play OoT 10 years ago was probably a little worn out itself (not to mention that I’d spent so many hours playing on that thing that it seemed like second nature).
The game itself is exactly the same (so are the original NES versions), but this time we have a wireless controller (the classic controller plugs into the bottom of the Wiimote, and the Wiimote is wireless), some extra buttons on the classic controller itself, and the benefit of a “Home” button that we can use to get back to the Wii dashboard (N64 didn’t have a dashboard, so turning the console off after saving was the next best thing).
To be sure, I’m still making my way through the vast expanses of Hyrule to defeat Ganondorf (if only so I can then play Majora’s when it comes out on the console, and then wind waker, and then twilight princess with some continuity), but it’s going a touch slower than it went when I played the first time through. The magic is still there, but it’s harder to get into the game when the graphics aren’t so cutting-edge. For $10 (1000 Wii points), the game is a worthwhile investment, since it’s held to be one of the best games ever made by many authorities.
So, while Nintendo has done an excellent job recapturing the Ocarina in this case (the smoothness of play on the Wii is notable) with their new controller, they’ve missed something in terms of capturing the time that the game first came out. That exact magic felt when first entering the game may be elusive, but playing the game through once more on your Wii will feel a hell of a lot better than simply dwelling on it.
