That's the only question fans of the Nintendo series are asking as the latest version comes out
Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda released a new game yesterday to commemorate the series' 25th anniversary. There's only one question Zelda fans buying it want to know: Is this the best Zelda game of all time?
A little background: Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time in 1998. It wasn't the first game in the series, but when it came out, everyone knew that it would be a benchmark not just for the series, but for all games to come after it. It was, in the truest sense of the word, a revelation. It was the first time a 3D system had ever built a true, living, breathing, changing world for the player to explore. It was a coming-of-age story both literally and for the games industry as a whole. It exploded the idea of the art and majesty that games were capable of. It's hard to talk about because it wasn't a game defined by its story, its setting, its characters, its architecture, or its gameplay. It had all these things at once. It occupied that place in between pure games and pure stories: neither something to be played nor watched, but lived.
More On Video Games | |
---|---|
![]() | An Acclaimed Director and Video-Game Maker Meet |
![]() | When Video Games Aren't Art |
![]() | Why the Video-Game Movie Craze Hasn't Happened Yet |
![]() | The Best Video Games of 2010 |
Since then Nintendo has made eight Zelda games and an ill-advised crossbow-centric title. Some of these were good games. In fact, by anyone else's standards, they were excellent games. The kind of game any developer would be proud to hang their hat on. But there was always Ocarina.
When Twilight Princess, the series' first title for Wii, came out in 2006, the game community looked forward to it as the first true successor to Ocarina of Time, and the greatest Zelda game ever. When it came out, they were so excited they could hardly be have been wrong.
"The debate that has waged for decades over which Zelda game should stand as the series' best will at long last come to a satisfying conclusion, as this is unquestionably the greatest Zelda yet," read Game Informer.