In a few days, Ocarina of Time arrives on Nintendo Switch 2, and millions will play it for the first time. They’ll find everything people already say about it: the dungeons, the music, the moment Link pulls the Master Sword and wakes up seven years later. It’s a masterpiece, and it has earned that label. But when I asked you why we love Ocarina of Time, that isn’t what most of your stories were about.

The response was overwhelming. Again and again, the story wasn’t really about the game but about who you played it with: a sister reading the guidebook aloud, a dad rushing home from work to watch, a best friend at a weekend sleepover. For many of you, it was more than your first Zelda; it was the game that introduced you to gaming in the first place. Lunnaei, one of our channel members, summed it up in one line: “It’s been a bridge that’s brought together precious relationships with my family.”

That’s what this video is about. Ocarina of Time is a masterpiece, but we love it because of who was sitting next to us on the sofa.

Before we go on, welcome back. This is Triforce Times. Here, we dive deep into The Legend of Zelda: its design, its lore, and everything Nintendo leaves unexplained. If that’s your kind of thing, consider subscribing. Members get exclusive Zelda videos, early access to new content, and an invite to our community Discord, the join link is below. Let’s get into it.

HOW WE GOT HERE

Ocarina of Time was released in Japan on November 21st 1998, in North America two days later, and here in Europe on December 11th. It arrived on the biggest cartridge Nintendo had made at that point; it was the first 3D Zelda, and it still sits at the top of Metacritic’s all-time list with a score of 99.

It returned on the GameCube, and on the Wii’s Virtual Console, and in 2011 it was rebuilt for the 3DS, which for a lot of people watching this was their first time in Hyrule. It’s on Switch Online too. Every generation of Nintendo hardware has had its own version of this game, and every generation has found a new set of kids to sit in front of it.

Jiro, one of our members, is a good example of that. Their first handheld was the original Game Boy, and their first home console was the N64; from there, it was, in their words, “basically every Nintendo thing till the Wii.” They were so young that they can’t remember whether Link’s Awakening or Ocarina came first, but he remembers which one stuck: “I was very young, and I remember liking 3D Zelda more even as a kid.”

So on June 9th, when Nintendo closed a Direct with Kokiri Forest and Link asleep in his treehouse, the reaction felt less like surprise and more like relief. The release date followed at the 40th Anniversary Direct, and now we’re just days away from November 5th.

CHILD ERA

Let me start with my own personal Child Era. My first Zelda was Zelda II, and while plenty of people don’t like it, it still holds a special place for me because the first one always hits hardest. By the time Ocarina came out, I was a console kid through and through, and I’d never seen anything like it. It didn’t look like a video game to me; it looked like a movie you could walk around in, with the camera sweeping across Hyrule Field, the cutscenes and the scale of the place. I did what any teenager would do, and took a day off school to play it.

I wasn’t the only one with a story about the day this game arrived. Lear Wolfe, one of our channel members, was even younger than I was: “It’s the Nintendo 64 game that truly got me into Gaming, back in 1998. I had just turned 5 after the original release. I had a gold cart… manual…(long lost to time… don’t know where it is.)” I had the gold cart too, and as I told Lear in the Discord, mine is lost to the threads of time somewhere as well. If you’ve still got yours, look after it.

Lear wasn’t the only one with a gold cartridge. Thecoops702 got one for Christmas ’98 and remembers being captivated just wandering around Kokiri Forest. SloudCtrife didn’t own an N64 at all; their best friend in third grade mentioned a new game with a golden cartridge on the way to school, and they played it almost every day after school for weeks. They never finished it, but years later, with a 3DS of their own, they played Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask 3D to death.

Then there are the release-day stories. JAP625 and their best friend were sophomores in high school, living off magazine previews until the trailer appeared on TV and, in their word, it felt epic. They reserved a copy and took the bus to the mall on release day to pick it up. Aust-h8g went to a midnight launch with their dad, and they played it together that night. Rocknewatches picked up a pre-reserved copy from Toys “R” Us right around their 10th birthday.

Many of you talked about the size of the game: the first 3D Zelda, and the first time Hyrule felt like a place. Nivaldowesley666 asked to try this “Zelda 64” at a friend’s house and, in their words, was absolutely blown away. Marlin3030hntr rented it from Blockbuster as a young teen and compared it with something most of us will recognise: “Much like having a first love, a first car, a first concert experience, it created an emotional sensation that we are looking for everything else to hold a candle to subconsciously.”

This was also a world without the internet in your pocket, so if you got stuck, you stayed stuck. SlickTater read the Nintendo Power Player’s Guide front to back and back to front, so often that it became an escape whenever they were bored at school. Sevenes was nine, had no internet, and kept hitting walls they couldn’t get past. They’d give up for weeks, then come back, step by step, until they’d beaten it.

The first time doesn’t belong to 1998. Tarnished_Hylian, met this game years later on the 3DS: “OoT 3d was introduced to me while on a camping vacation in the mountains by my older sister. I loved the idea of adventure, exploration, and fantasy. I was able to relate to Link being about the same age as me at that time.” It was a different decade and a different console, but the feeling was the same, and it was an older sister who handed them the game.

A WORLD THAT FELT ALIVE

Size was only part of it. Some of you talked about something harder to pin down: the sense that Hyrule was a real place with its own history. HadesForce-X said what pulled them in: the struggle against a seemingly unstoppable Ganondorf, the mystery of the Triforce and the Sacred Realm, the eerie Lost Woods with its Skull Kids and Stalfos, and Hyrule’s races with their own societies and customs. “Hyrule just seemed like a living, breathing world, with its own history,” they wrote. “That world captured my imagination as a child, and never let go.”

Isaacchef598 wrote one of the longest answers on the post, and a lot of it comes back to people. Characters had personalities and stories, even small ones like Malon and Mido, and you could follow them and help them. They see it as a natural continuation of the character work in the earlier games, and one that Majora’s Mask would push even further, where the lives of Termina’s people are the whole point, woven between a ticking clock and imminent destruction. Morgil27 says Ocarina was the game that taught them the importance of story, in a way nothing they’d played on the SNES or N64 had, and these days they treat writing as one of the most important parts of any game. Maximnewman2483 calls it the blueprint for every game they love: great characters, great story, interesting worlds and beautiful music.

Sometimes it was the small things. Sprockkets remembers the ambience in the forest, the sense of time passing, and the sage owl helping you through it. Luchaosat remembers wanting to ride that horse, because it seemed important and novel at the time. Ocarina gave a generation its first Zelda world full of people with lives of their own, and if there’s one thing I’m hoping the remake adds, it’s more of that.

WHO YOU PLAYED IT WITH

When I wrote the post asking for your stories, I gave a few examples. Was it the dungeons, the time travel, or because you played it with your brother, your best friend or your dad? Within a day, GlamGoreChaosQueen had pulled me up on it: “Why are we assuming only men played? ‘brother, best friend, dad’ my mom played it.” That was absolutely fair.

I went back through all of your answers and counted who you played this game with. I guessed brother, best friend or Dad, and you said yes, and then you kept going. 5 of you played it with a best friend or a friend, 4 with your dad, 3 with a sister, 2 with a brother or step-brother, 2 with your mum, 1 with a boyfriend and 1 with the whole family, and 3 of you are now passing it on to a nephew, a stepson or a daughter. 18 of you, more than one in four, couldn’t tell me why you love this game without telling me about someone else.

Of all those stories, I want to read one in full. It’s from Lunnaei, one of our channel members: “Back when OoT had just come out, I’d not really played many games. My sister and I are 10 years apart, and we had a bit of a rocky start to our relationship because of that age gap. We were finally old enough to start becoming friends. My sister invited me over to play this game that just seemed right up my alley. I remember sitting in her living room, on the floor right in front of the TV, as she read the guidebook to me whenever I got lost. It became a bonding moment for us, a first step in what’s become a precious friendship.” Two sisters, ten years apart, and what finally closed the gap was a guidebook, a living-room floor and a boy in a green tunic.

Tarnished_Hylian’s older sister, the one who handed over the 3DS on that camping trip, wasn’t finished either. A few months later, for their birthday, she gave them Majora’s Mask 3D, and those two games, they say, are what made them fall in love with the series.

On YouTube, 7021exe said she and her brother always fought over whose turn it was, and Ocarina was the first game where they stopped arguing and took turns, even helping each other out. Andrew-jb5dl replied with the same story from the other side: he and his sister argued at first, then got used to taking turns and helping each other with puzzles. In his words, “Core memory.”

Then there are the friends. Weirdoeevee’s mum would rent an N64 and Ocarina from the video store whenever she had to go away on a short trip. Eventually Weirdoeevee got a console for Christmas and played it with their best friend at weekend sleepovers, eating Pop-Tarts well into the night. They’re “still best friends almost 30 years later.”

Aftonforred3685 played it with their boyfriend in high school and still remembers the awe of leaving the Great Fairy at the top of Death Mountain. obnoxious_footing had a step-brother who wouldn’t let them or their brother near the cartridge; they were only allowed to watch, but the way he mythologised the game fascinated them, and when they were older he gave them his N64 and all his games. ShadowWizard224 says it brought the entire family together, because they all played it and helped each other.

Then there are the dads. CivilKeeton’s earliest memory of Ocarina is watching their dad explore the Kakariko graveyard, while a very young CivilKeeton, frightened of the Poes, urged him to jump into the graves to get away. So he did, straight into the grave with a single chest and a lone ReDead, and CivilKeeton had nightmares afterwards. Years later, the two played it together on the Wii.

Stevenfierro8119’s dad was a firefighter who passed away in the line of duty. A few years before that, he bought Steven an N64 with Ocarina of Time, and Steven became obsessed with it, and so did his dad: “he would call before he came home from work to ask if I was playing it and would rush home to watch me play it…sounds silly, but this game means so, so, so, so much to me.” When he finally beat it, he cried at the ending, and to this day his sister doesn’t let him forget it.

Not everyone had someone on the sofa, though. Luchaosat went in on their own, and for them that was the point: “My first true sense of adventure in a virtual world. I set out alone, nobody else to guide me, in a world that felt big, really big.” Some of you had a sister reading the guidebook and some of you set out alone, and both of you fell in love with the same world. That world, it turns out, was a lot darker than we remember.

ADULT ERA: THE DARK SIDE AND THE DUNGEONS

I want to start this half with Ruben, one of our channel members, because his answer surprised me. He played Ocarina for the first time two years ago, with no nostalgia attached, and when I asked what makes it great, he went straight for the same two things I would have: “Mainly two things are awesome in this game. The music and the dungeons. For me, only Skyward Sword can hold up with this game in both categories.”

He’s right. Those are the two things that keep bringing me back, and what ties them together is atmosphere. Ocarina sounds and feels like a place with moods and secrets: the Lost Woods music drifting through the trees, the silence in the Temple of Time, and the way the Shadow Temple seems to breathe.

11 of you brought up the music or the sound, and GreenTygur put it well: even in the early days of 3D games, the sound made you feel like you were in the world. 8 of you went straight for the dungeons. The theme that caught me off guard, though, was the one I opened with: 11 of you told me, one way or another, that this game frightened you. Here is CaldoLanrissian’s comment in full: “This was for me a horror game. I remember my 9-year-old self being absolutely terrified from the very beginning, when the giant skulltullas come down with that design and those sounds… And when I somehow got used to it, then came the Forest Temple with the Wallmasters, the Bottom of the Well, and the Shadow Temple. I had to ask for help to overcome this game. Not to mention the Redeads…”

Caldo wasn’t alone. Thecoops702 was scared of Gohma and avoided it for a long time. Br54789 was afraid of Sheikh, of all people: if you didn’t press Start on the title screen, the game played short clips from later in the story, and one showed Sheikh dropping into the Death Mountain crater and walking towards Link, with the camera showing nothing but the Sheikah eye. KoL_Bear went the other way, watching the intro over and over but skipping the gameplay clips so nothing would be spoiled. My favourite is what KoL_Bear did once they got further in: they became adult Link, ran out of town in fear, and spent the whole day at the fishing pond instead.

Why would we love the thing that scared us? GamingReinvented pointed to it: the game starts cheerful and upbeat, then introduces some of the creepiest monsters and places in the series, from the Well and DeadHand to the Shadow Temple and Bongo Bongo. Legendpokemonmasters, whose most replayed Zelda is this one, said: “Even the Shadow Temple feels Nostalgic and cosy to me.” Theoaremevano3227, who says the game influenced them as an artist. Hyrule mostly felt like a normal world, with currency, a day-and-night cycle, and real tools for real trials; because it was grounded, the magic and the monsters felt more convincing and potent. The image they keep coming back to is adult Link in the ruins of Hyrule Market, playing the Sun’s Song, a bright beam of light against the darkness around it.

Which brings me to the Water Temple. TheHero4hire’s whole answer was “Spoiler alert: we loved it because of the Water Temple. Hands down.” 5 of you named it, and it wasn’t usually a compliment. Thecoops702 got stuck there and put the game down for six months. Alteredkrimson5297 grew up on Xbox shooters, and Ocarina was the first game they played that wasn’t one. They made it all the way to the Water Temple before reaching for a guide, with a question a lot of you will share: “How was that temple designed for kids my age?”

The Water Temple story that stayed with me wasn’t a joke. It came from Andrew-jb5dl, who played with his sister: “This game was the year before my parents divorced. I have so many memories from this era; I relaxed on the game while life was getting stressful for me as a kid. The trials of the game came as I dealt with trials in my life. The Water Temple made me stop playing for a few months, then coming back to finish it made me feel so proud of myself.”

That’s the deeper side of Ocarina’s darkness: it’s a game about losing your childhood. When Link wakes up seven years later, it’s too late for things to return to how they were, and even back in the past, the horrors were already there at the bottom of the well in Kakariko. And once Link saves the world, his deeds are forgotten, Navi leaves him, and he sets off alone again, only to face more darkness in Termina. Rocknewatches, ten at the time, felt they were travelling into the future with Link, and that the game getting harder was like life getting harder as you grow up.

So it makes sense that, for some of you, this game became somewhere to go when things were hard. Marcos_Romo wrote, “I grew up a very lonely, anxious kid. OOT was the first time I experienced what it felt like to have a friend in Navi, to take on a grand journey, be a hero and save the land.” Marcos is almost 40 now and still listens to the soundtrack almost daily. When life’s anxieties get to him, those songs take him back to riding Epona around Hyrule Field, fishing and exploring without a care in the world.

The last word in this section goes to Lear Wolfe. He grew up in a small wood-marshland town where, in his words, he “wasn’t like the others”, and today he’s over thirty, a dad of two, and living through what he calls exhausting times. He wrote this to Nintendo: “Thank you, Nintendo. For Once again for being a Warm Light, a Guiding Voice, and helping me through my Darkest times…even now, years later.”

WHAT IT MADE US

For some of you, Ocarina didn’t stay inside the television. Bills-beard had loved every Zelda up to that point, but seeing Hyrule realised in 3D made them a fan for life. It opened the door to everything that followed: their first fan art, their first fan fiction, game collecting, and their first homemade cosplay, a young Zelda outfit for Halloween made from leftover felt and fabric glue. They also wrote a letter to Shigeru Miyamoto, thanking him for the experience. A year later, he wrote back, along with some free swag.

Vicgrefer writes fantasy fiction now, and calls Ocarina the first epic fantasy story they fell in love with, “so beautifully deep and bittersweet.” For Alteredkrimson5297, Ocarina and then Majora’s Mask a year or two later are two of their top ten games of all time, and the series pushed them towards genres beyond the shooters they grew up with. CivilKeeton, the one who sent their dad into the ReDead’s grave, says the world provoked their curiosity and forced them to be brave at times.

And SlickTater, who read that Nintendo Power guide until they knew everything it had to say, found that what stayed with them as they got older was the lore. “Theories that filled in the gaps were what I became obsessed over, and that’s what brought me to YouTube in the first place back in the early 2010s. And here I am.”

THE HONEST BEAT

It would be a bit dishonest to make a whole video out of your answers and only show the ones that agree with me, because not everyone was sold. The sharpest question came from one of our own members, Aina, who has never played Ocarina of Time: “For many, for my understanding of various folks trying to explain, its nostalgia for a lot of fans, it was their very first Zelda game, which I can get. FFIX is that way for me for that series.” It’s a fair question.

Others weren’t convinced. TýrMoran was more of a Majora’s Mask person, and Ocarina never resonated. Saricubra2867 loves the dungeons and bosses but holds up Twilight Princess as their 3D Zelda. Sprockkets listed everything they love about it, then finished by calling it “a timeless classic that never needed a remake.” And macnamaryb7773 loves Ocarina for its dungeons, then added that there hasn’t been a good Zelda dungeon for over a decade. If the best dungeons in the series are twenty-eight years old, what does that say about where Zelda has been, and about why so many people are this excited to go back?

THE NEXT SEVEN YEARS

As for Aina’s question, I think your answers settle it. If Ocarina of Time were only nostalgia, it would only work on people who were there. Rocknatex5013 first played it in 2012 on the Wii’s Virtual Console, with no N64 nostalgia at all, having already beaten Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess. What struck them was the freedom. Skyward Sword held your hand, and Twilight Princess made you do story events in a set order, but in Ocarina you could do things out of order, in a minor way. It felt like a world they were allowed to explore, the same feeling they’d later get from Breath of the Wild, though they still rate Ocarina’s dungeons the best in the series. Nobody told them you could go back in time, so they discovered it by accident while stuck in the Shadow Temple and searching around Hyrule, and their verdict is simple: “Despite being an old game from an era I never played, OoT was magical to me. And I still love it.” SamHesitation played it for the first time this year, in the same room as a friend, playing the same dungeons at the same time and helping each other out, and the remake is somehow already making them feel nostalgic.

It keeps working on the people who were there, too, long after nostalgia should have worn off. Legendpokemonmasters says it was their third Zelda, but it’s the one they’ve replayed most. Thecoops702 cleared the Fire Temple in a single day’s sitting, then spent the next decade learning the game inside out, and ended their comment simply: “I wish I could go back.” Sevenes, the nine-year-old who kept hitting walls without the internet, came back as a teenager and, after finishing it, wanted to finish it again, and again. They completed it on 3DS, then Master Quest, and in the last few weeks they’ve played a hardcore randomiser with Skullsanity and Keysanity. Lunnaei put it best: it’s a game “you can get lost in over and over again, even if you know exactly where to go and what to do.”

Above everything else in your answers, though, there’s one theme that runs through them: passing it on. Years after Lunnaei sat on her sister’s living-room floor with the guidebook, she did the same for her sister’s youngest son: “He loved video games, and so I got him a 3DS and OoT3D, and while he played, I was his guidebook… he was 6. He was so enthralled, to the point where he’d call me randomly over the next months to announce what temple he’d gotten to proudly… or to let me know he was stuck and needed to know what to do next.” She became his guide, the role her sister once played for her, and now she and her nephew are both hyped for the remake, ready to re-explore a world they grew up in.

Link Wolf, the five-year-old with the gold cartridge, is a dad of two now, and he has started learning to play the ocarina: “I even started to learn how to play my ocarina; my daughter follows me around, hums and sings…” Tarnished_Hylian told me about a comment they once saw from a father who had told his kids the story of Ocarina of Time, and how excited they were when the remake was announced. They want to do the same for their stepson: “I know a lot of people say it is just a game. But it created memories, connections, and life lessons. I don’t think a lot of people look past the controller and character on a screen.”

As for what’s coming, Lear thinks this game is setting the bar for what a remake should be. Vicgrefer has already bought a Switch 2 just for this game. Brazz2017, who was 11 when they first played it and is 39 now, described what a lot of us felt watching that first trailer: “Watching the new Ocarina trailer, I was flung back into childhood, much like the food critic in Ratatouille.” Jeremygibson4531 said no game in the last twenty years has made them feel the way this one has; it’s like being ten years old, staring at the alarm clock all night before a trip to Disney.

Part of the excitement is finally seeing the game we always thought we were playing. 7021exe says that, in her imagination, it always looked like the remake. Lunnaei is looking forward to a Hyrule with the detail and life she’s sure Nintendo always intended it to have, and didn’t have the technology for in 1998. For me, it’s the music: I can’t wait to hear it fully arranged and orchestrated.

On November 5th, millions of people will wake up in a treehouse in Kokiri Forest for the first time. Some will have a sister reading them the guidebook, some will have a dad rushing home from work to watch, and some will set out alone into a world that feels big, really big.

I’ll give the final word to Lunnaei: “I love it because I think it did what Nintendo always hopes its games will do: bring people together.” That’s why we love Ocarina of Time. It’s not only the dungeons, the music or the Master Sword; it’s who we were when we played it, and who we played it with.

So here’s my question for you, and I want to read every answer. Who are you playing it with this time? Let me know in the comments.

First, a special thank you to the members of our Discord who shared their stories for this video: Lear Wolfe, Lunnaei, Tarnished_Hylian, Ruben, Aina and Jiro. To everyone who wrote in, thank you. I read every single one, and I wish I could have included them all.

Before I go, a proper thank you to everyone supporting this channel through membership. Whether you’re a Hylian, a Sheikah Scholar, or one of our Ancient Sages, this channel wouldn’t be possible without you. Speaking of Ancient Sages, huge thanks to Tarnished_Hylian, dealbreakerj1835, EldritchKhaotic, supersonicmariokirby and Romulus879. You lot keep this channel running, and I appreciate every single one of you. If you’re not a member yet, membership gets you exclusive videos, early access to everything we make, and an invite to the Discord. Links are below. See you in the next one.