Zelda: A Link to the Past is better than Ocarina of Time
- Thread starter MiracleOfSound
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LA was great, possibly the greatest portable game ever created (Tetris is the only one in the same league), but honestly I don't think it's as good as the console Zeldas due to the fact that it was smaller in scope. I just don't think the GB/GBC format could handle a game the scale of LTTP much less OOT. Newer handhelds can I think and the GBA remake of LTTP is one of my most replayed games, I think it makes an excellent portable adventure even for today's standards, not even pointing out that it's a 17 year old game. Phantom hourglass was fun in it's own way but I think it's not in the same league as LA for best portable game, and not in the same league as TP, OOT, LTTP for best zelda game.
ALTTP and Ocarina are both good choices, but Wind Waker will always be my favorite. The only part about the game I truly hated was the search for the triforce of courage, but you can't fault a great game because you didnt like a single part of it, you just grin and bare it.
I guess Zelda games tend to live up to the Hype more than Halo and people do get the nostaligia from thier youth with them.Shapsters said:
Are you serious? In my class the Nintendo/Sega debate was far more heated than any 360/PS3 fanboy war of nowadays... we used to get in to fistfights over whether Mario or Sonic was betterHaro said:
BTW obviously Mario was waaaay better...
Well, first person shooters aren't very becoming on consoles.. the controls just aren't meant for them. Part of the halo hate is more or less.. console fps hate.Shapsters said:
The other thing as mentioned, Zelda is rooted in the heyday of the NES, when there really wasn't a big console war going on (it was really minor, since the crash of 83 kinda wiped out most of the competition).. it wasn't till the next generation that it went full swing and hasn't stopped since. Console wars breed a lot of hate, especially for titles that are exclusive to a competing console and therefore can be identified with that console. Some of the halo hate is Xbox/Microsoft hate.
Finally Zelda uses a winning formula, gameplay first, and that gameplay involves a lot of exploration, action, dungeon crawling, treasure hunting, puzzle solving, trap dodging, etc.. and there's just something about the pacing of zelda games that makes them so damn good and you want to finish them. A lot of other games focus on things like graphics first, physics first, story first, etc.. it's gameplay that keeps a game playable 20+ years later, not graphics, sound, physics/realism, or sometimes even story. Story is probably a better thing to focus on than graphics.. but still.. eventually a game's story will be seen as "cliched" even if it's the game that originated those cliches (IE Dragon Quest games are seen as cliched even though they're sticking to their original formula for story and are the origin of many of these cliches in console rpgs).
However gameplay only becomes classic, and never feels aged.
It wasn't until the Genesis/SNES days that the console war really kicked off.miracleofsound said:
In the 80's Sega was more undergroundish I guess, I never knew anyone who owned a master system, never saw ads on tv or anthing... then in like late 1989/1990 I started seeing "Genesis does what Nintendon't" ads.. that was the first shot of console wars as we know them.
Huh, I disagree with all of this. People really say the snes one is better? Really?? And I'm not some dumbass kid who grew up with Ocarina either. A couple of points:
A Link to the Past: amateur graphics, poor music. Everything sounds muffled and muted. It's an early gen snes title so I guess that's okay. Combat is pretty lame, but it's better than the nes one (not a difficult feat). The world map is small, even with the dark world. Dungeon pacing is bad (later on the overworld-to-dungeon ratio is very low). Many tools are underwhelming or only useful for certain puzzles (the series has grappled with this problem forever though). The plot is... um, there is a plot? Link is a kid who lives with his "uncle?" wink wink nudge nudge (yes I just implied link was a homo and his uncle a pedo). Still lets be fair and say that what plot there is is sufficient for the story and the game was great at the time because everyone hated The Adventures of Link (except me, I thought it was the shizit) and A Link to the Past was the "return to form" for the series.
Okay now about Ocarina of Time:
Yeah the graphics are cruddy, early style 3d. At the time, pretty good, but lousy by today. Still, the 3d shift is less about appearances and more about how you perceive the game: you are no longer playing as some detached observer floating over Link's head. You are Link. You run around in his shoes and see the world as he does. This makes the game so much more immersive and makes the gameworld feel so vast and epic, the effect is indescribable. Really, going back to when I was a kid playing Zelda for the NES, running around the trees and bushes stabbing octorocks; to think one day I would be playing a game that let me do this in full 3D... it's just unbelievable to me. Consider that Miyamoto has said many times that the basic concept of Zelda is the sense of wonder he had from exploring the wilderness as a kid. In no game does this come across stronger than in Ocarina of Time (or perhaps maybe Wind Waker.)
Ocarina of Time's combat also rocked face. Z-targeting seems obvious now but at the time it was so revolutionary every similar game copied it (and none of them got it right!) Dividing combat into incidental battles with random enemies, puzzle-based boss battles, and epic z-targeting duels testing the player's skill and tactics was hugely successful. The world map was huge with better divides between dungeons and wilderness, there was more of a plot with an origin for Link and backstory for the game, and the music kicked ass.
So in a nutshell I decry anyone who claims Ocarina of Time is the inferior game; either you are clouding the past with nostalgia goggles or are trying to make yourself appear cultured and discerning by bashing something popular.
A Link to the Past: amateur graphics, poor music. Everything sounds muffled and muted. It's an early gen snes title so I guess that's okay. Combat is pretty lame, but it's better than the nes one (not a difficult feat). The world map is small, even with the dark world. Dungeon pacing is bad (later on the overworld-to-dungeon ratio is very low). Many tools are underwhelming or only useful for certain puzzles (the series has grappled with this problem forever though). The plot is... um, there is a plot? Link is a kid who lives with his "uncle?" wink wink nudge nudge (yes I just implied link was a homo and his uncle a pedo). Still lets be fair and say that what plot there is is sufficient for the story and the game was great at the time because everyone hated The Adventures of Link (except me, I thought it was the shizit) and A Link to the Past was the "return to form" for the series.
Okay now about Ocarina of Time:
Yeah the graphics are cruddy, early style 3d. At the time, pretty good, but lousy by today. Still, the 3d shift is less about appearances and more about how you perceive the game: you are no longer playing as some detached observer floating over Link's head. You are Link. You run around in his shoes and see the world as he does. This makes the game so much more immersive and makes the gameworld feel so vast and epic, the effect is indescribable. Really, going back to when I was a kid playing Zelda for the NES, running around the trees and bushes stabbing octorocks; to think one day I would be playing a game that let me do this in full 3D... it's just unbelievable to me. Consider that Miyamoto has said many times that the basic concept of Zelda is the sense of wonder he had from exploring the wilderness as a kid. In no game does this come across stronger than in Ocarina of Time (or perhaps maybe Wind Waker.)
Ocarina of Time's combat also rocked face. Z-targeting seems obvious now but at the time it was so revolutionary every similar game copied it (and none of them got it right!) Dividing combat into incidental battles with random enemies, puzzle-based boss battles, and epic z-targeting duels testing the player's skill and tactics was hugely successful. The world map was huge with better divides between dungeons and wilderness, there was more of a plot with an origin for Link and backstory for the game, and the music kicked ass.
So in a nutshell I decry anyone who claims Ocarina of Time is the inferior game; either you are clouding the past with nostalgia goggles or are trying to make yourself appear cultured and discerning by bashing something popular.
Link to the past i do think was better i mean it was more stream lined and you didnt have to worry about having to find every song to do everything in the game you just went to a dungeon kill enemies and then get out the other end. no to say OoT isn't good its great if you have a weekend to kill...or a couple of weekends actually if you don't play through the week
Respectfully, you are wrong... the SNES and Mega Drive had a huge fan rivalry, even the magazines of the time got in on it, they would have comic strips of Sonic beating Mario up and vice versa...Devildoc said:
Or maybe... just possibly... we're simply expressing an opinion?Grampy_bone said:
If you re-read the OP you will clearly see I am not 'bashing' OOT, just considering that its predecessor is the more mechanically functional game.
By the way I do enjoy the game, I loved many games that frustrated me (Shadow of the Colossus, Mario 3, San Andreas etc etc).
Honestly, 1991, let alone the SNES, was not the pinnacle of 2D gaming, but I'll let that slide. I liked OOT far more than LTTP and some of your complaints are just nitpicking (the lock-on system is not broken).
But it's your opinion, so whatever.
But it's your opinion, so whatever.
Did you read what I said at all? I said that the console wars started with the Genesis/SNES days. You're agreeing with me by saying the rivalry was heated during the Genesis/SNES days.miracleofsound said:
I'm saying that during the 80's when it was the NES and Master system, there wasn't that much of a war because Sega didn't mobilize for it and Nintendo was enjoying huge profits and didn't really have much competition. It was in the 80's.. not the SNES/Genesis days.. that Zelda took its roots as a fan favorite series.
The thing about A Link to the Past was that it was nothing but solving puzzles in dungeons. That's fine if all you want out of a Zelda game is a dungeon, but for me the game felt a little empty
That said, the controls for Ocarina of Time are bloody annoying
That said, the controls for Ocarina of Time are bloody annoying