E3 1998 Voting

[Cerebralbore101]

Ocarina of Time + Poke'mon Red/Blue = No contest. Nintendo wins easily.

I still remember how much Ocarina of Time changed my outlook on games. I legit thought Turok 2 was better than Ocarina of Time. A kid in my 8th grade art class kept going on and on about how Ocarina of Time was so damned good. We argued everyday in class over whether Turok 2 was better. Finally he let me borrow Ocarina of Time. At first I still thought Turok 2 was better. But by the time I beat OoT, my mind had been changed. It was the biggest, most extensive, complete game I had ever played. Every part had its place, every corner of the game hid a secret. Nothing I played came close to OoT until Metroid Prime. Nothing surpassed Ocarina of Time until maybe Mass Effect 2, or Dark Souls. It was that damned good.

You know all those open world games, where you are in a city? That one city is the entire game. Like Spideman or GTA? Imagine somebody building an entire country with twelve of these cities in a game, with every NPC being unique, and every area lovingly designed. That's how big OoT was compared to other games at the time. The best PS1 games were all just turn based JRPGs with pre-rendered backgrounds. Outside of Nintendo Insomniac, and Rare just about everybody else fumbled when it came to good 3D game design. Crash was simply running forward and jumping. MGS was a fantastic game for its time, but the stealth and controls were just flawed. Same goes for Goldeneye, and Perfect Dark. Nintendo was delivering controls and gameplay from 2006 in 1998. Everyone else was just playing catchup.