Uh... because for these people there are at least five better games out there? The game has aged now, simple as. It started a lot of things but that's it.

And so it should be because it's an emotion that's very likely to influence one's opinion and very difficult to dissociate from it. It's the same thing as having a crush on someone; you can't claim people are being unfair because they can't just see how awesome that other person is. Chances are you are wrong, even if you are one among a large set of people as crowd psychology has been theorizing for a long time. As Sagan would put it, extraordinary claims need extraodinary evidence. Claiming a game to be among the best five ever when it released a decade and a half ago and a thousand games releasing every year is more likely to be a claim based in emotion as opposed to evidence than not. It's like saying a modern game has less than 0.03% of being better than Zelda with all the competition and resources we have nowadays.

Praising OOT is hardly nostalgic, that game took massive leaps in game design back in '98. Of course it has aged but it made such a huge impact, and remembering the game for that has nothing to do with nostalgia.

That's a good point, but how can we talk about games -- specifically games from the 70s, 80s, and 90s -- if someone can dismiss a valid opinion as nostalgic?

perhaps, but Pong did the same thing, as did Mario Brothers, yet those don't get remembered nearly as fondly.  

Take the original Mario Brothers, for example.  Great game, without it we wouldn't have Nintendo, consoles, platofmers, or gaming as we know it.  It's widely considered to be one of the most important games of all time, but nobody's trying to say it's the best game of all time becuase it's not.  the controls are sluggish, the level design is simplified by comparison, etc.  It's still a great game, but it has aged very poorly.  It IS possible to appreciate the contributions and significance of a game without coddling it or staring at it with rose-tinted glasses.  

Ocarina of Time is the same deal.  It's a great game, holds up okay, but it has aged poorly and is important becuase of its contributions to the genre moreso than it is for its unrivaled design and polish.  

I wholeheartedly agree with you. It's just that, some people regard it the best game of all time relevant to its time, and others compare it directly to modern games in which case OOT obviously falls short. It's a matter of perspective. I would consider Pong and Super Mario Bros. extremely important games, even timeless as they are still easily playable even today. OOT is a masterpiece in game design and isn't all that different to modern games. In fact, I'd call OOT the first game of the modern gaming industry, as its template has laid the foundation for nigh all modern action and adventure games.

All in all, there are many games out there that have surpassed Pong, Mario and OOT, but very few of them were so important, revolutionary and polished in their respective time.

Because Skyward Sword is the first and only Zelda to hold my attention for more than an hour.

OoT was a revolutionary game in it's day though.

I miss that Nintendo - the one at the cutting edge of gameplay, not the one stuck in retro gameplay. Even LoZ:SS gameplay feels quite out-of-date by todays standards.

Get out. SMB still controls better than some modern platform games...

because i dont like the game....

what about super mario 64?  Couldn't that be seen as the first game of the modern era?