This was a hard question. First off Mario 64 was total perfection. Everyone who complains about the camera is wrong. Personally this is still my favorite Super Mario Bros. game and always will.

Metroid Prime delivered on the most daunting task. The world the music and atmosphere; just mesmerizing. The features like X-ray visor and things like that lived up to all the promise. But! MP was missing the long jump boots and it wasn’t a dual stick fps.

Ocarina of Time was, as someone said, the closest we could get to an open world at that time. Riding on a horse that you earned as well as earning your inventory was grand. The dungeons were perfection. Story had nice progression. I think I replayed it 7 times. This one wins for me. The open world is why.

Two of those are in my top 3 all-time favorite games, and they have been for all the years there has been a top 50 end of the year extravaganza here on VGC, so obviously I say they are both pretty much perfect games.

The third, Metroid Prime, I haven’t played. I guess it’s one of my gaming sins, like I also never played Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger, but it’s GameCube’s fault; too many games on it couldn’t compare to their N64 predecessors (which is why Rol is wrong; newer isn’t better) so I lost interest.

For those that inexplicably ignored the top 50 threads last month; Ocarina of Time is my #1, Super Mario 64 is #3 so for this thread OoT > SM64 > MP.

Metroid prime is the clear winner of the three to me, but...

Ocarina of Time is clearly much, much better than Mario 64.

I honestly wouldn't rate any of them above the other. Each one was the closest to perfection that could have possibly be expected from their franchises 3d debuts. Each one was revolutionary in tis own right, though Prime is less so solely because it came out the following generation when there was less space for revolution in control and game design than there was in the first true 3d generation. Each one has aged well, all things considered. Each one has gotten some form of remake or remaster between SM64DS, Ocarina of Time 3D, and the Prime Trilogy adding pointer controls to Prime. nd all of them in my opinion were surpassed by later games in their series, since I prefer every 3d Mario except Sunshine and 3D Land to 64, every 3D Zelda from Wind Waker on to Ocarina of Time, and Prime 3 to Prime 1.

Ocarina kthxbye

I'm taking this question as 'the most revolutionary upgrade to 3D for each series', or like which game had the biggest impact, and I voted for Mario.

Prime was a huge risk changing the genre to fps but it worked brilliantly. Though since it came out some years after fps games had already become popular on consoles, I feel it made less of a historical impact, even thought it is very different from standard fps fare.

Ocarina of Time was revolutionary because it was really the first 3D adventure game on a grand scale and set the bar for the genre forever after. But Mario 64 set the bar for 3D games in general. It is still a blast to play today and it's still fun to even just run around in circles and jump around in the game. I'd say Zelda and Mario are close but I give Mario 64 the edge.

Anyway, there's a bunch of different ways to take this question, but that's my take on it.

For me personally, Ocarina of Time takes the throne.

All three are amazing, earth-shattering works of creative genius that set new standards in the medium, but for me, Ocarina stands apart for its sheer epic splendor.

It's like the video game equivalent of The Lord of the Rings; a grand journey through an unforgettable world of mind-blowing scope and ambition, from humble beginnings through to an apocalyptic climax, with countless memorable encounters, challenges, characters, and places along the way.

Few moments in my nearly 30 years as a gamer can compare to the highlights of playing through it for the first time, and few games have imprinted themselves on my memory so powerfully.

Well super metroid is better than metroid prime and that came out 8 years earlier, so that's a pretty big hole for this little theory you've concocted here.

Curl! Why you always make us make such hard choices dude :D:D

Can't decide for the life of me. All three are outstanding.

...aaahrg! Okay I pick Sup.... No I'll go with Metr... Wait, the best is Zel...duuuh

Forget it, I'm out.

Metroid Prime. It's the only one of the three that hasn't aged a bit. A masterpiece when it came out in 2002, still a masterpiece 20 years later. Both OoT and specially Mario 64 feel clunky and outdated in both graphics and gameplay and have been surpassed by pretty much every major entry that came after them. Masterpieces when released... Ok games nowadays.