If you completely ignore the whacked-out gravity, crazy planetoid perspectives, and new pointer system for doing various tasks, then I, uh, agree. I guess. I suppose Mario still jumped around a lot and I do remember seeing a few koopas.

Personally, I think Chess and Go are better than both of these games. My favorite game released in the last 2-3 years is Portal, a game that hardly pushes the envelope in terms of graphical or technical complexity.

In short, games do not get better as the graphics or even the tech get better (they don't get worse -- I'm not suggesting that -- I'm simplying saying they don't get better, either). Games likely will not be better in 10 years, just as games were not worse 10 years ago, or 100. If that weren't the case and the level of fun actually was increasing, then people who lived 50 years ago would have been having much less fun than us and people who lived 200 years ago would have died of boredom/antifun before they died of Cholera.

This isn't to say that GTA IV isn't a better game than Ocarina of Time, by the way. I haven't played the former and the latter wasn't my favorite game to begin with. Instead, I'm just pointing out that games aren't getting any better than they were, and the perception that they are is entirely that; a perception. I hereby declare that there is no correlation between "fun-factor" and "technical and graphical complexity."

So if I am hearing this right from everyone flaming me....

If you were going to be sent to the Moon, never to come back to earth, and could only take one video game with you, you would take OoT?

I would not take GTA4, but it's about 100 games ahead of OoT on my list.

This is my last post in this thread, because I hate being flamed :p

EDIT: I would probably take UT3 for the PC, or NeverWinter Nights, so I can keep moding it forever. 

So would it blow your mind if I said Super Mario Bros. 3 is better then Super Mario Galaxy

or that Wind Waker is better then Twilight Princess

or that NES has better games then PS3

Yep.  Games haven't gotten better at all.  That's why no one buys consoles and we all sit around playing Chess and Go.

Oh wait... 

This thread is great.

There's one lunatic hailing GTA4 as the best ever and then everyone else giving him a passing "...nah" before changing the subject to other games. =D

Very true. But you embedded the wrong video. The cinematic scene in videogames to which all others should measure up to: INSANITY PREVAILS

Lots of people do sit around playing Chess and Go. In fact, I'd wager they're still more heavily played than any Console game on earth. Check out Yahoo Chess' statistics alone, let alone the numerous tournaments, leagues, and hobby shops dedicated singularly to Chess. Go has the same reputation in the East.

Add to the fact that those two games have been played for centuries, or in the case of Go, millenia. Have any console games been played by a large population for more than, say, 5 years? No? Then they fail. If you think Chess and Go are dying or something, then you clearly don't know the world we live in, or just don't run in the right circles. It would be like me insisting that no one likes Rock anymore because I don't personally know anyone still listening to it (I seriously don't have any friends who do).

As smaller, less popular examples, how about Baseball? Football? Soccer? All of these are less popular games than Chess or Go, but still have a very large, healthy, and unwavering following. Why haven't they been swept away by the tides of technological progression? Heck, most people don't even play these games, they just watch them, and they still prefer it.

Graphics/complexity/technology have nothing to do with a game's popularity or staying power. It may have something to do with a game's ability to exist (for example, Super Mario Brothers couldn't exist pre-1900), but doesn't actually make any game more fun than they other -- history clearly shows it.

@ WoW

I've probably played chess on my more than any console game. I might have played Pokemon Red more than chess, but I don't know.

I've played bridge more than chess too, and don't say that's not normal, because chess + bridge players who play regurarily (no idea how much that is) exceed 180M about now (according to my dad's bridge magazine). That's about the same as the consoles sold last gen, and I doubt all of them were played regularily.