That haunting whistle of wind through stone corridors, followed by the gentle pluck of harp strings—that’s the sound that changed everything for me back in ’98. I’m sat in my mate Steve’s living room in Didsbury, watching him fire up Ocarina of Time on his N64 for the first time. He’d queued up at Virgin Megastore on Market Street at half past seven in the morning to get his copy, the absolute nutter, and I’d been getting increasingly frantic phone calls from him all week leading up to release day.
We’d been surviving on scraps for months, you know? Tiny screenshots in Edge magazine that we’d examine with the intensity of archaeologists studying ancient tablets. There was this one demo station at Game in the Arndale Centre where this spotty teenager in a company polo would practically breathe down your neck if you spent more than three minutes with the controller. The N64 had been kicking about for two years by then, and yeah, we’d had our minds properly blown by Super Mario 64—still the best launch game ever made, fight me—but this felt different. This felt like Nintendo was about to show us what their weird three-pronged controller was actually designed for.
Steve’s mum kept bringing us cups of tea and complaining about us hogging the telly while we took turns with the opening sequence. That first walk through Kokiri Forest…Christ, it was like stepping into a Studio Ghibli film that had somehow learned to be interactive. The way Link moved through that world, the way the camera swept around him, the way every tree and blade of grass seemed to have its own personality. I’d been gaming since my Spectrum days, right, but this was the first time a game world felt like it was actually breathing around me rather than just existing as a series of obstacles to navigate.
The Z-targeting system—bloody hell, what a revolution that was. One button press and suddenly 3D combat went from being a complete mess to something that felt natural, intuitive. No more running around enemies in circles like a headless chicken, trying to figure out which direction Link was supposed to be facing. You could lock on, focus, actually fight with some semblance of strategy. Sounds obvious now, doesn’t it, but back then it was like someone had just solved 3D gaming in one elegant button press. Steve’s younger brother kept trying to play it like Street Fighter, mashing every button on the controller and hoping something would connect, until we showed him that Z trigger. Click. Everything just clicked into place.
But here’s what really got me about Ocarina, something I didn’t properly appreciate until I was replaying it years later on the GameCube—it wasn’t just the mechanics that hooked us. It was the way the game made time feel meaningful, important. Those day-night cycles weren’t just pretty window dressing; they fundamentally changed Hyrule’s entire personality. Nighttime in Hyrule Field felt genuinely unsettling, with those skeleton warriors erupting from the ground like something out of a Ray Harryhausen film. Daytime felt safe, warm, inviting you to explore every corner. The game taught us that atmosphere isn’t something you slap on top of solid gameplay—it’s something you weave into every single system, every mechanic, every sound effect.
Playing songs on the ocarina was pure magic, wasn’t it? Not just because the mechanic worked brilliantly—though watching Link actually put that blue instrument to his lips and seeing those glowing musical notes float through the air was pretty spectacular for 1998—but because it felt like you were learning an ancient language, unlocking secrets that had been hidden for centuries. Epona’s Song, Zelda’s Lullaby, Song of Storms…these weren’t just button combinations you memorized. They were spells. Proper incantations. The first time I played the Song of Storms and watched that windmill bloke go absolutely mental, spinning around his hut like a man possessed, I nearly spilled tea all over Steve’s carpet from laughing.
Then Majora’s Mask showed up two years later, and Nintendo basically said “right, hold my pint” to their own masterpiece. If Ocarina was a gentle, epic introduction to adventure gaming done properly, Majora was a fever dream wrapped up in a masterclass of experimental game design. The three-day time loop should have felt restrictive, claustrophobic even, but instead it made Termina feel impossibly dense, impossibly alive. Every single character had a schedule, a routine, a complete life story that played out whether you were paying attention or not.
I’ll be completely honest here—Majora scared the absolute hell out of me initially. That moon with the face, slowly descending toward Clock Town, grinning like some cosmic serial killer. The transformation masks that let you become different races, complete with their own movesets and abilities and…personalities, really. The whole thing felt like a dark mirror universe version of what we’d experienced in Ocarina. Same basic engine, same fundamental controls, completely different soul lurking underneath.
But that’s exactly what made it brilliant, isn’t it? Nintendo took the adventure game formula they’d essentially perfected with Ocarina and twisted it into something entirely new, something that shouldn’t have worked but absolutely did. The time mechanic forced you to think about cause and effect in ways no other game had ever attempted. You couldn’t just bumble through dungeons hoping for the best—you had to plan, experiment, reset when things went pear-shaped. It was like being handed an actual time machine and told to figure out how to save the world with it. No pressure.
The mask transformations were genius wrapped up in absolute nightmare fuel. Becoming a Deku Scrub and learning to hop across water, spinning like a tiny wooden missile launcher. The Goron form that let you roll around Termina at breakneck speed, bowling over enemies like you were a living boulder with anger management issues. And that Zora form—swimming in proper 3D space like you were flying underwater, which was something I’d never experienced in a game before. Each transformation didn’t just change what you could do; it changed how you thought about moving through the world, how you approached every single problem.
Both games absolutely nailed something that modern adventure games still struggle with, even now—making exploration feel genuinely rewarding rather than just busy work. Every heart piece felt properly earned, like you’d solved a puzzle that had been specifically designed for you. Every new song felt like unlocking one of the universe’s fundamental secrets. When you finally got your hands on the Master Sword in Ocarina, or when you collected all those masks in Majora, it wasn’t just a gameplay milestone you’d ticked off a list—it felt like a personal achievement, something worth celebrating.
The music, though. Bloody hell, the music. Koji Kondo didn’t just compose soundtracks for these games; he created entire emotional landscapes that still give me goosebumps twenty-five years later. The way Hyrule Field’s theme would gradually swell when you stepped out of Kokiri Forest for the first time, that sense of the world opening up before you. The genuinely haunting melody that played in the Forest Temple, all twisted corridors and rotating rooms. The way Majora’s soundtrack could shift from whimsical fairy tale to absolutely terrifying horror film within the same bloody track. I still get chills thinking about Clock Town’s theme as it gradually becomes more desperate, more frantic with each passing day of the cycle.
These weren’t just great games—they were the blueprint for what adventure gaming could actually be when developers stopped thinking small. Every modern open-world game owes something to Ocarina’s lock-on system, to its day-night cycles, to the way it made exploration feel meaningful rather than just busy work designed to pad out play time. Majora showed the entire industry that you could take an established, successful formula and completely reinvent it without losing what made it special in the first place. That’s proper design confidence, that is.
Twenty-five years later, I can still boot up either game and immediately fall back into their rhythms like putting on a comfortable old jumper. The Z-targeting still feels completely natural. The music still gives me chills. Link still moves with that perfect balance of weight and responsiveness that makes you forget you’re controlling a character rather than just…being one, existing in that world. That’s the mark of truly great game design—when the interface completely disappears and you’re just living in the world the developers created. Nintendo achieved that twice with these games, and the entire gaming industry has been chasing that feeling ever since.
John grew up swapping floppy disks and reading Amiga Power cover to cover. Now an IT manager in Manchester, he writes about the glory days of British computer gaming—Sensible Soccer, Speedball 2, and why the Amiga deserved more love than it ever got.
