The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time/Master Quest

I’ll conduct this review without the usual categories because I feel the majority of the people reading have already played the original Ocarina of Time. I’ll dive right into all the hyped-up improvements Nintendo has made. First, and most obvious, is the visual qualities: Link has been upgraded to run in 640×480 resolution for some higher end TVs… like mine… and for the even higher-end TVs, Master Quest can run in progressive scan mode. These may not seem important, but almost regardless of what kind of television you have, there’s a noticeable difference. All the muddy areas of the past you caught in the skyline and textures are gone, in fact specifically those 2 areas, skyline and textures, look far better than they ever could have coming off a cartridge. My only complaint in the visuals department is that after all the revamping Nintendo did, through some research I’ve discovered that the game still only runs around 20 fps… very disappointing. All the same sound effects and orchestrated musical themes are there, sounding a little clearer than before coming off a disc, and still running in Dolby Pro Logic so you can catch those stupid flaming bats before they sneak up behind you.

Now for the real reason everybody wants a piece of theMaster Quest… the dungeons. These are the only things changed in the game, with the small exception that side quests have a tad more emphasis and that long-winded owl appears A LOT less. While the room placement and total dungeon architecture remains the same, it’s on the inside that counts. Rooms that previously required you to shoot down a few bats to open the iron bars on the doors now may have anywhere from 1 to 5 puzzles encompassed into one very unfamiliar pain in the ass. There are even switches placed randomly inside Jabu-Jabu… disguised as cow heads… that sound like cows. It took me a while to face the fact that in order to open the door in front of me I had to look to the ceiling, take out my bow, and pop that cow in the eye. Even the earliest dungeons include rooms containing up to 3 Stalfos brothers at a time, very difficult with a Kokiri sword indeed. Gamers are going to be forced to use every single weapon, technique, and random ounce of luck they can muster to survive these dungeons that do a wonderful job at showing off the re-write-able capabilities of Ocarina of Time’s engine.

Final Grade: 95%