Collection essentials #550: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (GC)

Ocarina of Time had been one of Nintendo’s biggest smash hits of the previous generation, for the Nintendo 64. To read more about it, please see my blog post about it.


When Ocarina first hit store shelves, Nintendo had plans for an alternate version of the game. It would have been released for an add-on system for the 64, but after many delays to said add-on, those plans had to be scrapped. They could have easily discarded the idea and moved on to other pursuits, but luckily they opted to bring it to life another way.


This release, as the box advertises, is two games in one. There’s a port of the original Ocarina of Time here, with nothing but button colors tampered with. And then, there’s an all-new version: Master Quest. What is Master Quest? It’s mostly the same game, except the biggest part of the gameplay has been reimagined. In Master Quest, all of the game’s dungeons have been redesigned. They’re still the same locales as in the original game, with the same graphics, music and story segments, and they bring back the same gameplay mechanics too. But the actual layout of the rooms and the puzzles to solve are new. They’re generally tougher, too, best suited for people who are already familiar with Ocarina of Time. It’s a really cool and fresh way to experience Ocarina a second time!


What’s also pretty neat is that Nintendo offered an outstanding deal for this game. All you had to do to get it was simply pre-order the brand new GameCube Zelda game that was coming out in early 2003, and you would get this game free of charge! As a youngster, this really caught my attention. I had never pre-ordered a video game before that point, and this proved more than enough incentive to get me to do so. I made the pre-order, and the copy of the game shown in the photo is what I got. I jumped into Master Quest, but I wasn’t able to finish it back then because the dungeon puzzles got too tough for me. But years later, though, I went back to it in my 20s and got through what I had been struggling with before.


How do I like Master Quest compared to the original game? …it’s hard to say. I feel like I would have to replay it to get a better idea of how I feel. 


If you’ve never played Ocarina of Time before, I’d recommend starting with the original version of the game. If you really love it like many do, though, then Master Quest is definitely worth a spin. It’s mildly surprising to me that Nintendo has never done anything like this with another Zelda game since. In terms of getting your hands on Master Quest now…there isn’t a version available on current systems. There was an Ocarina of Time remake in the early 2010s which contains a version of Master Quest on it, which I’ll be covering at some point. If you’re a big Zelda fan, it’s worth the extra effort of digging up old hardware for sure.


As a reminder of my first time pre-ordering a video game, and because I love classic Zelda, Ocarina of Time on GameCube is most definitely an essential in my collection. 

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