3DS Impressions + Ocarina of Time 3D Review

I love Ocarina of Time. You may think you love it more than I do, but you’d be wrong. I’ve always dreamed of having OoT on the go. When I was in high school, I built myself a handheld N64 (Fun fact: Expensive to do) just to play Ocarina of Time.

After that broke, I tried coding myself an N64 emulator for the PSP which again was only to play Ocarina of Time, and ran at a blazing fast 8 FPS.

Once I had a phone capable of running it, I spent several days tinkering with the OS so I could use a PS3 controller with it via Bluetooth.

The moral of the story here is that I’ve dreamed of the day when they would officially release some sort of handheld version of Ocarina of Time, so that my torturous labors could end. That day has come, my friends. And it is glorious.

While some of you may think that $300 is a high price to pay for a single game, I posit that it is in fact not high enough! After all, as any gaming forum will tell you, Ocarina of Time is a game so glorious, so amazing; that there is nobody on this planet, not even Chuck Norris himself, who could improve upon it. That didn’t stop Grezzo from trying, however. And believe it or not they did a pretty good job. While the gameplay and maps remain the same, the graphics have been improved, while still maintaining the look and feel of the original. In addition (I’m sure nobody saw this one coming), they’ve added some fancy new 3D effects!

Like many, I was apprehensive about the 3D effect being the key selling point for a console, but the idea has certainly grown on me. Unlike in a movie, I can turn it on and off at will, and my games haven’t gotten 30% more expensive because of it. And, at least in this game, there were points where it really did add something to the experience. Both Ganondorf fights became a hell of a lot easier once I could actually tell how far away the pong dot was from my paddle sword. Yes, the bubble where the effect takes place is annoyingly small. And yes, adding functionality where you move the screen around makes absolutely no fucking sense when you need to keep within a few inches of the bubble. But it’s better than I thought it’d be. And besides, who wouldn’t want Ganondorf’s massive nose to look like it’s about to poke you in the eye?

There’s really not a whole lot else to say on the game itself. It’s still Ocarina of Time. It’s the same game that has a 99/100 on Metacritic. Zelda fanboys still have wet dreams about it every night, even though everybody knows that Link to the Past was a far superior game. Oh that’s right, the fanboys never played any of the real Zelda games. You know, the 2D ones on the NES/SNES? Also, what’s up with the rather large number of link cosplayers at Anime and Comic conventions? What on earth does Zelda have to do with either one of those? OW! OK, WiNG, I’ll get back on topic, please stop whipping me! OW! Yes, yes, I know I’m past my deadline, but my wife was going into labor and I had to stop writing for just a few minutes to- OW! I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again!

I did have a few nits to pic about the game. Clearly a lot of effort went into improving the graphics to take advantage of this powerful new hardware. Why wasn’t the same done for the sound? As much as I love the old sound effects, we’re capable of producing better than 16-bit sound at 48 Khz. I wouldn’t have even noticed it, except that during the credits a beautifully remastered version of the theme song (which was oddly missing from this installment of the franchise) plays, just to show they could have done it… In addition, the D-Pad never gets used. With the loss of the C buttons for items, would it really have been so hard to let us put items there?

That’s about it. Shortly after completing the game, I noticed that they had The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening and the original Kirby’s Dreamland on the eShop, which were 2 of my first video games… So I’ve been too busy reliving the old days to actually check out any of the other 3DS features. The AR cards are cool, if gimicky though. Let’s see if game makers actually implement it in their games in a way that enhances the gameplay beyond a gimmick (spoiler alert: they won’t). Bottom line, the 3DS is pretty damn awesome. One game isn’t really enough to sell a console, but once we have a few more good games out for it, I’d highly advise picking one up.