Some admirable honesty right there from Mr. Zelda - Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma - in an interview with Nintendo Power, as reported by Nintendo Everything. Discussing one of the most influential and important games of all time, he admits that the fact that it’s spoken of in such hushed tones is indicative that no Zelda since has topped it.
“I’m happy that a title I worked on some time ago remains highly praised to this day, but that also shows how none of the subsequent games in the series have surpassed it,” Aonuma suggests. “As someone who is still working on the series, I have mixed feelings about that. Because I haven’t yet surpassed it, I can’t quit. Surprisingly, that simply motivation may be the reason I continue to work on the Zelda series.”
Interesting stuff. Having played Wind Waker before Ocarina of Time, it’s clear that the GameCube game owed a lot to the N64 classic, which was very much ahead of its time, but I personally preferred Link’s sea-faring adventure. Indeed, some would suggest that, while it could never be as influential as Ocarina, Twilight Princess was such an effective homage to that game that it surpassed its predecessor.
So will Nintendo ever top Link’s 1998 adventure in the eyes of those who played it and loved it at the time? Probably not. Times have changed, and a combination of nostalgia, the feverish excitement built up by such epic games in those heady days where games didn’t have their endings dissected on forums and uploaded to YouTube on release day, and the simple fact that it’s virtually impossible for one single game to define its console quite as effectively as Ocarina did these days means you’ll always have those hardcore fans saying “yeah, but it’s not as good as Ocarina”.
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