Zelda Retrospective: Part I - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest

Okay, so this is going to be the first in a series of blogs that overlook the Zelda franchise. I just recently finished playing through The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest and it gave me inspiration. This is an announcement that I will embark upon a journey through the various console Zelda games, namely The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. This will be a long on-going series of commentaries that will review the games as games themselves, analyze how the franchise and games in general have evolved over time and maybe to have a little bit of fun at the games' expense. I expect this series to take a long time because we're talking about a lot of long games, and since I'm trying to get a job and will be going back to school in a little less than two months. Also, I'm leaving out the Zelda titles that were released on Nintendo's handhelds, because that would just take even more time. But perhaps later on? Anyway, on to Master Quest.
Back in 2003, as an incentive for pre-ordering The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the GameCube, Nintendo offered up a free bonus disc. This disc contained two versions of the same game. The first was the standard version of Ocarina of Time, the game that kicked off my love of the Zelda franchise and ignited the burning desire to own a Nintendo 64 that consumed my ten-year-old heart. The second was what made me want this particular disc so badly: Ocarina of Time Master Quest. Back in the late 1990's, Nintendo was working on the 64 Disc Drive (64DD), a disc-based add on for the Nintendo 64. Master Quest was known in Japan as Ura Zelda, but it was never released since the 64DD was sold at very underwhelming numbers. Essentially, Master Quest was meant to be in the same vein as the second adventure in the original Legend of Zelda, in which you could go through harder dungeons by naming your character "ZELDA" after completing the main quest.
Master Quest isn't really a different game from Ocarina of Time. The story, dialogue, cutscenes, items and everything are the exact same as the regular Ocarina of Time. When you get into the dungeons, however, all bets are off. Though the maps are identical, with the rooms layed out in all the same positions, the puzzles, enemies and progression through the rooms is drastically changed. This version is meant for Ocarina of Time veterans, because you have to be very familiar with the original game to stand a chance of getting through some of the game's more merciless puzzles and also because there are several sidequests from the original that now become mandatory if you hope to get through a dungeon. Items like Din's Fire and the Fire Arrow and the Scarecrow's Song are now essential if you hope to solve certain puzzles. Harder still are the many extremely well hidden switches that I often spent large amounts of time trying to track down or missed completely and had to look up on a walkthrough to understand what I needed to do to move on. It's interesting to note that now, there are less enemies overall within the dungeons, but there are a larger number of harder enemies that take multiple hits like Lizolfos, Dinolfos, Stalfos, ReDead and Iron Knuckles. Also, because of the progression changes, you might find yourself completely bypassing certain rooms or unable to get into them until you've gotten an item from later in the game. This, of course, tends to mean that there are Gold Skulltulas in those rooms. While the Gold Skulltulas outside the dungeons remain in the same places that they are in the original quest, they are in drastically different places in Master Quest and are often much harder to find.
The various changes make a huge change to the overall difficulty of the game - everything is now much harder.
The switch to GameCube also allowed for a few minor upgrades to graphics. The game runs at about 24 frames per second (according to some articles I read on IGN), as opposed to modern games which run in at least 30 frames per second but tend to aim for 60 frames per second. This means that movements on screen might look a little rugged and choppy, especially if you're used to the high definition games that are on the market today. But you'll get used to it after a little gameplay and, really, the game is still great to look at for something that essentially came out eleven years ago. Plus, the GameCube disc can run in progressive scan, so if you have a 'Cube or a Wii set up on an HDTV with the right cables, you can get a slightly better picture out of it.
The gameplay of Ocarina of Time was revolutionary back in 1998, with its Z-targetting system, such a huge game world, and an unheard of camera system that could move into a 1st person free-look. This all worked fantastically on the N64, but on GameCube, it misses a few points. For one, I had the problem of forgetting that this particular Zelda came before the free floating camera that could be manipulated to any position via the C-Stick, as it can in The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. When I first started the file, I kept finding myself trying to manipulate the camera only to bring out an item, since items have been mapped to the C-stick and also to the X, Y and Z buttons. I found myself always using the buttons rather than the stick for my items because it is a much more intuitive and responsive way to do it.
The mapping of C-Button functions from the N64 controller to the GameCube controller's C-stick is most problematic in the use of the ocarina within the game. Because there is no button assigned the the C-Up button from the N64, the ocarina's C-Up note must be played via the stick. This makes many of the songs that use that note much more difficult to play. If a song didn't use C-Up at all, I would always use the X, Y, Z and A buttons just for the sake of convenience. This would be a minor gripe, but considering the prolific use of the ocarina throughout the game, it's tedious. It also makes the ocarina mini-games with the Skullchildren in the Lost Woods and with the Frogs in Zora's River much more difficult.
I hadn't played Master Quest since I first received and played through the disc in 2003, so I've come back into it with fresh eyes. The game still holds up remarkably well and is still very challenging. It's not for Zelda newbies, but veterans who haven't played it should take a look. The game disc is pretty hard to find these days, I'd recommend checking around local or online stores that sell used games. Luckily, the Wii is backwards compatible, so, so long as you have a GameCube controller and memory card, you can play the disc on a Wii if you still don't have a GameCube.

Oh, also, I discovered while playing this that Ganondorf has Obama ears. I'm serious.


Tommorrow's post will be on the first day of play of Legend of Zelda for NES (I'll be playing it on the Collector's Edition GameCube disc). I've actually never played all the way through the NES Zelda games, so this should be interesting.