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Keep in mind, the console wars were in full swing during a time when people actually cared about console wars. At any rate, what strikes me most about that review is that it was such an event and that we were all riding this hype wave for months. Peer: This one? Matt (middle) dubbed this friendly wizard at the 1998 Zelda event "Mr. Waffles? If memory serves, I was about 100 pounds heavier with a very unnatural bleached blonde look, and there are pics to prove it. You and Matt were the ones doing the early preview shenanigans. Waffles, the Magician.Ĭraig: I hadn’t quite leapt into the Nintendo coverage at IGN by Ocarina of Time’s release - I was still knocking around with SEGA Saturn and whatever hand-me-down scraps that were given to the Ultra Game Player Online site. We actually played a preview build at an event in Seattle called the Zelda Summit and also in San Francisco. But then Nintendo surprised us by having the final US retail version ready right before launch. With Ocarina of Time, we were intent on snagging an import copy to start playing early since it came out on November 21, two days before the North American launch. I remember many a poor Nintendo representative crashing on the couch in our demo room while we were playing a game late into the night. Basically, the cartridge was literally shackled to the console and couldn’t be removed – and the NOA visitor was usually only in town for two days. Back then, Nintendo used to send a chaperone along with their unreleased games – a person with a locked suitcase carrying a “Lockbox N64”. Whenever Nintendo shared a playable game early, it came with “strings attached”. Next Generation was stingy with their copy – but we did manage to sneak a peek at least. We played like 17 hours straight, because unlike the magazines, we didn’t get weeks of heads-up time. Peer: Oh, I remember the actual review process. Sadly, no known screen captures of the IGN64 homepage from November 1998 exist. I’m pretty sure we were checking it early simply because we stole it from Next Generation. But I do have somewhat wavy memories that we were looking at the review code on the gold cart in the first Brisbane offices…we were finally released out of our cramped media cave into the wide-open, much to the detriment of our magazine neighbors. Can you fill in some gaps?Ĭraig Harris: A long freakin’ time ago. Peer Schneider: Hey guys, our features editor asked me to write a piece about Ocarina of Time turning 25.
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We made Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto hold up this copy of : The Magazine - a one-off print mag we wrote entirely after hours in 1998 - which means he totally loved it. But 25 years is a long time, so I needed a little help to try to piece together the memories of what it was like to play this much-revered gaming history icon before anyone else. I’d never wanted to play a game as much as Ocarina of Time and I would’ve spat rocks at anyone trying to challenge me to my nerd right. I don’t remember if there was much discussion in the office as to who would review it, either – I doubt it – but any attempted claim would’ve been futile. Prior to playing Ocarina of Time, my favorite game of all time was A Link to the Past – so to say that I was looking forward to playing and reviewing it would’ve been the understatement of the decade. We had received a special delivery with a boxed, final copy containing a shiny, golden cartridge just a few days prior – and I vaguely remembered spending a few delirious nights playing the game for review in our offices at Imagine Media (our former parent company – and the original “I” in "IGN"), then located south of San Francisco in Brisbane, California. I posted my review of Nintendo’s first 3D Zelda action-adventure here on IGN on November 25, 1998, just two days after it hit stores in the US. You’re in good company if that makes you feel old. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time turns 25 today.