No matter how much I wish it were the case, I’ll never know what it was like to have seen Jaws in the summer of 1975. Yet, I still get the joy of watching the film that changed blockbuster cinema forever 50 years later, whether that be on towering IMAX screens or wonderfully restored 4K blu-rays. The experience of being there when a film, game, or piece of music entered our culture and witnessing its impact firsthand can never be replicated, but through preservation, remasters, and remakes, new audiences get to uncover these treasures for themselves.

This is the case with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. My recent playtime with a demo of the Switch 2 remake felt like digital archaeology; the unearthing of a cultural artefact that informed so much of what came after it, while remaining a gleaming treasure in its own right. A link between one era of video games and another. A sacred text. At least, that’s how it felt to me. You see, I’ve never played the original.

Well, that’s a tiny bit of a lie — I did briefly mess around in the opening hour or so of the 3DS port around a decade ago. I know, I should be subject to whatever form of medieval torture you deem appropriate. But the truth is, it’s one that simply passed me by, despite having played several Zeldas since — Tears of the Kingdom is a masterwork of open-world design in my eyes, even if Wind Waker still sits closest to my heart.

Source link