Ocarina of Time Master Quest Part 2: When cows meet slingshots.

After about six hours of gameplay, I'm maybe 1/4 through dungeon five. It's a bit slower than my usual time (I'm generally at about five hours at this point) but Master Quest isn't posing a whole lot of difficulty so far. It seems like a good time for an update, so I want to talk a little bit about the main differences I'm noticing between Ocarina of Time and Master Quest.

The Gamecube controller:
From Batman accessory to Picasso painting.

I want to talk first about some of the differences in the game that come from the fact that it's on the Gamecube instead of the N64. For starters, the graphics are a lot sharper and clearer - I'd compare it to the difference between looking at something with smudgy glasses and then looking at them once you've cleaned them. If you don't have glasses, come up with a simile yourself.

This isn't necessarily a good thing. It instantly dates the game, for example, and reveals some of the more lazy texture mapping and design choices that Nintendo made in 1998 not thinking about future ports on more advanced consoles. The pre-rendered backgrounds in Hyrule Castle and Castle Town are particularly bad, and the difference in quality between some graphical elements and others become really, painfully obvious. Watching the very detailed, very sharply done Link sprite climbing up flat, ugly and pixelated vines really takes you out of the game. It does allow a lot of graphical details to pop out at you that weren't immediately obvious on the N64, though, which does add a bit of extra color to the game.

Star and Crescent on the left, edit on the right. The same symbol
appeared and was changed on movable blocks in dungeons.

My biggest critique of the Gamecube version is probably the control scheme. While the controls generally map over well from the N64 to the Gamecube, the Gamecube controller isn't really fantastic for the job. The "c" buttons, for example, are replaced by a yellow "c" stick on the lower right side of the controller. You can select the "c" buttons by pointing the stick in the right direction, but it's a jumpy little thing and as a result you often select the wrong item or screw up otherwise simple ocarina tunes. The main joystick on the left hand side of the controller is horrible for aiming things like arrows or the hookshot; it's so jumpy that it's almost impossible to make the small adjustments needed. Z-Targeting is replaced by R-Targeting, activated by the right bumper button, which is a natural enough adjustment and doesn't really interrupt gameplay.

Because the Gamecube uses discs instead of cartridges, it has the same problem as the Playstations do - writing to memory cards. While saving your game was very seamlessly integrated into Ocarina of Time on the N64, activated by simply closing the menu with the B button, the same habitual saving is accompanied by about five seconds of wait time as data is written to the memory card.

Ganondorf used to cough up red blood, but they changed it
to green. It just looks kind of dumb now. Note to self:
slash chickens and see if they have green blood...

Finally, Master Quest and the vanilla version of Ocarina of Time for the Gamecube feature all the changes that were made to Ocarina of Time over its many re-releases for the N64. As the game came out originally, many things were brought to Nintendo's attention which people might find offensive. As a result, with each reprint, Nintendo changed some things to make it more PC. The music in the Fire Temple originally featured male Muslim chanting, but it was deemed offensive and replaced with synthesized music. The main symbol on items in the original game was a crescent moon and star, but this was replaced for obvious reasons. Red blood was changed to green and several other small changes were made.

I have a very old version of Ocarina of Time for the N64 which has none of these changes, so it kind of kills the nostalgia for me, but if you've never played it or played an edited version, it probably won't bother you.

So anyway, on to the game.

The first couple of introductory dungeons, the Deku Tree and Dodongo's Cavern, are really very straightforward and similar to the original. There's nothing revolutionary here. They changed around the order of some rooms and, annoyingly, made other rooms superfluous (so far, in every dungeon there's at least one room which contains only a gold skulltula or is otherwise unnecessary for completion. Lazy.) Familiar obstacles might have one added step or complication to complete it, but generally it's nothing that will make an experienced player scratch their head.

Apparently Jabu Jabu likes his steaks tartar. Hurr. 

Things don't start to get creative until the third dungeon, Jabu Jabu's Belly. The entire dungeon is based around hitting cows embedded in Jabu Jabu's stomach walls with slingshots to proceed. It's silly, it's surreal, and it's a bit gross - it's something that the level designers would probably not have gotten away with in the original, which makes it kind of fun. However, once you've figured out the gimmick, the dungeon loses all difficulty. The first thing you do when you get into a room is look for a cow.

The Forest Temple was done beautifully, as previously (the Forest Temple is my favorite dungeon in the entire game anyway) although so much of the dungeon's puzzles were integrated into the design and layout of the dungeon originally that the only thing the designers could really do was rearrange the steps to complete it. No challenge to an experienced player, but the extra complication is enough to freshen up the game significantly.

Largely, so far, Master Quest isn't nearly as punishing as any of the previous Zelda titles. It's a great choice for experienced Ocarina of Time fans who love the game, but are getting a little bit tired of being able to complete the dungeons with their eyes closed and/or timing themselves with stopwatches to make it interesting.