Nintendo Power · Issue 114, November 1998 · The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Nintendo Power's comprehensive Ocarina of Time coverage in late 1998 doubled as both the definitive guide and the fan-service event of the year, arriving alongside a game that immediately became the highest-rated in history and validated everything the N64 had promised.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrived on November 23, 1998, having been anticipated for years — shown in various states of completion at trade shows, discussed in magazines with breathless excitement, and delayed multiple times as Nintendo's teams pushed the hardware. Nintendo Power's coverage was an event unto itself, with the magazine providing the most comprehensive guide available for a game that was simultaneously vast, complex, and bewildering in scale. The issue was packaged with pull-out maps and arrived as what felt like the culmination of the N64's promise: this was the three-dimensional Zelda that fans had imagined since the SNES era, and Nintendo Power was there to document every dungeon, every Gold Skulltula, every upgrade. The game received perfect scores from every major publication and held the record as GameRankings' highest-rated game for over a decade.
Documenting gaming's most critically acclaimed release at the time and providing an essential companion to a game whose scope made it nearly incomprehensible without guidance.
Ocarina of Time's Hyrule was the largest, most complex game world Nintendo had ever built, and it arrived in an era before in-game quest markers, hint systems, or the option to look up a solution in thirty seconds on a smartphone. Players genuinely needed guidance, and Nintendo Power's comprehensive coverage — dungeon maps, item locations, boss strategies, side-quest walkthrough — was as much a part of the OoT experience for many players as the game itself. The magazine understood its role as guide service and rose to meet it.
The coverage also served a second function: it was a celebration. Nintendo Power's editorial enthusiasm for Ocarina of Time was unfeigned (and also, certainly, editorially convenient for Nintendo's advertising relationships), and the magazine's photographers and editors clearly understood they were documenting something exceptional. The screenshots of the Water Temple, the Spirit Temple, the final confrontation with Ganondorf — reproduced in the magazine's glossy pages — functioned as both spoilers and enticements, giving players who hadn't yet reached those areas something to look forward to.
The pull-out maps included with the issue became essential navigation tools in an era when the game's own map system was limited. Hyrule Field, Lake Hylia, Death Mountain — understanding how these areas connected spatially was genuinely necessary for efficient play, and a physical map spread on a desk or floor while playing was a reasonable solution that modern players forget was once entirely normal.
The critical reception to Ocarina of Time in late 1998 represented a moment of near-universal agreement in a medium not known for consensus. Every major publication awarded it a perfect or near-perfect score; Famitsu's 40/40 was only the second in that publication's history; GameRankings' aggregate of reviews produced a score that would remain unmatched for years. This unanimity reflected genuine quality: the game had achieved something that reviewers across different tastes and backgrounds could all recognize as exceptional.
What Nintendo Power's coverage captured, intentionally or not, was a moment when 3D gaming fully matured. Ocarina of Time solved problems that had plagued 3D action-adventure games since their inception — camera management, spatial navigation, combat pacing in three dimensions — in ways that became industry standards. The z-targeting system, the day/night cycle, the dungeon design philosophy: all of these were so well executed that they were immediately borrowed and became genre conventions. Nintendo Power was there at the moment the template was set.