10 Best No.5's In Gaming History

Looking back, it's staggering to realize Nintendo's mastery at adapting their biggest games to the third dimension.

After nailing 3D platforming with Super Mario 64, the super-minds at Nintendo took a break to look at the rest of the 3D gaming scene, see what needed fixing, and then sent Ocarina of Time out to show every other developer how to take the medium forward.

Link's first 3D adventure set the groundwork for so much of modern gaming. Context-sensitive action buttons? Thank Zelda. Effective lock-on systems? Thank Zelda. Irritating companions who don't know when to shut up? Yeah, you can go ahead and blame Zelda for that. You can tell someone's a '90s kid if their eye twitches when you say "Hey, Listen!"

Annoying NPCs aside, Ocarina of Time still holds up. Its stellar soundtrack, quirky cast, and trademark time-jumping still exude a charm that belies the game's aging graphics, and the quality of the level design remains just as obvious now as it did back in 1998. We love Breath of the Wild, but man alive did we miss the type of genius that brought us OoT's Forest Temple.

Ocarina of Time is undoubtedly the greatest of the "Traditional" (i.e. pre-Breath of the Wild) Zeldas, which makes it the greatest entry in arguably the best video game series ever made.